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On Jun 23, 2:11 pm, Bruce Majors <majors.br...@gmail.com> wrote:
> **
>
> http://lilt.ilstu.edu/rrpope/rrpopepwd/articles/socvcap.html****
>
> *On Principle**, Vol. 1, No. 3*
> Autumn 1993
>
> by: C. Bradley Thompson ****
>
> Throughout history there have been two basic forms of social organization:
> collectivism and individualism. In the twentieth-century collectivism has
> taken many forms: socialism, fascism, nazism, welfare-statism and communism
> are its more notable variations. The only social system commensurate with
> individualism is laissez-faire capitalism. ****
>
> The extraordinary level of material prosperity achieved by the capitalist
> system over the course of the last two-hundred years is a matter of
> historical record. But very few people are willing to defend capitalism as
> morally uplifting. ****
>
> It is fashionable among college professors, journalists, and politicians
> these days to sneer at the free-enterprise system. They tell us that
> capitalism is base, callous, exploitative, dehumanizing, alienating, and
> ultimately enslaving. ****
>
> The intellectuals' mantra runs something like this: In theory socialism is
> the morally superior social system despite its dismal record of failure in
> the real world. Capitalism, by contrast, is a morally
> bankrupt system despite the extraordinary prosperity it has created. In
> other words, capitalism at best, can only be defended on pragmatic grounds.
> We tolerate it because it works. ****
>
> *Under socialism a ruling class of intellectuals, bureaucrats and social
> planners decide what people want or what is good for society and then use
> the coercive power of the State to regulate, tax, and redistribute the
> wealth of those who work for a living. In other words, socialism is a form
> of legalized theft. *****
>
> The morality of socialism can be summed-up in two words: envy and
> self-sacrifice. Envy is the desire to not only possess another's wealth but
> also the desire to see another's wealth lowered to the level of one's own.
> Socialism's teaching on self-sacrifice was nicely summarized by two of its
> greatest defenders, Hermann Goering and Bennito Mussolini. The highest
> principle of Nazism (National Socialism), said Goering, is: "Common good
> comes before private good." Fascism, said
> Mussolini, is "a life in which the individual, through the sacrifice of his
> own private interestsŠrealizes that completely spiritual existence in which
> his value as a man lies." ****
>
> Socialism is the social system which institutionalizes envy and
> self-sacrifice: It is the social system which uses compulsion and the
> organized violence of the State to expropriate wealth from the producer
> class for its redistribution to the parasitical class. ****
>
> Despite the intellectuals' psychotic hatred of capitalism, it is the only
> moral and just social system. ****
>
> Capitalism is the only moral system because it requires human beings to
> deal with one another as traders--that is, as free moral agents trading and
> selling goods and services on the basis of mutual consent. ****
>
> Capitalism is the only just system because the sole criterion that
> determines the value of thing exchanged is the free, voluntary, universal
> judgement of the consumer. Coercion and fraud are anathema to the
> free-market system. ****
>
> It is both moral and just because the degree to which man rises or falls in
> society is determined by the degree to which he uses his mind. Capitalism
> is the only social system that rewards merit, ability and achievement,
> regardless of one's birth or station in life. ****
>
> Yes, there are winners and losers in capitalism. The winners are those who
> are honest, industrious, thoughtful, prudent, frugal, responsible,
> disciplined, and efficient. The losers are those who are shiftless, lazy,
> imprudent, extravagant, negligent, impractical, and inefficient. *[What
> about the role of luckbeing in the right place at the right time or the
> wrong place at the wrong time? R. R. Pope*} ****
>
> Capitalism is the only social system that rewards virtue and punishes vice.
> This applies to both the business executive and the carpenter, the lawyer
> and the factory worker. ****
>
> But how does the entrepreneurial mind work? Have you ever wondered about
> the mental processes of the men and women who invented penicillin, the
> internal combustion engine, the airplane, the radio, the electric light,
> canned food, air conditioning, washing machines, dishwashers, computers,
> etc.? ****
>
> What are the characteristics of the entrepreneur? The entrepreneur is that
> man or woman with unlimited drive, initiative, insight, energy, daring
> creativity, optimism and ingenuity. The entrepreneur is the man who sees in
> every field a potential garden, in every seed an apple. Wealth starts with
> ideas in people's heads. ****
>
> The entrepreneur is therefore above all else a man of the mind. The
> entrepreneur is the man who is constantly thinking of new ways to improve
> the material or spiritual lives of the greatest number of people. ****
>
> And what are the social and political conditions which encourage or inhibit
> the entrepreneurial mind? The free-enterprise system is not possible
> without the sanctity of private property, the freedom of contract, free
> trade and the rule of law. ****
>
> But the one thing that the entrepreneur values over all others is
> freedom--the freedom to experiment, invent and produce. The one thing that
> the entrepreneur dreads is government intervention. Government taxation and
> regulation are the means by which social planners punish and restrict the
> man or woman of ideas. ****
>
> Welfare, regulations, taxes, tariffs, minimum-wage laws are all immoral
> because they use the coercive power of the state to organize human choice
> and action; they're immoral because they inhibit or deny the freedom to
> choose how we live our lives; they're immoral because they deny our right
> to live as autonomous moral agents; and they're immoral because they deny
> our essential humanity. If you think this is hyperbole, stop paying your
> taxes for a year or two and see what happens. ****
>
> The requirements for success in a free society demand that ordinary
> citizens order their lives in accordance with certain virtues--namely,
> rationality, independence, industriousness, prudence,
> frugality, etc. In a free capitalist society individuals must choose for
> themselves how they will order their lives and the values they will pursue.
> Under socialism, most of life's decisions
> are made for you. ****
>
> *Both socialism and capitalism have incentive programs.* Under socialism
> there are built-in incentives to shirk responsibility. There is no reason
> to work harder than anyone else becuase the rewards are shared and
> therefore minimal to the hard-working individual; indeed, the incentive is
> to work less than others because the immediate loss is shared and therefore
> minimal to the
> slacker. ****
>
> Under capitalism, the incentive is to work harder because each producer
> will receive the total value of his production--the rewards are not shared.
> Simply put: socialism rewards sloth and penalizes hard work while
> capitalism rewards hard work and penalizes sloth. ****
>
> According to socialist doctrine, there is a limited amount of wealth in the
> world that must be divided equally between all citizens. One person's gain
> under such a system is another's loss. ****
>
> According to the capitalist teaching, wealth has an unlimited growth
> potential and the fruits of one's labor should be retained in whole by the
> producer. But unlike socialism, one person's gain is everybody's gain in
> the capitalist system. Wealth is distributed unequally but the ship of
> wealth rises for everyone. ****
>
> Sadly, America is no longer a capitalist nation. We live under what is more
> properly called a mixed economy--that is, an economic system that permits
> private property, but only at the discretion of government planners. A
> little bit of capitalism and a little bit of socialism. ****
>
> When government redistributes wealth through taxation, when it attempts to
> control and regulate business production and trade, who are the winners and
> losers? Under this kind of economy the winners and losers are reversed: the
> winners are those who scream the loudest for a handout and the losers are
> those quiet citizens who work hard and pay their taxes. ****
>
> *As a consequence of our sixty-year experiment with a mixed economy and the
> welfare state, America has created two new classes of citizens. *The first
> is a debased class of dependents whose means of survival is contingent upon
> the forced expropriation of wealth from working citizens by a professional
> class of government social planners. The forgotten man and woman in all of
> this is the quiet, hardworking, law-abiding, taxpaying citizen who minds
> his or her own business but is forced to work for the government and their
> serfs. ****
>
> The return of capitalism will not happen until there is a moral revolution
> in this country. We must rediscover and then teach our young the virtues
> associated with being free and independent citizens. Then and only then,
> will there be social justice in America. ****
>
> C. Bradley Thompson is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ashland
> University and Coordinator of Publications and Special Programs at the John
> M. Ashbrook Center for Public
> Affairs. ****
>
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