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 parties are extremely slight. Is their grounds for referring to one as socialist and not the other? Is either party socialist?
Using the classic definition of "ownership of the means", we would have a hard time classifying either the platforms or the actual legislation of either major American political party as even faintly socialist. With few exceptions, both support the ownership of the means of production by the monopoly corporations. It would be hard to find examples of any recent and not so recent 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. It is no accident that both parties almost unanimously support the bank bailout, the largest redistribution of wealth in history.
The American welfare/warfare state is defined by redistribution. The respective parties take their sides on who should receive the bounty, but both strongly support the state socialist principle of redistribution. What socioeconomic sector the wealth should come from is also disputed, but both agree redistribution should occur.
But this political conundrum isn’t really that odd. The political process itself is socialist. In fact, all non consensual government is socialist in that it what requires redistribution of wealth. And, throughout political history, we have never witnessed non consensual governing of any appreciable scale. The state and governing is defined by force and wealth redistribution.
The state is a monopoly of force within a region. The extent of the region does not determine the intrusion into individual freedom at all. The extent of the region {or empire} simply determines the amount of land and the number of people under the umbrella of the state. All people within the region any state controls are subject to the whims of that particular state. Because of this, the state is always all encompassing in relation to those that live within its region. The state always originates with complete control over its citizens and only increases the size of the area it controls. The "limited coercive state" is an impossibility.
Social contract as a justifiable excuse for the state is also a myth; or at least an invalid contract, even under the guise of democracy. How can any contract be valid if it is only instituted through the use or the threat of force? Wouldn’t that allow that all contracts could be valid that are backed by force? This would also lead to the assumption that war itself is the ultimate contract.
Social contract insinuates that even if we disagree with the actions of the state, we agree to accept those actions and accept how they might affect us. Could there be a more glaring example of a breach in human reasoning? Social contract is a two bit theory devised by the status quo ruling class to convince those below that those above know what is best for them, no matter the opinion and circumstance of those below.
Small government can only be small in the sense that it has control over a "small" region. Within the region that it controls, it is neither small nor large. There is no "size" of government beyond "monopoly of force within a region". The state does not grow to have a "greater" monopoly of force within a region. That is like telling a person that is drowning that there is ten feet of water above his head instead of fifty. The point is the person does not have access to air, not the amount of water causing the lack of access.
Some governments do "charge" more for their monopoly. Taxes can be lower or higher. This is not a overall determination of efficiency, 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. Of course, some governments are less efficient at expansion than others, but those usually remain smaller in area or eventually fail.
This confusion has led some to believe that high taxes and what they erroneously 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, although that is possible. It instead allows the state to afford to grow its region or at the least, maintain it in relation to competitive states.
We can reference our own country to prove this assumption. 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 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. Your personal affairs are of little interest to the state, your pocketbook is of great interest.
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 entirely symbiotic. One thrives with the other and 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.
Believing that certain forms of the state or certain forms of governing are socialist and certain forms are "free" is erroneous and a bit ridiculous. All governing states are socialist by nature. The state by definition derives its control and power to enforce its 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 of those same productive means.
Attempting to try to "unsocialize" the state is futile. One political party referring to the other as "socialist" is hysterical. All politics that exist within the state monopoly are only variations on the question of who the wealth will come from and where it will go. This has always been the nature of the state.
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