We expend great amounts of energy classifying "types" of governing, when the crucial debate should revolve around "governing" itself. by Gene DeNardo
(libertarian)
Sunday, July 4, 2010
With our recent midterm election, we witnessed one party claiming the other was socialist while the other warned of the "extreme" politics of the supposed non-socialist party. In reality, the differences between the two mainstream parties has little to do with socialism.
The universally accepted definition of socialism is government ownership of property necessary for production. With few exceptions, both parties support the ownership of the means of production by cartelized corporations rather than the state. It would be hard to find examples of any legislation by either party that proved otherwise.
However, one of the principles of socialism is the redistribution of wealth. Both parties are strongly in favor of this principle. This was more than evident during the bank bailout, the largest redistribution of wealth in history.
The American welfare/warfare state is defined by redistribution of wealth. What socioeconomic sector the wealth should come from is disputed by the parties, but both agree redistribution should occur.
The state is defined as a monopoly of force within a region. The geographical extent of the region {or empire} determines the amount of land and the number of people under the umbrella of the state. Redistribution of some form is always necessary to maintain this monopoly, but this does not mean a state is always "socialist".
Social contract is often used as valid reasoning for the existance of government. Fundamentally, this is incorrect. No contract is valid if it requires forced acceptance by any party. Acceptance must always be consentual.
Some governments do "charge" more for their monopoly. This is not a overall determination of efficiency {though it can be}, but usually an indicator that the state is expanding. The more the state charges for its monopoly service, the more likely it is attempting to expand its region.
This confusion has led some to believe that high taxes and what they refer to as "big government" is socialism. High taxes are simply a sign of expansion of the state’s region, an attempt to achieve a greater influence in relation to other states or to take over anarchical or semi anarchical regions. Charging more for the state monopoly does not necessarily make them more socialist.
If we follow the history of American taxation, we will find that the region of influence that the American state controls has paralleled the growth of taxation. Beginning as a poorly funded republic with barely any control over a handful of eastern seaboard confederated states, the nation expanded its monopoly to control or at the least influence, in one manner or the other, vast sections of virtually every hemisphere of the world. The necessary oppressive taxes and money creation grew right along with the growth of the empire.
The intrusion into our "private" lives that so many worry about and fear is the growth of "socialism" is instead the need for the growing state to capture ever greater control of the economic sphere in order to fund its regional expansion. That is the greater control the state desires, not the control over your moral or family life, but control of the economic sphere. If influence in the moral or familial sphere is needed to garner this economic control, and it eventually is, then that course will be pursued by the state. But, this is only a means to the end of funding state expansion.
The corporate state is and has always been a part of this growth. You cannot separate the growth of the corporate monopoly from the growth of the monopoly state. It is symbiotic. One would not thrive without the other.
The simultaneous growth of the multinational corporate behemoth and the move to organize governments into ever greater and larger groups of collected states is no accident. There cannot be a greater organization of small states into larger states without the greater economic organization of small industry into large. The large state needs the large economy much like the large monopoly corporation needs the large state.
All states derive their control and power to enforce monopoly by confiscating and redistributing the resources of its populace. It cannot survive without acting in this manner. While it may not directly control the "means of production", to ensure its survival and growth it will control the necessary proportion of the product.
Intervention and control of the economy is necessary for the survival of any state. Ownership of the production system itself is not.
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