Chapter 31: The Ethics of Socialism

1. The Alternative to Freedom

In the preceding chapter we tried to confine ourselves to a discussion of the positive ethical values of "capitalism" -- i.e., of the system of economic freedom. We did this because these values are so seldom appreciated or even considered. For more than a century the system has been under constant attack from numberless detractors (including those who owe most to it), and even the majority of its defenders have been apologetic about it, contenting themselves with pointing out that it is more productive than its alternatives.

This is a valid defense. It has, indeed, an ethical as well as a "merely material" validity. Capitalism has enormously raised the level of the masses. It has wiped out whole areas of poverty. It has greatly reduced infant mortality, and made it possible to cure disease and prolong life. It has reduced human suffering. Because of capitalism, millions live today who would otherwise have not even been born. If these facts have no ethical relevance, then it is impossible to say in what ethical relevance consists.

But though a defense of capitalism solely because of its productivity is valid and even ethically valid, it is not ethically sufficient. We cannot fully appreciate the positive ethical values of a system of economic freedom until we compare it with its alternatives.

So let us compare it now with its only real alternative -- socialism. Some readers may object that there are any number of alternatives, a whole spectrum ranging from various degrees of interventionism and statism to communism. But to avoid getting into purely economic issues, I am going to be dogmatic at this point and say that all so-called middle-of-the-road systems are unstable and transitional in nature, and in the long run either break down or lead toward a complete socialism. For the argument in support of this conclusion, I must refer the reader to the relevant economic literature. (1) Here I will content myself with calling attention to the difference between a general undiscriminatory system of laws against force and fraud, on the one hand, and specific interventions in the market economy on the other. Some of these specific interventions may indeed "remedy" this or that specific "evil" in the short run, but they can do so only at the cost of producing more and worse evils in the long run. (2)

I should also warn the reader that in most of this discussion we shall be treating "socialism" and "communism" as practically synonymous. This was the practice of Marx and Engels. It is true that the words have come to have different connotations today; later in this chapter we shall recognize these. But in most of this discussion we shall assume, with Bernard Shaw, that "A communist is nothing but a socialist with the courage of his convictions." The parties and programs in present-day Europe that call themselves "socialist" in fact advocate merely a partial socialism -- the nationalization of railroads, various public utilities, and heavy industry -- but not usually of light industries, the service trades, or agriculture. When socialism becomes complete, it becomes what is generally called communism.

An additional distinction: the parties that call themselves Communist believe in getting into power, if necessary, through violent revolution, and in spreading their power by infiltration, hate-propaganda, subversion and war against other nations; whereas the parties that call themselves Socialist profess (for the most part sincerely) to wish to come into power only through persuasion and "democratic means." But we can leave a discussion of such differences until later.

2. Utopian Socialism

Let us begin by considering the ethical assumptions of utopian (or pre-Marxist) socialism. The utopian socialists have always deplored the alleged cruelty and savagery of economic competition, and have pleaded for the substitution of a regime of "cooperation" or "mutual aid." This plea rests, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, on a failure to understand that a free-market system is in fact a marvelous system of social cooperation, both on a "microeconomic" and on a "macroeconomic" scale. It rests on a failure to recognize, in addition, that economic competition is an integral and indispensable part of this system of economic cooperation, and enormously increases its effectiveness.

Utopian socialists constantly talk of the "wastefulness" of competition. They fail to understand that the apparent "wastes" of competition are short-term and transitional wastes necessary to increasing economies in the long run. One does not get any comparable long-run economies under monopolies. Above all, one does not get them under governmental monopolies: witness the post-office.

In Looking Backward (1888), the most famous utopian-socialist novel of the late nineteenth century, Edward Bellamy portrayed what he considered an ideal society. And one of the features that made it ideal was that it

eliminated the interminable rows of stores [in Boston] . . . ten thousand stores to distribute the goods needed by this one city, which in my [utopian-socialist] dream had been supplied with all things from a single warehouse, as they were ordered through one great store in every quarter, where the buyer, without waste of time or labor, found under one roof the world's assortment in whatever line he desired. There the labor of distribution had been so slight as to add a scarcely perceptible fraction to the cost of commodities to the user. The cost of production was virtually all he paid. But here the mere distribution of the goods, their handling alone, added a fourth, a third, a half and more, to the cost. All these ten thousand plants must be paid for, their rent, their staffs of superintendence, their platoons of salesmen, their ten thousand sets of accountants, jobbers, and business dependents, with all they spent in advertising themselves and fighting one another, and the consumers must do the paying. What a famous process for beggaring a nation. (3)

What Bellamy failed to see in this incredibly naive picture was that he was putting all the costs and inconveniences of "distribution" on the buyer, on the consumer. In his utopia it was the buyers who had to walk or take a trolley or drive their carriages to the "one great store." They could not go just around the corner to pick up groceries, or a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk; or a medicine; or a pad and pencil; or a screwdriver; or a pair of socks or stockings. No: for the most trivial item they had to walk or ride to the "one great store," no matter how far away it might happen to be. And then, because the one great nationalized store would not have any competition to meet, it would not put on enough salesmen, and the customers would have to queue up for indefinite waits (as in Russia or most government-run "services" anywhere). And, because of the same lack of competition, the goods would be poor and of limited variety. They would not be what the customers wanted, but what the government bureaucrats thought were plenty good enough for them.

Among the things that Bellamy overlooked was that all real costs must be paid for; and if the one great government store does not put the cost of "distribution" on the price, because it does not assume that cost, it is only because it forces the consumers to assume that cost, not only in money, but in time and inconvenience and even personal hardship. The "wastes" of the kind of system that Bellamy dreamed of would be enormously greater than those of the competitive system he derided.

But these were comparatively minor errors. The major error of Bellamy's picture lay in his complete failure to recognize the role of competition in constantly reducing costs of production, in improving products as well as means of production, and in developing wholly new products. He did not foresee the thousand inventions, improvements, and new discoveries that capitalistic competition has brought to the world in the seventy-six years since he wrote in 1888. Though he was supposed to be writing about conditions in the year 2000 (in his dream), he did not foresee the airplane or even the automobile; or radio or television or high-fidelity and stereophonic systems, or even the phonograph; or "automation," or a thousand miracles of the modern world. He did foresee music being piped into homes from central government stations by telephone; but this was because the telephone had already been privately invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 and 1877 (ten years before Bellamy wrote), and had been privately improved since then.

Nor did he foresee the enormous economies that were to be effected in distribution. He did not foresee the enormous growth that was to develop in the size of the privately-owned department store and in the varieties of goods it was to offer. He did not foresee that these stores would open branches in the suburbs or in other cities to serve their customers better. He did not foresee the development of the modern mail-order house, which would enable people to order goods from huge catalogs and save them the trouble of driving in to the "one great store" in the hope that it might carry what they wanted. He did not foresee the development of the modern supermarket, not only with its immense increase in the varieties of goods offered, but with its enormous economies in the size of sales staffs. And the reason he did not foresee these things is that he failed to recognize the enormous pressures that the competition which he deplored put on each individual store or firm constantly to increase its economies and reduce its costs.

And for the same reason he did not foresee the immense economies that were to be brought about by mechanized bookkeeping and accounting. In fact, his comments show that he hardly understood the need for bookkeeping or accounting at all. To him it was merely a way in which private merchants counted up their inexcusable profits. He knew nothing of one of the main functions of accounting. That a chief purpose of bookkeeping and accounting is precisely to know what costs are, and where they occur, so that wastes can be traced, pinpointed, and eliminated, and costs reduced, never occurred to him. He was against competition because he took all its beneficent results for granted.

I had not meant to get into economic considerations to this extent, but it seems necessary in order to show what is wrong with the implicit ethics of socialist or anti-capitalist writers.

3. "Equal Distribution" vs. Production

What socialist writers fail to understand is that only through the institution of the free market, with competition and private ownership of the means of production, and only through the interplay of prices, wages, costs, profits and losses is it possible to determine what consumers want, and in what relative proportions, and therefore what is to be produced, and in what relative proportions. Under a system of capitalism, the interplay of millions of prices and wages and trillions of price and wage and profit interrelationships produce the infinitely varied incentives and deterrents that direct production as by "an invisible hand" into thousands of different commodities and services. What socialists fail to understand is that socialism cannot solve the problem of "economic calculation." "Even angels, if they were endowed only with human reason, could not form a socialistic community." (4)

Now by any utilitarian standard (and the socialists themselves constantly appeal to a utilitarian standard) any system that cannot solve the problem of production, that cannot maximize production and cannot direct it into the proper channels, any system that would grossly reduce (compared with what is possible) the material basis for social life, the satisfaction of human wants, cannot be called a "moral" system.

We have already seen that a free-market system tends to give to every social group, and to every individual within each group, the value of what it or he has contributed to production. The working motto of such a system is: To each what he creates. Now Marxian socialism denies that capitalism tends to do this. It holds that under capitalism the worker is systematically "exploited" and robbed of the full produce of his labor. We have already seen in the preceding chapter that this Marxian contention is untenable. (5) But in any case the Marxists do not propose this for their own motto for distribution. Their motto is: From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.

The two parts of this slogan are incompatible. Human nature is such that unless each is paid and rewarded according to his ability and effort and contribution he will not exert himself to apply and develop his full potential ability, to put forth his maximum effort, or to make his maximum contribution. And the general reduction of effort will of course reduce the production out of which everybody's needs are to be supplied. And that each will have "according to his need" is an empty boast -- unless need is to be interpreted as meaning just enough to keep alive. (Even this, as the history of famines in Soviet Russia and Communist China has shown, is not always achieved.) But if "needs" are to be interpreted in the sense of wants and desires, in the sense of what each of us would like to have, it is a goal never to be fully achieved as long as there is an acknowledged shortage or scarcity of anything at all. If "need" is interpreted simply as other people's need as estimated by a Socialist bureaucrat, then no doubt the socialist goal can be sometimes achieved.

The most common ideal of "just" distribution espoused by utopian socialists is equal division of goods or income per head of the population. (6) Applied literally, this would violate the motto of distribution according to need by giving as much to infants as to adults in their prime. But the central objection to the ideal is of a quite different nature. It would destroy production.

We have already seen (Chapter 30) why this is so. Suppose at present (or at the time that the experiment of guaranteed equality of income per head is started) the statistical average income per capita is $2,500 a year. Then nobody who had been getting less than that would work harder to increase his income, because the difference would be guaranteed to him. In fact, as the whole amount would be guaranteed to him, he would see no reason to continue to work at all -- except insofar as he was coerced into doing so by slavery, the whip, a tyrannical public opinion, or the intermittent and uncertain promptings of his own conscience. As, moreover, the new guaranteed equality of income at $2,500 a year could only be realized by seizing everything above that amount earned by anybody, those who had previously been earning more than that amount would no longer have any incentive to do so. In fact, they would no longer have any incentive to earn even that amount; because it would be guaranteed to them whether they earned it or not. The result would be general poverty and starvation.

It may be replied that this would be a suicidal thing for men to do, and that the inhabitants of such a society would surely be intelligent enough to see this; that they would be intelligent enough, in fact, to see that the more each produced the more there would be for all. This is in fact the argument of all socialists and of all socialist governments. What those who put forward the argument overlook is that what is true for the collectivity is not necessarily true for the individual. The individual is told by the managers of the socialist society that if he increases his output he will, other things being equal, increase total output. Mathematically he recognizes that this is so. But mathematically he recognizes, also, that under a system of equal division his own contribution can have only an infinitesimal relationship to his own income and welfare. He knows that even if he personally worked like a galley slave, and nobody else worked, he would still starve. And he knows, also, on the other hand, that if everybody else worked like a galley slave, and he did nothing, or only went through the motions of working when somebody was watching him, he would live very well on what everybody else had produced.

Suppose a man lives in a socialist country with a population of 200 million. By backbreaking work, say, he doubles his production. If his previous production was average, he has increased the total national production by only one-two-hundred-millionth. This means that he personally, assuming equal distribution, increases his income or consumption by only one-two-hundred-millionth, in spite of his terrific effort. He would never notice the infinitesimal difference in his material welfare. Suppose, on the other hand, that without getting caught he does not work at all. Then he gets only one-two-hundredmillionth less to eat. The deprivation is so infinitesimal that again he would be unable to notice it. But he would save himself from any work whatever.

In brief, under conditions of equal distribution regardless of individual production, a man's output, or the intensity of his effort, will be determined not by some abstract, over-all, collectivist consideration but mainly by his assumption regarding what everybody else is doing or is going to do. He may be willing to "do his share"; but he'll be hanged before he'll break his back to produce while others are loafing, because he knows that it will get him nowhere. And he will probably be a little generous in measuring how hard he himself is working and a little cynical in estimating how hard everybody else is working. He will be apt to cite the very worst among his co-workers as typical of what "others" do while he slaves. (7)

That this is what actually happens in a completely socialized economy is proved by the necessity the managers of such an economy are under to maintain a constant propaganda in favor of More Work, More Production. It is proved by the mass starvation that immediately followed the collectivization of the farms in Soviet Russia and in Communist China. But no more impressive illustration can be found anywhere than in the very beginnings of American history.

Most of us have forgotten that when the Pilgrim Fathers landed on the shores of Massachusetts they established a communist system. Out of their common product and storehouse they set up a system of rationing, though it came to "but a quarter of a pound of bread a day to each person." Even when harvest came, "it arose to but a little." A vicious circle seemedto set in. The people complained that they were too weak from want of food to tend the crops as they should. Deeply religious though they were, they took to stealing from each other. "So as it well appeared," writes Governor Bradford, in his contemporary account, "that famine must still insue the next year allso, if not some way prevented."

So the colonists, he continues,

begane to thinke how they might raise as much come as they could, and obtaine a teeter crope than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in miserie. At length [in 1623] after much debate of things, the Gov. (with the advise of the cheefest amongest them) gave way that they should set come every man for his owne perticuler, and in that regard trust to them selves.... And so assigned to every family a parcell of land....

This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more come was planted than other waise would have bene by any means the Gov. or any other could use, and saved him a great deall of trouble, and gave farr better contente.

The women now wente willingly into the feild, and tooke their litle-ons with them to set come, which before would aledg weakness, and inabilitie; whom to have compelled would have bene thought great tiranie and oppression.

The experience that was had in this commone course and condition, tried sundrie years, and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanitie of that conceite of Platos and other ancients, applauded by some of later times; -- that the taking away of propertie, and bringing in communitie into a comone wealth, would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this comunitie (so farr as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much imployment that would have been to their benefite and comforte.

For the yong-men that were most able and fitte for labour and service did repine that they should spend their time and Streingth to worke for other mens wives and children, with out any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in devission of victails and cloaths, than he that was weake and not able to doe a quarter the other could; this was thought injuestice....

And for men's wives to be commanded to doe service for other men, as dressing their meate, washing their cloaths, etc., they deemd it a kind of slaverie, neither could many husbands well brooke it....

By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine, now God gave them plentie, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoysing of the harts of many, for which they blessed God. And the effect of their particular [private] planting was well scene, for all had, one way and other, pretty well to bring the year aboute, and some of the abler sorte and more industrious had to spare, and sell to others, so as any general! wante or famine hath not been amongest them since to this day. (8)

Such are the results when an attempt is made, in the name of "justice," to substitute a system of equal division per capita for a system of allowing each to get and keep what he creates. The fallacy of all schemes for (a necessarily coercive) equal division of wealth or income is that they take production for granted. The sponsors of such schemes tacitly assume that in spite of such equal division production will be the same; a few even explicitly argue that it will be greater. We can imagine a modern Socrates questioning such a Leveler:

Socrates: Which is more just -- an equal division of goods or an unequal one?

Leveler: Obviously an equal division.

Socrates: No matter who produced the goods or how much was produced?

Leveler: Under all circumstances an equal division would be clearly more just than an unequal division.

Socrates: Let us see. Suppose in a poor isolated village of a hundred people, each were allotted a small bowl of rice a day, while in another isolated village of a hundred, ten people got only one bowl of rice a day, ten others two bowls, seventy others three bowls of rice a day, while one-tenth of the group lived very well indeed, with a rich varied diet. Which village would be better off -- the first or the second?

Leveler: The second, of course. But --

Socrates: But according to your own definition, there would be less "justice" in the second village.

Leveler: But you are simply changing the terms of the problem. Obviously if the greater supply of goods produced in the second village were evenly divided, the second village would be better off than before, because the division would be more just.

Socrates: But suppose it was precisely because of the coercive equal division that the first village had been reduced to a production of only one bowl of rice per person per day? Suppose the production and distribution in the first village would be the same as that in the second if, as in the second, each person were allowed to keep his own contribution to production? For I have not really been talking about two different villages at all; but about what might happen in the same village under two different systems of "distribution" -- one, a forced equal distribution of the total production, and the other a system in which each person was paid for what he produced, or was allowed to keep or exchange what he produced and protected in his right to do so.

Leveler: But isn't equal division under all circumstances more just than unequal division?

Socrates: Under certain circumstances it might be, as in the food allotment to an army, or to the people of a city under siege. But it is never more just when its result is substantially to diminish the output or product to be divided.

4. Again: What Is Justice?

But perhaps we have already put too many opinions in the mouth of even a modernized Socrates. We must never lose sight of the fact that Justice, like Virtue, is primarily a means; and though it is also an end, it is never the ultimate end, but must be judged by its results. Whatever produces bad results, whatever reduces material welfare or human happiness, cannot be Justice. We call Justice (as we have already seen in Chapter 24) the system of rules and arrangements that increase human peace, cooperation, production, and happiness, and Injustice whatever rules and arrangements stand in the way of these consequences. All a priori concepts of Justice must be revised accordingly.

The system of "to each what he produces," and the system of equal division regardless of what each produces, cannot, insofar as they are legal or governmental systems, be reconciled. It is commonly thought that while enforced equal division would be impracticable, precisely because it would discourage production, it is at least possible to mitigate the "injustices" and inequalities in wealth and income by various devices, the most popular of which in our day is the graduated income tax. The blessings of this tax in bringing about greatly increased "social justice" are constantly extolled. It is commonly assumed today, even by most academic economists, that personal incomes can be taxed up to 91 per cent (9) without significantly reducing incentives or the capital accumulation upon which all improvement in economic conditions depends. It is just as commonly assumed that unemployment compensation and social security benefits can be increased or extended indefinitely without reducing the incentives to work and production. This is not the place to enter into a technical discussion of the economic effect of "progressive" income taxes and of welfare-state payments, or of a combination of the two. The reader may be referred for this to other sources. (10) Here it is sufficient to point out that whatever forced transfer of income from Peter to Paul reduces the total "social dividend" is a dubious gain for "justice."

So there was wisdom as well as wit in the old Victorian jingle:

What is a Communist?

A man who has yearnings,
For equal division
Of unequal earnings

We are brought back once more to the question, What is the proper conception of Justice? A system under which the talented and skilled and industrious received no more than the incompetent and shiftless and lazy, and which equalized material rewards irrespective of effort, would certainly be unproductive; and to most of us, I think, it would also be unjust. Surely most of us would prefer, if we thought that were the only alternative, an enormously productive if not ideally "just" system to one which provided a perfectly "just" distribution of scarcity and poverty -- "splendidly equalized destitution." (11) This does not mean that we prefer Abundance at the expense of Justice. It means that the term Just, as applied to material rewards, must be conceived as that system of distribution that tends in the long run to maximize everybody's incentives and so to maximize production and social cooperation.

There is one more principle of economic distribution, supported by some socialists, to be discussed. This is distribution or payment on the basis of "merit." This is a less naive principle than equal division per capita, and it is peculiarly likely to appeal to literary men, artists, poets, and intellectuals in other disciplines than economics. What a scandal, some of them say, that a vulgar and ill-mannered brewer or oil prospector, or the writer of a trashy novel, should make a fortune, while a fine modern poet almost starves because his volume sells only a few hundred copies or perhaps is not published at all. People should be rewarded in accordance with their true moral worth, or at least in accordance with their "real" contribution to our cultural life.

This proposed solution leaves the central question unanswered: Who is going to decide on people's true moral worth or "real" merit? Some of us may secretly believe that we would be competent to decide each person's true merits, and would reward them in proper proportion with absolute impartiality and justice, once we knew "the facts." But a little thought would convince most of us that only someone with the omniscience and impartiality of God would be able to decide on the relative merit and deserts of each of us. Where the solution is attempted in practice, as in Soviet Russia, we know the nightmarish results. The nearest approach to a practical answer has been the token solutions in contemporary England, with its annual awards of knighthoods and other titles, in France with election to the Academy, and in the United States with the distribution by its colleges of honorary degrees. But people have been known to question the justice or wisdom even of some of these.

5. Socialism Means Coercion

The solution of the free market is not perfect, but it is superior to any alternative that has been devised or seems likely to be devised. Under it material rewards correspond to the value that a man's particular services have to his fellows. The others reveal their valuations by what they are willing to pay for his contribution. The best-paid writers or manufacturers are those who offer the public what it wants, rather than what is good for it. What it wants will correspond with what is good for it only as the general level of taste and wisdom and morality rises. But whatever the defects of this system, any coercive or arbitrary substitute will surely be a great deal worse.

The central issue between capitalism and socialism is liberty: "It is of the essence of a free society that we should be materially rewarded not for doing what others order us to do, but for giving them what they want." (12) This does not mean that capitalism is more "materialistic" than socialism. "Free enterprise has developed the only kind of society which while it provides us with ample material means, if that is what we mainly want, still leaves the individual free to choose between material and nonmaterial reward.... Surely it is unjust to blame a system as more materialistic because it leaves it to the individual to decide whether he prefers material gain to other kinds of excellence, instead of having this decided for him." (13)

What is not seen by those who are proposing other systems of material rewards than those provided by capitalism is that their systems can be imposed only by coercion. And coercion is the essence of socialism and communism. Under socialism there can be no free choice of occupation. Everyone must take the job to which he is assigned. He must go where he is sent. He must remain there until he gets orders to move elsewhere. His promotion or demotion depends upon the will of a superior, upon a single chain of command.

Economic life under socialism, in short, is organized on a military model. Each is assigned his task and platoon, as in an army. This is clear even in the utopian visions of a Bellamy: his people had to take their turns in the "army of labor," working in the mines, cleaning the streets, waiting on table -- only, for some unexplained reason, all these tasks had suddenly become incomparably easier and more delightful. Engels assured his followers that: "Socialism will abolish both architecture and barrow-pushing as professions, and the man who has given half an hour to architecture will also push the cart a little until his work as an architect is again in demand. It would be a pretty sort of socialism which perpetuated the business of barrow pushing." (14) In Bebel's Utopia only physical labor is recognized by society, and art and science are relegated to leisure hours.

What is implied but never clearly stated in these utopian visions is that everything will be done by coercion, by orders from the top. The press will be nationalized, intellectual life will be nationalized, freedom of speech will disappear.

The grim reality is shown today in the Russian slave camps and in Communist China. When economic liberty has been destroyed, all other liberty disappears with it. Alexander Hamilton recognized this clearly: "Power over a man's subsistence is power over his will." And as one of the masters of modern Russia -- Leon Trotsky -- pointed out even more clearly: "In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation: The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat."

So complete socialism means the complete disappearance of liberty. And, contrary to the Marxist propaganda of a century, it is socialism rather than capitalism that tends to lead to war. Capitalist countries have, it is true, gone to war with each other; but those who have been most strongly imbued with the philosophy of the free market and free trade have been the leaders of public opinion in opposition to war. Capitalism depends on the division of labor and on social cooperation. It therefore depends on the principle of peace, because the wider the field of social cooperation the greater the need for peace. The maximum of trade between nations (which all true liberals recognize to be mutually advantageous) requires the constant maintenance of peace. As recalled in our chapter on International Ethics, it was one of the first great liberals, David Hume, who wrote in his essay "Of the Jealousy of Trade" in 1740: "I shall therefore venture to acknowledge that, not only as a man, but as a British subject, I pray for the flourishing commerce of Germany, Spain, Italy, and even France itself. I am at least certain that Great Britain, and all those nations, would flourish more, did their sovereigns and their ministers adopt such enlarged and benevolent sentiments towards each other."

It is socialist governments, on the contrary, notwithstanding their denunciations of the Imperialist Warmongers, that blame their almost inevitable failures on the machinations of capitalist countries, and that have been the greatest source of modern wars. We need not rehearse here in detail the war record of the National Socialists in Germany (more popularly known today by their abbreviated name, the Nazis). (15) Nor need we rehearse the constant record of aggression, subversion, and conquest of Soviet Russia and Communist China -- whether the conquest was only partly successful, as in Finland, South Korea, India, and Quemoy, or completely successful as in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania, etc. We have in any case, as daily reminders, Khrushchev's constant threats to bury us.

6. A Religion of Immoralism

We are brought back, in fact, to the pervasive immorality of Marxism from its very beginnings to the present day. The noble end of socialism was thought to justify any means. As Max Eastman writes:

Marx hated deity, and regarded high moral aspirations as an obstacle. The power on which he rested his faith in the coming paradise was the harsh, fierce, bloody evolution of a "material," and yet mysteriously "upward-going," world. And he convinced himself that, in order to get in step with such a world, we must set aside moral principles and go in for fratricidal war. Although buried under a mountain of economic rationalizations pretending to be science, that mystical and anti-moral faith is the one wholly original contribution of Karl Marx to man's heritage of ideas. (16)

Marx expelled people from his Communist party for mentioning programmatically such things as "love," "Justice," "humanity," even "morality" itself. When he founded the First International, he wrote privately to Engels: "I was obliged to insert in the preamble two phrases about 'duty and right,' ditto 'truth, morality, and justice.' " But these lamentable phrases, he assured Engels, "are placed in such a way that they can do no harm." (17) Lenin, a faithful follower, declared that in order to bring nearer the earthly socialist paradise: "We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, law-breaking, withholding and concealing truth. We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, scorn, and the like, toward those who disagree with us." (18) Addressing an all-Russian Congress of Youth, Lenin declared:

"For us morality is subordinated completely to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat." (19)

Stalin, when young, was an organizer of bank robberies and holdups. When he came into power he became one of the greatest mass murderers in history.

The motto of the Bolsheviks was simple: "Everything which promotes the success of the revolution is moral, everything which hinders it is immoral."

As Max Eastman exclaims, reviewing the record of this "religion of immoralism": "The notion of an earthly paradise in which men shall dwell together in millennial brotherhood is used to justify crimes and depravities surpassing anything the modern world has seen.... Such a disaster never happened to humanity before." (20)

Notes

1. See especially Ludwig von Mises' essay "Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism," in his Planning for Freedom (South Holland, III.: Libertarian Press; 1952). Also the essay by Gustav Cassel, From Protectionism Through Planned Economy to Dictatorship (London: Cobden-Sanderson; 1934).

2. For scores of specific examples, see Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson.

3. Looking Backward: 2000-1887, Chap. 28. (Many editions.)

4. Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, p. 451.

5. And see Eugen Bohm-Bawerk, Karl Marx and the Close of His System; J. B. Clark, The Distribution of Wealth; and Ludwig von Mises, Socialism.

6. See the tremendously garrulous argument for this ideal in Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (New York: Brentano's, 1928).

7. See Henry Hazlitt, Time Will Run Back (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House), pp. 88-93.

8. I related this history in an article in Newsweek, June 27, 1949.

9. The top U.S. rate until 1963.

10. See especially the chapters on Taxation and Social Security in F. A. Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty.

11. L. Garvin, A Modern Introduction to Ethics, p. 460.

12. F. A. Hayek, "The Moral Element in Free Enterprise," essay in symposium The Spiritual and Moral Significance of Free Enterprise (New York: National Association of Manufacturers, 1962), p. 31.

13. Ibid., pp. 31-32.

14. Quoted by Max Eastman, Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (New York: Devon Adair, 1955), p. 83.

15. For that economic and war record, see Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government (Yale University Press, 1944).

16. "The Religion of Immoralism," Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (New York: Devin-Adair, 1955), Chap. 7, p. 83.

17. Ibid., p. 85.

18. Ibid., p. 87.

19. Ibid., pp. 87-88.

20. Ibid., p. 88.

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