The Romance of Commerce By Harry Selfridge 1918

The Romance of Commerce By Harry Gordon Selfridge 1918

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To write on Commerce or Trade and do the subject justice would require more volumes than any library could hold, and involve more detail than any mind could grasp. It would be a history in extense of the world's people from the beginning of time. For we are all merchants, and all races of men have been merchants in some form or another. The desire to trade seems to be inherent in man, as natural to him as the instinct of self-preservation, and from earliest recorded history we see trade and barter entering into and becoming part of the lives of men of all nations, and further, we see it as one of the most desirable objectives of the nations themselves. Ever since that moment when two individuals first lived upon this earth, one has had what the other wanted, and has been willing for a consideration to part with his possession. This is the principle underlying all trade however primitive, and all men, except the idlers, are merchants.

We give this title exclusively to the man who buys and sells merchandise, but the artist sells the work of his brush and in this he is a merchant. The writer sells to any who will buy, let his ideas be what they will. The teacher sells his knowledge of books—often in too low a market—to those who would have this knowledge passed on to the young.

The doctor must make an income to support himself and his family. He too is a merchant. His stock-intrade is his intimate knowledge of the physical man and his skill to prevent or remove disabilities. He sells a part of his experience for a given sum to whomsoever seeks his advice. The lawyer sometimes knows the laws of the land and sometimes does not, but he sells his legal language, often accompanied by common sense, to the multitude who have not yet learned that a contentious nature may squander quite as successfully as the spendthrift. The statesman sells his knowledge of men and affairs, and the spoken or written exposition of his principles of Government; and he receives in return the satisfaction of doing what he can for his nation, and occasionally wins as well a niche in its temple of fame.

The man possessing many lands, he especially would be a merchant in fact, and sell, but his is a merchandise which too often nowadays waits in vain for the buyer. The preacher, the lecturer, the actor, the estate agent, the farmer, the employee, all, all are merchants, all have something to dispose of at a profit to themselves, and the dignity of the business is decided by the manner in which they conduct the sale.

To work is elevating. To accomplish is superb. To fill one's time with profitable enterprise is to leap forward in the world's race and to place beside one's name the credit mark of effort. It has always been so since civilization began, and all effort has always had for its object a gain of some kind, while the amount of effort is usually determined by the value of the hoped-for gain, plus the temperament, ambitions and inclinations of the doer.

The first efforts were made in the direction of bodily protection. Food, clothing and shelter, these, in some degree, must be possessed by every individual. And the steps from these crudest beginnings of trade up to the science of Commerce of the twentieth century are as interesting to study as the pages of the wildest romance. Wealth with its accompanying power has been since earliest time the goal that no honest effort can be too great to reach; and the goal it must always remain for peoples who have the red blood of progress in their veins. And without Commerce there is no wealth. Adam Smith wrote one hundred and fifty years ago: "All original wealth comes from the soil; but while the soil so amply repays labour expended upon it, the owner of the crops looks to the alchemist, Commerce, to turn his golden harvests into golden coin.

Commerce creates wealth, and is the foundation of the great state. Armies are raised and paid for to win, or to protect the countries' trade, or commerce. Ships are constructed, colonies established, inventions encouraged, governments built up, or pulled down, for Commerce. Commerce cuts the way, and all professions, all arts follow. If Commerce is necessary to wealth, no Commerce means no wealth, and our statesman soon finds himself out of employment. Where wealth again is greatest, everything else being fairly equal, arts thrive the most.

A thousand departments of mental and physical activity foster and in turn are fostered by its achievement. People must be governed, and there must be those who govern. Laws must be made, and there must be those who study, and those who execute these laws. People must be taught, and there must be teachers. All these and the Church, the newspaper, the theatre, the fine arts are essential to the completeness of the State, to the happiness and safety of its people; but Commerce is the main stem, or trunk, where they are all branches, supplied with the sap of its far-reaching wealth. It is as necessary to the existence of any nation as blood to the physical man. That country in which trade flourishes is accounted happy, while that in which Commerce droops provokes shaking of heads and prophecies of downfall.

Just as in a beautiful tapestry there must be the groundwork, the foundation upon which the design is woven, so has Commerce acted as the underlying warp and woof in the development of civilization. It gives both strength and substance, and more than this, for it gives colour as well. Its threads are so closely interwoven with the rest as to be almost indistinguishable from them. Or to change the simile, Commerce is the foundation upon which nations are built; but it is also the superstructure, and provides the bands of steel which support every part of the national edifice.

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Commerce is the mother of the arts, the sciences, the professions, and in this twentieth century has itself become an art, a science, a profession. As it plays with a fine touch on the strings of human nature the world over, and makes happier by its fairness the youth of to-day and the man of to-morrow, it is an art.

As it strives for the new and discards the old, when the old has been superseded by the better, as it invents and thinks out methods, ideas, even fundamental principles, and as its laboratory is always occupied by men who are searching for the causes of its depression and experimenting upon its possibilities of progress, so it becomes a very catholic science.

And as it studies and digs deeper into the wishes and wants of the people; as it urges and proclaims its determination to force a higher and better standard of living throughout the realm of its activity; as it hates the wrong, the deceitful, and holds up the fair and straightforward; as it stands for greater accomplishment, greater power, greater happiness to its own workers and to the entire community as well, then it may truly be ranked as a profession, and one whose sphere of work is broader, whose almost uncountable ramifications are infinitely more far-reaching than those of any other profession.

Great is Commerce, and great is its field of work, of thought, of development.

It is to the writer an almost incredible thing that any Government could ever be so suicidally short-sighted as to discourage trade; yet history is full of the restrictions placed upon it by the very men who would have profited by making its path easier. Commerce has developed too often in spite of legislation rather than by its help. This has almost always been so, and is very true to-day, for as far as we can see there has been very little progress made by law-makers towards encouraging Commerce. How rarely indeed are laws passed to encourage anything. They restrict, they limit, they prohibit from this and that; and as regards the man of Commerce their whole purpose seems to be too often to hamper and annoy.

However, it is folly to waste ink on this subject. It has always been so, and, for all that we can see, always will be. Some day, perhaps, some Solomon may rise and create a form of government which will please everyone; and if this new Solomon comes from the same race as his distinguished predecessor we may be sure he will see to it that in his government business shall find a true friend.

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The Literature and Concept of Utopia by Adolph Franck 1899

The Literature & Concept of Utopia by Adolph Franck 1899

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The Concept of Utopia (from the Greek, OU TOPOS, that which exists in no place, nowhere). The word is the invention of Thomas More; the title given by him to one of his works which soon became celebrated; but the thing is much older than the name. By utopia is meant a certain organization of society and of the state, to which imagination and the spirit of system contributes not most but everything, without examining whether it is realizable in a given place or time, and without investigating whether or not it is compatible, even in a general way, with the moral and physical conditions of human nature. It follows from this, that the utopia necessarily changes character according to the system which produces it. And, in fact, there are religious utopias and philosophical utopias; idealistic and sensualistic, sensual and even materialistic utopias. Lastly, there are utopias which have their origin in pantheism; and this is true of the greater number of utopias. The pretension of Gregory VII. to make christendom a republic entirely subject, in things temporal as well as spiritual, to the sovereign authority of the holy see; a pretension afterward developed in a systematic form by the great theologians of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, is a religious utopia. The republic of Plato is a philosophical, and, moreover, an idealistic utopia. On the other hand, we observe the inspiration of sensualism in the doctrine of Fourier, the inspiration of materialism in the “Leviathan” of Hobbes, and in the "Positivist Catechism" of Auguste Comte, and that of pantheism in the reveries of Campanella and Saint-Simon. The utopia is, therefore, different from the ideal, although the ideal may some times be found in the utopia. The ideal which applies to society, as well as to the individual, raises us above what we are, to show us what we should be, and, therefore, can be. The utopia deceives us in regard to both, by placing before our eyes a chimerical goal, which may at the same time be a type of debasement and servitude; for it is impossible to create a new form of society, without concerning ourselves with the government adapted to it, and the best suited to preserve it. We, therefore, can not admit the distinction made by some publicists between the social utopia and the political utopia. Every utopia is necessarily both political and social. — The age of utopias does not begin, as is generally supposed, with Plato; it is much more remote. It would not be difficult, for instance, to demonstrate that the republic of the Hebrews, such as we may represent it to ourselves in accordance with the institutions and the laws of the Pentateuch, was in great part a utopia which was never realized; that that sacerdotal race, a people of priests, who acknowledged no sovereign but God, never existed; that the periodical restoration of inheritances to their primitive boundaries and of slaves to liberty, any more than the perfect equality of fortunes, was never put in practice. But we are quite willing to accept as the extreme bound of antiquity the history of Greek philosophy. Even in that history Plato is not the first utopist. Aristotle ("Politics," book ii., ch. v., vi.) introduces us to two utopists, more ancient than Plato, one of whom, Phaleas of Chalcedon, gave social order, as its principle, the most perfect equality, and the other of whom, a celebrated architect called Hippodamus of Miletus, having introduced regularity and symmetry into the construction of cities, desired to impose these same qualities on the organization of the state. Thus he demanded that the citizens, to the number of ten thousand, should be invariably divided into three classes: artisans, laborers and warriors; or, according to other testimony, into magistrates, warriors and workmen; and that a distinct portion of the territory of the republic should be allotted to each of these three classes. The two probably belonged to the Pythagorean school, which both commanded and practiced a community of goods. But no one before Plato knew, as well as he did, how to give a body to these imaginary conceptions, and to make the most of them by the graces of poetry and the power of dialectics. We know that he has connected his name with two entirely distinct utopias, one of which is developed in the “Republic,” and the other in the dialogue on the “Laws.” Both, according to his own avowal, belong solely to the world of ideas, but the second is nearer to reality than the first. The first has for its object perfect unity, the unity which consists in entirely melting the existence of the individual into that of society, and the real person of the individual into the ideal person of the state; the second, in default of unity, is satisfied with equality, which is also a means, but an inferior means, to hold together, under the empire of a common law, the different parts of the body social. All the elements of which the two Platonic constitutions are composed are explained, and, to a certain extent, excused, in these two primary ideas. Thus, the three classes of citizens, or rather the three castes of the "Republic," answer to the three faculties of the human soul, the magistrates to the intellect, the warriors to the will or the sentiments, and the laborers to the appetite. And because the appetite should be subordinate to the sentiments, and the sentiments to the intellect, the same hierarchy should exist in the classes which represent them. The most important of these classes is, beyond contradiction, the class of warriors; for the role of the lowest class is reduced to obedience; and the magistrate or philosopher, once he has performed his task, once he has founded the city on the supreme laws of the intellect, has nothing more to do. This explains why it is that the warriors should afford us the expression of the ideal unity of which we have just spoken. Hence the community of goods and women which Plato, by restricting it to them, considers a sacrifice, and not a privilege. — It is evident that in this organization the human person and individual liberty count for nothing. They are not quite so entirely annihilated, but they are still oppressed under the regime of equality presented to us in the “Laws.” For instance, the division of the territory having to remain invariable, it is necessary that the number of citizens fixed by Plato at 5,040 should be invariable likewise. So much the worse for the children born in excess of that fatal figure. They will be forced to emigrate. Sterile families will be obliged to complete their number by adoption. The law will see to it that personal Wealth shall not disturb the equilibrium of fortunes. It will trammel industry, commerce and the increase of capital in such a way that industry, commerce and the increase of capital will become almost impossible. A fortiori, the burden of the law is felt in what concerns marriage, the education of children, and wills. It prescribes, as it did in Sparta, meals in common, prohibits travel, except in certain cases of necessity or of the public interest, subjects to the inspection of the authorities the most intimate relations of life, and lays down the most inflexible rules for all the occupations it is so good as to allow the citizens to engage in. Pagan antiquity affords no other examples of the utopian spirit; for we can attach no value to a few lost fragments like those of Hecatzeus of Abdera, of Evemerus and Theopompus, which are evidently only reminiscences of the ideas of Plato; and, as to the “republic” of Cicero, it is less a work of the imagination and spirit of system than of patriotism and the political passion; it contains only a partial apology for the old institutions of the Roman republic. The middle ages bring us to the religious utopias, of which the boldest and most brilliant is assuredly the utopia of Gregory VII. Universal theocracy never existed except in the ambition of that great pontiff. The condition of the world at the period in which it was produced, and the general state of society, have always made it an unrealizable dream. But after it had met with the resistance of facts, the idea of Gregory VII. entered the domain of speculation. It took possession of philosophy and theology through the works of Thomas Aquinas, of Giles of Rome, and notably through the De regimine principum and the treatise De ecclestica potestate. Another utopia, hatched at the same epoch, between the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, but which savors perhaps as much of philosophy as of religion, is that which bears the name of the abbé Joachim, and which is described in the “Eternal Gospel". Joining the pantheistic principles of Amaury de Bone and of David de Dinant to some misconstrued texts of the Gospels, the adherents of this doctrine expected the reign of the Holy Ghost or of love to succeed the Son, as the Son had succeeded the Father. During this last period of our history, for which the two preceding periods had only paved the way, all differences and inequalities were to disappear from the earth, even the difference between vice and virtue; for all the passions were to be sanctified; the flesh and the spirit reconciled with one another, or rather, confounded together, were to cease their struggle for preeminence; and the suppression of war and a community of goods and of women were to make all men one family—With the renaissance the purely philosophical utopia reappeared; and it was the minister of a despot, the chancellor of Henry VIII., Thomas More, who, in calling it back to life, gave it its real name. Everything in Thomas More’s book is not chimerical. It contains an extremely profound and sensible criticism of the politics, the political economy and legislation of his time. And even when he seems to abandon himself to the caprice of his imagination, when with complaisance he gives us an exposition of the laws and institutions of the country of Utopia, there is a distinction to be made between its political conception and its social organization. The former is simply a representative government, with a leaning toward the republic, having a senate, an assembly of the people, a president appointed for life, and election to all the degrees of power, spiritual as well as temporal. The latter is summed up in communism, with some of the elements which subsequently served in the construction of the phalanstery system. This is sufficient to convince us that the communism of Thomas More does not flow from the same philosophical system as that of Plato. The latter remains as much an idealist, even in its most deplorable applications, as the former inclines to sensualism. It is no longer with a view to their moral perfection, but in the interest of their common happiness, that men, according to the English philosopher, should renounce property. It is sufficient that this end he proposed to them for labor, grown both more pleasant and more fruitful, to satisfy all the wants of society. The day in this system was to consist of only six hours: three hours before dinner and three hours before supper. Fatigue was to be avoided by diversity of occupation; every citizen, exercising several professions at the same time, might alternatively pass from one to the other. He would, therefore, have leisure enough to give himself up to all the enjoyments of study and conversation, and to taste the pleasures procured by the fine arts.

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Thomas More, however, does not carry the illusion so far as to believe that all trades, without distinction, could lend themselves to this combination. He recognizes that there are rude and repulsive trades, which are carried on only from necessity. But these trades are to fall to the lot of the public slaves. reduced to that condition in expiation of their crimes, or purchased by the state in foreign countries. Thus we see the utopian spirit resuscitating, in the bosom of Christianity, the institution of the helots. We must remark, however, that the citizens themselves are not treated much better. The law, like the discipline of a barracks, or the rule of a monastery, intervenes in all the details of life. It prescribes what their clothing, their food, their work and relaxation shall be, and leaves not the least place for freedom or intellect. If Thomas More thinks little of liberty, he has at least some regard for morals. He respects marriage, and, to a certain extent, preserves the rights of conscience by basing the national religion on deism. No such consideration for them is to be found in the system of Campanella, which is easy to account for, since pantheism is its basis. Pantheism confounds man, nature and God; it does away with the individual, and recognizes only the collective existence of society. This is precisely what Campanella does in his famous “City of the Sun.” All the actions, and even the sentiments and thoughts, of its imaginary subjects, are submitted to an absolute authority. The chief of this solar people is something like the Supreme Father in the Saint-Simonian system, that is, he is both a monarch and an infallible pontiff, a man clothed with the attributes of God. Under him are three ministers in the departments of wisdom, of power, and of love; and under these three ministers are divers classes of magistrates set over all the virtues and all the faculties, who assign to each man his rank, his task, and, according to the manner in which he performs it, his share in the enjoyment of the common goods; the community is not here confounded with equality. And so, although women are in common, they can be enjoyed only in accordance with the rules established by the minister of love affairs, and only on the days, at the hours and under the circumstances most favorable to the improvement of the human race. Despotism was always dear to Campanella. In his “Discourse on the Spanish Monarchy," written many years before the “City of the Sun,” he reaches this conclusion: the only and the true monarch of the world will be the sovereign pontiff; all peoples will constitute only one flock under the staff of only one shepherd; the king of Spain will play the part of the dog charged to bring back to the fold the sheep which have strayed away, and to devour them if they resist! — At the same time that Campanella was taking up the ideas of Gregory VII., and paving the way for those of Saint-Simon, Bacon was writing his “New Atlantis”; but there is no reason why we should concern ourselves here with that work, since it relates more to the reformation and reorganization of learned societies than to the reorganization and reformation of the state. It offers, as it were, an anticipated plan of the institute of France. Hobbes and Harrington had another aim. It is laws and institutions which they pretended to make over from top to bottom, after a preconceived model which they present us with, Hobbes in the “Leviathan,” and Harrington in the “Oceans.” Although diametrically opposed to each other in their principles, since the former, in the name of materialism, invites us to servitude, whereas the latter, appealing to our moral dignity, urges us on to the conquest of liberty, these two writers have this in common, that their views do not extend beyond the domain of politics. Nevertheless, both are utopists; for the unity of power, as Hobbes conceives it, the absolute monarchy which disposes of men’s bodies and souls, of conscience and interests, of religion and of the state alike, is not more easy to realize than the perfect equilibrium between power and property which Harrington seeks to effect, and which he bases on the agrarian law, as if the agrarian law was not itself a source and instrument of oppression.— Histoire des Sevarambes, by Denis Vayrasse, containing only a mixture, without any consistency (being, so to speak, only a weakened echo of them), of the two systems of More and Campanella, it may' be said that the history of utopias in the seventeenth century closes with the two creations of Fenelon, the Bétique and the Republique de Salente. The first of these presents us not so much with a hope for the future as with a souvenir of the past. It is a classical reminiscence of the Arcadia of the poets. It transports us among a pastoral people like those who lived under the fabulous sceptre of Saturn. It introduces us to men who have none of the passions, and consequently none of the vices, of humanity; who have put everything in common, since they possess nothing, and have scarcely any wants; and to children, enjoying the peace and innocence of their tender years, while nature, like a kind mother, relieves them of all care and trouble. The Republique de Salente unveils to us much more clearly the real thought of the illustrious archbishop. It is the picture of a people, who, with no industry but agriculture, were able to attain the highest degree of perfection and happiness. Population is to that people the source of all wealth, and war the source of all misery. This is the very reverse of the maxims which guided the government of Louis XIV. But there is something more in Fenelon’s republic. It is, despite the simplicity of its life and customs, an aristocratic state, the citizens of which, divided into seven classes, are distinguished from one another by their conditions, their occupations, their rights, their clothing even, and in which the first rank belongs to birth. It is the ideal republic of Plato modified by Christian morals and by the prejudices of race borrowed from feudalism. The eighteenth century, independent and fruitful in every other matter, was only slightly inventive in social and even in political utopias. Rousseau and Mably confined themselves to reproducing, with some necessary development, the institutions of Lycurgus. Theirs was a retrospective utopia. Morelly, in his Code de la Nature, is only Rousseau's echo, while Baboeuf proposed to become Rousseau's testamentary executor. All, while they never tired talking of liberty, succeeded only in imagining a system of slavery on the foundation of demagogy and communism. —-The first half of the present century it is that witnessed the birth of the boldest, the most radical and the most brilliant utopias: Saint-Simonism, Fourierism, positivist socialism and the atheistic theocracy of Auguste Comte. Even a summary exposition of these different doctrines would carry us beyond the limits allotted to us here. But we must remark at least, that, while these doctrines are no less chimerical than the ideas of Plato, of Thomas More, Campanella, Hobbes and Rousseau, they are not, at bottom, more liberal. The tendency of Saint-Simonism is to re-establish, to the advantage of pantheism, the universal theocracy of Gregory VII. He hands over the destinies, not only of the state, but of humanity, to the discretion of one man, who is at once prince, pontiff and infallible arbiter of the works of human thought. There is no refuge from this universal despotism, since both property and the family have ceased to exist. Fourierism also destroys these two fundamental institutions: property and the family. The former it would replace by shares of stock delivered by the state to each in proportion to his labor, his talents and his capital. Of the latter, thanks to the consecration of free love, not a trace would be left. Nevertheless, it is not directly by the establishment of despotism, but indirectly by license in morals and the letting loose of all the passions, that Fourier annihilates liberty. To Fourier man is only a kind of machine, of which passion is the motive power, and which, putting itself in gear with an analogous machine, produces the effect desired without its knowledge. He reaches fatalism by the way of sensualism, and from sensualism he draws the most extravagant and unclean consequences that can present themselves to human thought. Lastly, in the materialistic Utopia of Auguste Comte, the priests of humanity, or rather of atheism, have a power no less exorbitant than the power of the Saint-Simonian Supreme Father. They have the right of life and death over all works of the mind, old and new, existing or to come into existence. They are the absolute masters of public education and of the state itself. They dispose, besides, of the honor of citizens, and regulate private life after their fancy, leaving to the lay power only the looking after of material interests. The proletariat Comte makes a public institution. Majorats and substitutions he re-establishes under another form, and extends them not only to landed but to commercial and industrial property. The conclusions to be drawn from this succession of chimeras are these: that the progress and perfecting of social institutions are not sudden creations, issuing full-fledged from a human brain, and governed by one single idea, but the fruit of experience and time, of the thoughts and the efforts of a long series of generations; that no society is lasting or perfectible except the society which is founded on the liberty which respects the rights of the individual, and leaves him responsible for his acts and for the government and use of his faculties; that liberty is inseparable from property, and that it is impossible to preserve or suppress the one without preserving or suppressing the other; that liberty and property, in turn, suppose the moral dignity and the inviolability of the human person. Utopias have this advantage, that they bring these truths into greater relief, and compel the human mind never again to separate the progress of the social order from the conquests of civil and political liberty.

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Why I am Opposed to Socialism

Why I am Opposed to Socialism by George Lansing Raymond (Author and University Professor.) 

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I am opposed to Socialism because I think it founded on a misconception of the requirements of human nature; and this, mainly, for three reasons:

First: A great many people will not practice diligence and thrift, unless stimulated to do so by a possibility of obtaining, possessing and using something that they can call their own. This is something that Socialism theoretically, and so far as it has been applied, practically, would deny them.

Second: A great many will not work at all, when their only inducement is that others wish them to work, or need their help. Socialism, if established, would be obliged merely to secure support for the community to force such people to work against their own wills. This would inevitably involve the re-establishment of a system of human slavery.

Third: All a man's mental and moral development in this world - to say nothing of what may come after death needs training. According to a law apparently divine, but certainly human, this training, whether in home, school, business or society, is imparted by means of discipline. The discipline is mainly derived from the circumstances of life in which one finds himself placed, and, in such cases, is always accompanied by dissatisfaction with one's alloted place, and by actual suffering. The Socialist aims to escape from this dissatisfaction and suffering by making a change in his circumstances such a change, for instance, as would make a king a servant, or make all men kings or servants. But history and experience show that kings, whose friends die, courtiers flatter, and enemies trick, are no more free from the sufferings attendant upon discipline than are servants. The truth seems to be that to occupy a different position in life means merely to be placed in a different part of the same apparently divine and certainly social machine which as some have faith to believe is at work grinding out of the coarse grain of humanity what shall, some day, prove to be its fine flour. One who has the wisdom to apply this theory to life, will, in no position that a man can fill, feel either too haughty or too humiliated to sympathize with everybody, and to do his best everywhere to alleviate suffering, lessen oppression, equalize opportunity, enthrone justice, and prove himself, in every sense of the term, a fellow-man. The result upon individual consciousness and conscience of this attitude of mind is the most important of any that can be exerted in order to secure human welfare. It differs from Socialism in being derived as Socialism is not from a recognition of the exact and entire truth a truth that includes, both that which is material and spiritual, philosophical and religious.

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Why I am Opposed to Socialism by Horace Ellis (President Vincennes University.) 

Socialism originally meant to become an effective protest against the tyrannies of all forms of monarchy. If it had succeeded in its ambition we all had been Socialists. But it failed utterly. Its failure may be traced to certain fundamental errors as to the means it should employ to realize its purpose. It presumed that most practices it found in the economic world were inherently bad because they had been employed by heartless men in furthering their individual interests. Socialism denies the accepted maxim relating to competition in spite of the evidences of history which have fully established the fact that, in every realm of human activity, competition has been one of the mightiest factors for individual, community, national and racial prestige. Socialism would deny to virile, purposeful, masterful leaders of men the privilege of leadership because, forsooth, some such leaders have misused authority reposed in them. In lieu of this practice, it would constitute society at large the rightful leader in all economic matters because some evidences appear which indicate that society possesses some attributes of stability. Fatal both of these deductions. There are many thousands of good Socialists, but few substantial economic contentions behind them.

Why I am Opposed to Socialism by Boyd-Carpenter, William B., B.A., F.R.G.S. 

The world has always sighed after novelty. Even St. Paul found that the Athenians of old longed to hear some new thing. The craze for novelty, or an increasing curiosity are the symptoms of the decline of a philosophic outlook on life. It is the idea that a change means reform. Now reform can never be a change in the substance, but rather an application, a direct and precise application of a thought-out remedy for a particular and authentic grievance. Nor is innovation a real reform we have to change our clothes because they are wet, but this does not mean we reform ourselves or our clothes. "Woman makes an innovation in the shape of her clothes or her hats she does not reform her clothes or her hats. But Socialists and syndicalists demand the immediate alteration of the capitalists' system of production by which they mean, if they mean anything, such a reform as will give to them, as a political party within any State, the power of using the forces, political
and capitalistic within the State on behalf of their own section of the community, unless they mean this, they cannot hope to benefit wages and employment. If they do not mean this, they are hoodwinking workingmen and merely are seeking a change, not a reform. Change is impermanent therefore transitory change is merely the expression of want of tone in the political health of a people. But Socialism and syndicalism by seeking the benefit of the many workers at the expense of the few capitalists, is creating a form of injustice, which in their main doctrines Socialists assert they are hoping to avoid. Injustice to any section of a community is the creation of inequality again in a community. If we cannot reform with equity, let us not reform at all. As we put back the hands of the clock's progress, so we recreate inequalities. Life at best is a matter of compensation; it is the disturbance of this balance which makes for injustice and inequality.

Then again, Socialism has been tried and has always resulted in the re-erection of the capitalist system. The Revolutions of France 1789, 1832, 1848, 1871 all were to usher in the millennium. But France is capitalistic today and amongst the wealthiest nations on the earth. The German Revolution, 1848, or the Spanish Revolution all began in high hopes of republics to be ruled by Democrats. All these countries have gone back to what the world has tried and found stands best the test of time. Nations, like individuals, are impatient and do damage in fits of temper for which many years of steady care are required to effect the repairs. The world wants more religion in active life and more ostracism of the irreligious. The fear of public disgust is the beginning of ordered honesty. The strength of a public opinion is the poor man's friend. "To complain of the age in which we live; to revile the possessors of power; to lament the past; to conceive wild hopes for the
future, are the common dispositions of the vast majority of men." They are also the attributes of laziness and the form of a vulgar levity. A nation must have all classes grumblers and saints, happy and querulous, in order to make strong men.

The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression

Why I am Opposed to Socialism by Henry Louis Mencken. (Author of "The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche," editor of The Players' Ibsen, part-author with Robert Rives LaMonte of "Men vs. the Man." Member of the editorial staff of the Baltimore Evening Sun.) 

I am opposed to Socialism because, in general, it means a vain and costly attack upon the immutable natural law that the strong shall have advantage over the weak. I do not defend that law as perfect, nor do I even maintain that it is just. If I had the world to make over I should probably try to find something to take its place, something measurably less wasteful and cruel. But the world is as it is and the law is as it is. Say what you will against it, you must at least admit that it works, that it tends to destroy the botched and useless, that it places a premium upon enterprise and courage, that it makes for health and strength, that it is the most powerful of all agents of human progress. "Would brotherhood, supposing it to be achieved, do as well? I doubt it. Brotherhood would help the soft man, the clinging man, the stupid man. But would it help the alert and resourceful man? Answer for yourself. Isn't it a fact that difficulties make daring, that effort makes efficiency? Do not functions develop by use? Does the cell act or react?

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Socialist Venezuela imposes 'forced labor' to fight food shortage By Andrew Moran

http://economiccollapsenews.com/2016/08/02/socialist-venezuela-imposes-forced-labor-to-fight-food-shortage

Calvinism and Capitalism by Emile Doumergue 1909

Calvinism and Capitalism by Emile Doumergue 1909

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Max Weber (Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism) sums up modern culture in the word, "capitalism". "The spirit of capitalism" is the modern spirit. Then, he sums up the moral, practical and social tendency of Protestantism in the word, "asceticism"; but a very special asceticism, which must always be accompanied by two epithets: Protestant)and intra-mundane. And finally Weber's special thesis 1s that this Protestant asceticism of the 16th century has been one of the great factors of the capitalistic or modern spirit.

This is how he expresses himself: "The spirit of labor", of "progress", or whatever you wish to call it, to which one is inclined to attribute the awakening of Protestantism, must not, as it is the habit nowadays to do, be taken in a Rationalistic sense (aufklarerisch). The old Protestantism of Luther, Calvin, Knox, Voet, concerned itself little with what to-day is called "progress". If, then, there is an intimate kinship between the old Protestant spirit and modern capitalistic culture, we must try to find this relationship, rightly or wrongly, not in a pretended "delight in the world" (joie du monde), more or less materialistic, or at least anti-ascetic, but rather in purely religious principles. Montsquieu (Esprit des Lois, xx, 7) says of the English: "They are the people of the world who have best known how to excel at the same time in three great things: religion, commerce and liberty". Did their superiority in the domain of industry and their capacity for appropriating liberal political institutions, of which we shall speak elsewhere, depend on the religious ideas which are a matter of record, according to Montesquieu? Such is the question to which Weber answers Yes, with a knowledge that can be called positive, avoiding equally Rationalism (Aufklarung) on the one hand, and the Middle Ages on the other. "The modern conception, indicated by the expression, 'spirit of capitalism', would have been proscribed in antiquity as well as in the Middle Ages, as sordid avarice and mentality without dignity". In the Middle Ages it was the general opinion that the merchant could not please God (Deo placere non potest); that there was something shameful (pudendum) in a mercantile condition. And it was necessary to break away from this "tradition" of antiquity and of the Middle Ages in order to make way for modern times.

Who broke with this tradition? The Protestantism of the 16th century; the Protestantism and not the Rationalism. Those who are tempted to believe that the "capitalistic spirit" is a product of Rationalism, and that Protestantism intervenes only so far as it is a forerunner of Rationalism, Weber confronts simply with the facts.

Protestantism has worked through its religious conceptions, properly so-called, in the list of which Weber puts the great idea of vocation. The Latin-Catholic peoples have no word, any more than has classical antiquity, to express this idea of vocation (Beruf), in the sense of social condition, life in a determined sphere. On the other hand this word exists among all Protestant peoples. "And as the significance of the word is new, so also is the idea; it is a product of the Reformation. No doubt, already in the Middle Ages certain attempts at appraising daily toil in this way are found. But what is entirely new is this: the esteeming the accomplishment of duty, in the earthly vocation, as the ideal of personal morality. This it is that has logically produced the view of the religious importance of the daily task in this world and which has given birth to the idea of vocation. Thus, that which finds its expression in this idea of vocation is the central dogma of all the old Protestant denominations, which rejects the distinction between the precepts and the counsels in Christian ethics, and indicates, as the only way of leading a life agreeable to God, not the excelling of worldly morality by monastic asceticism, but the being content merely with the fulfilment of one's duties in the world, as the situation of each requires, that is to say, fulfilling his vocation."

"That this moral character of 'vocation' is one of the merits of the Reformation, the consequences of which have been most important, and that it is specially due to Luther, is incontestable and of common notoriety." However, if Luther began, he did not continue. Luther became more and more a traditionalist. "He did not discover the new theoretical basis on which the relation between vocation and religious principles rests." "So the simple idea of vocation, in a Lutheran sense, remained (in the domain in which we are), of problematical importance."

But Calvinism came. "Calvinism, historically, is one of the incontestible factors of the 'capitalistic spirit'." And it is Calvinism that has been the most opposed to the Middle Ages. "It is with reason that Catholicism has regarded Calvinism, from its origin until to-day, as its real enemy." Luther created Protestantism; Calvin saved it.

It is seen how the article of Weber excludes the thesis of Troeltsch, and how it proves that the Reformation broke with the Middle Ages, and inaugurated modern times. Undoubtedly, in Weber's work, aside from the fundamental thesis, there are points upon which we are not in agreement with the author. But that matters little here.

We confine ourselves to formulating two regrets. The first is that Weber has called the "spirit" with which the Reformation has inspired modern culture, "the capitalistic spirit." Of course, I know Weber's reservations. I know that he is not concerned with capitalism, but with its "spirit", with that which has been its quality, to wit, a power of incessant toil systematically disciplined. This spirit, which does not urge on to pleasure, but to production, is so contrary to human nature that it could only arise through the influence of an extremely efficacious spiritual power.

From Dictionary of Political Economy, Volume 1 edited by Sir Robert Harry Inglis Palgrave 1894:

Calvin was the first theologian who rejected the current opinions regarding the sinfulness of usury. His views on this subject are to be found in his commentaries on Ex. xxii. 25; Lev. xxv. 35; Deut. xxiii. 19; Ps. xv. 5; Ezek. xviii.; Luke vi. 35, and in the famous letter (Works, vol. viii. 223, ed. Amst.) Usury is not condemned by Scripture. Scripture forbids the exaction of usury from the poor,

but allows it in the case of the rich. The laws of the Jews which prohibited the taking of interest by Jews from Jews are political not moral laws: these very laws permitted Jews to receive interest from Gentiles. Usury is repeatedly condemned in the Old Testament, but never on grounds which are valid for all Christians. The prohibition of interest in the Old Testament is a provision in the interests of the poor. The exaction of interest from the poor has often produced tumults, as in Rome. Calvin rejects with proper scorn the substitution of "usura" for "the detested word foenus," holding that there is no description of "foenus" to which the name "usura" may not be given. He exposes the evasions by which usury was exacted without being mentioned by name, a poor man requiring to repay the loan of six measures of wheat by a return of seven. The question is one not of words but of things. Aristotle's argument, accepted by Ambrose and Augustine, that usury is unnatural because money is barren, is worthless. May not a cheat make much profit by trading with another man's money? A man purchases a farm. Is not the produce convertible into money? Usury is not unlawful unless it contravenes equity. Usury therefore must not be exacted from the needy; the lender must not forget to be charitable; regard must always be had to natural equity; the borrower must be as much enriched by the transaction as the lender; our conception of justice must be drawn from the Word of God and not from prevailing usage; (6) the interests of the state as well as the individuals concerned must be considered; and the limit of interest fixed in each state must not be exceeded. But usury should not be made a means of livelihood. It is plain from this passage that Calvin rejected the two chief arguments against usury—its condemnation by Scripture, and the barrenness of money; but that he felt rather than saw the distinction between usury and interest. Whether he discerned the principle on which the payment of interest rests is doubtful. He says, indeed, that no creditor can ever lend money without loss to himself, and that usury ought to be paid to the creditor in addition to the original sum to compensate him for loss, but it is uncertain whether he saw that this principle applies in all cases. (On Ex. xxii. 25 and related passages.)

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Bastiat & Political Economy 1852

Bastiat and his Works, article in The Economist 1852

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FRANCE lost in M Frederick Bastiat a most useful citizen, and the world an acute philosopher. His career was, however, short. It began as a public man 1845, and terminated in 1851; but from the day when he took up his pen in the cause of Free Trade it knew no repose. "Modest and studious by nature, he then became devouringly active; he scattered his truths abroad with both hands, and laboured as if he foresaw he should want time to distribute the treasure he had amassed by twenty years' silent study." Besides the works a list of which will be found below, be published in those five years about a hundred articles in the Journal des Economistes and in the Journal du Libre Echange, which he edited; he gave a gratuitous coarse of lectures, carried on a voluminous correspondence, entered into controversies in the public journals, and combated Proudhon, even in the Voix du Peuple. The revolution of 1848 carried him into the legislature, but there he spoke little. He made notes and wrote out heads of speeches on some of the most important subjects discussed, and though he joined no party he was honoured for the inflexible reason of what he did say. At the close of the summer of 1850 his protracted illness assumed a fatal character, and as a last hope he was ordered to Italy, where he died in the autumn of 1851.

A short time after M. Bastiat's death, a few of his friends, in order to do honour to his memory, resolved to acquire the copyright of his works and publish them in a cheap form. The means were speedily collected by subscription, and the works thus published, having recently reached us, induces us now to say a few words of the distinguishing characteristics of his writings.

Most of them were dictated by circumstances, and, like articles generally of newspapers or pamphlets of the moment, contain an abundance of extra scientific remarks. The most strictly scientific and the largest or his works are his Sophismes Economiques, well known in England both in its native form and in Mr Porter's excellent translation; and his Harmonies Economiques. All his writings are much more remarkable for the terse logic of his style, the felicity of his illustrations, the completeness of his demonstrations, than for any new principles he taught. He made no pretensions, except in his Harmonies Economiques, to establish or propound a system. His success was more doe to his great skill in expounding than in discovering truth; and his great merit lay rather in his mode of treating what was known than in searching after the hidden. He is not so much distinguished from other political economists by his principles as by his lively yet vigorous style. At the same time be holds himself up, or his friends now hold him up, as distinct from the English school. Like Sismondi, he aspires to carry the science from the domain of the material into that of the moral world. He deals with facts abstractedly, and is always more logical than statistical. "Wealth," says the preliminary notice of Messrs Prosper Paillottet and Roger de Fortenay to his Harmonies, "was for him only a form, an incident; the reality, the substance was the utility, the well-being, the development of man, intellectual and moral." Though adopting the doctrine that commodities pay for commodities, he did not rest at the visible productions, but went farther, and laid down the principle more general and more immaterial, that services are exchanged for services. The exchange is with him between men more than of goods. He made political economy more a science of man than of what man produces. He considered it more from the consumption than the production point of view-more as the wants of individuals were gratified than as the revenues of Governments were increased. He had to combat against Protection in every form against restrictions on every productive art-to combat Socialism and Communism, the natural growth of Protection and restrictions; and he was much more intent on defending the rights of individuals than on expounding the principles or taxation. He considered justice more than expediency, and, not stopping short at existing facts or existing systems, he went back to the principles of man's existence and the laws of Nature.

In the chapter "Moteur Social" of his Harmonies he says explaining both the impelling and the guiding or restraining power provided by Nature:-"The motive power is that innate irresistible impulse which incites us all to flee from evil and seek good. It is called the instinct of conservation, personal or private interest. But it is not enough that man is irresistibly impelled prefer good to evil, he requires to perceive it. For this end the Almighty has provided him with that marvellous and complex instrument called intelligence. To fix attention, compare, judge, reason, connect effect and causes, remember, and foresee, are the wheels of this admirable contrivance." Thus the science concerns, in his view, the intellect as well as the hand, knowledge as well as labour; and well does he demonstrate that the appetites and the wants, the impulses and the passions, carry forward society, while the intellect controls and guides it, and discovers, or rather records the means, when once discovered, by which evil is avoided and good attained.

On this principle M. Bastiat was a strenuous and powerful opponent of making classical learning the legal test of university and other literary honours, and of making it the basis of education. In his little tract, Baccalaureat, he has shown, by a larger induction of instances, bringing together more facts than in any other of his productions, how very pernicious has been the effect on the intellect and happiness of France, of the extreme study of the writings of the Romans and the Greeks. Speaking sneeringly of M. Thiers and a party zealous for the classics, M. Bastiat says: "To know what is, this is the evil. To impregnate oneself with Roman facts is morality. M. Thiers is not the first nor the only person who has succumbed to this illusion, I may say this mystification." To know what is, according to M. Bastiat, is the the wisdom, the sole means of properly guiding life; and filling the mind with a knowledge of what was, deadening the senses to what is, and shutting out a knowledge of it, M. Bastiat demonstrates - going, we admit, ont of the ordinary bounds of political economy-was a source of the terrible ignorance and vast social misery for which France has been more than half a century remarkable.

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From his doctrine of services be is led to differ from Mr Ricardo, Mr M'Culloch, and other English economists, who have described rent as "the sum paid for the use of the natural and inherent powers of the soil." M. Bastiat-alarmed by this doctrine being logically acted on by the Socialists, who denied a property in the gratuitous services of nature, and therefore attacked property in land, and therefore might, according to him, attack all property whatever, for the cloth manufacturer, the founder, the carpenter, the navigator, like the agriculturists, use the powers of nature - disputed its accuracy, and taught that rent paid as the price of food is only the reward of the service of the agriculturist, as the price of cloth or iron is the reward of the weaver or the founder. Such a conclusion (little more in truth than a repetition of his great definition that services always pay for services, and there is no other means of payment,) arises spontaneously in a Frenchman. It was common to M. Say with M. Bastiat. In France the land is parcelled out into little plots, and the wretched agriculturists, aided by all the inherent powers of the soil, scarcely obtain a bare and miserable subsistence. Such a conclusion will with difficulty be arrived at in England, where the land remains in a few hands, and where the present race of landlords (without, as landlords, rendering any services to other men) are persons of great fortunes. In France the great majority of the owners of the soil are only paid for the food they supply to others. The differences between rent in France and rent in England are so great that they cannot be reduced to a common principle. Rent in Englaud does not fall within M. Bastiat's principle-the very foundation of all his arguments- "that services are exchanged for services." In past times at least, whatever rent is now becoming or may become, it was much more like the taxes men are compelled to pay, whether they like or want the services of rulers paid for or not, than like those voluntary exchanges which alone are considered in political economy-which spring from division of labour, and are essential to its existence and continuance. A part of rent in this country is the reward of services; but as long as the Corn Law existed a part of rent was as much a tax as is part of the price of a pound of tea or a newspaper. That part lies as much beyond the domain of M. Bastiat's principle-services exchange for services -as does the Turkish system of taxation.

Another point on which M. Bastiat differs from most of our living economists, and from almost all practical politicians, is the narrow functions which be is led by the condition of France to ascribe to the State. Wherever verbal reasoning much predominates over the observance of facts, as in education on the Continent, the philosophical theory of nominalism prevails, and public writers as well as the populace ascribe to general terms properties and qualities not possessed by any or all the species or individuals for which the general name stands. "It is the deplorable habit," he says, "of our age to give a life to mere abstractions to imagine a city apart from the citizens, a humanity different from men, a collective besides all the parts that compose it." Both in his "Harmonies" and his little work "L'Etat," he takes pains to show that the State has no powers and no rights but those belonging to the individuals composing it, and that consequently nothing is or can be more absurd than the multifarious demands which are made, by all parties and classes in France, for the State to exert powers and perform services for the people, as if it were endowed with God-like virtues, and could confer benefit on all by taking away the rights of all.

M. Bastiat, accordingly, limits the duties of the State to watching over the public security, to administering the common domain, and to levying the taxes. He fights valiantly against the State assuming too many duties, and says:-"When the State charges itself with everything, it becomes responsible fer everything. Under this system a suffering people can only look to the Government, and their only remedy and only policy is to overthrow it. Hence an inevitable chain of revolutions - I say inevitable, for under such a system the people must suffer injustice, ruin, suffering, and discontent, combined with the displacement of responsibility, cannot but lead to political convulsion." It is to be feared, too," he adds, "when a Government has assumed these gigantic proportions by transforming private business into public services, that revolutions, which are in themselves such terrible evils, are not even a remedy, except by the lessons of experience they afford. The displacement of responsibility perverts the public view. The people, accustomed to expect everything from the State, do not accuse it of doing too much, but of not doing enough. They destroy it and supersede it by another to which they do not say do less, but do more; and thus the abyss has been dug and is digging again."

We doubt, however, whether the great principle of services being exchanged for services is applicable to Governments and their subjects. It is not a fact that Government is now anywhere, except in the United States, the result of the deliberate and voluntary action of the people. In most cases they are born to it or born under it as a burden or an inheritance. They may be destined to outgrow it; they cannot shake it off. Though it acts only by the will of the people, their will is more instinctive than deliberative, and the general obedience, like the general striving after good, is more impulse than reason. France has gone through the process, supposed by M. Bastiat to constitute a Government of the people's will. The citizens have chosen their representatives, or rather their representative, in the person of Prince Louis, and he has already decided in a great variety of cases, besides continuing the action of the State in others, what the State shall and shall not do. For the services he thus renders to the whole people he decides, too, what he shall be paid for his part of them, and what the whole people shall pay for the services he ordains the State shall perform, or it has been accustomed to perform. In all the process there is nothing like an exchange of service for services voluntarily made, which is the peculiar feature of M. Bastiat's system. We fear, therefore, that the services of Governments cannot be measured by the rules of political economy, and that they stand apart from and are extraneous to the natural organisation of society, of which mutual voluntary exchange is a principle, and which we have nowhere seen so well described as in the first chapter of M. Bastiat's Harmonies Economiques.

Taking the facts that were continually passing before him for his text, and alarmed, as every rational man might well be, at the prodigious number of demands made by the French on the State, and convinced as he was that the bulk of those demands were the necessary consequence of the gigantic assumptions of the State, M. Bastiat was tho most consistent and the sturdiest opponent of Government action who has appeared in our time, or, perhaps, has ever appeared in the world. He carried his doctrines much beyond mere considerations of wealth, except as its production is indirectly and remotely influenced by the deadening of the faculties, the consequence of Government undertaking to do too much for the people; and more than any other economist, not of the sentimental school, he extended his researches from the works of man's hands to man himself, and the natural laws under which he lives in society.

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Socialism Means Slavery for the Working Man By PH Scullin 1910

Socialism Means Slavery for the Working Man By P. H. Scullin 1910

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According to the Socialists, all the affairs of men should be managed by the government regardless of individual choice. Who would make the laws is the first thing to be considered. The people, of course, say the Socialists. Well, that of itself could not improve things, for that is just what they are doing now and have been ever since the Declaration of Independence. Yes, say the Socialists, but under our system there would be no incentive to corruption. Our representatives could not sell our interests to the corporations. There would be no corporations to sell to. The people themselves would own everything, hence selling the people, or legislative corruption, would be impossible. Every incentive to corruption is eliminated because of the fact that no man can or will be allowed to accumulate. Everything is to belong to everybody. Just so, but as everything is to belong to everybody and everybody is to share equally with everybody else, it follows that there must be established an elaborate system of both production and distribution. This system must not only be established by the government, but must at all times be under government supervision and control; and, as production comes before distribution, I will deal with production first as governed by law for the best interests of all the people. The State, being the supreme power, would also be the supreme and only judge of what was best for all the people, as it would also be the sole and only employer. Therefore as a business proposition and in justice to the State it must put its employees to work at the kind of work for which they are best adapted in order that each shall do that which is for the best interest of all. This is not alone a logical deduction, but the doctrine propounded from the Socialistic platform. Do not pass this phase of the question lightly. This is where slavery begins. The boy leaving school at a certain age specified by law, must begin to contribute his quota to the State's support and could not choose his own calling or attempt in any manner, by his own determination and effort to realize the future of his boyish dreams or youthful ambition. He is not to be the judge, neither shall his parents interfere. He and they are blotted out. Neither he nor they shall even assist in his destiny. He belongs to the State. Every individual human desire, however high or holy, if not considered by those in authority to be for the best interests of all, must be crushed and obliterated. The budding genius, the fore-ordained poet, painter or sculptor must go serve his time to be a bricklayer, a plumber or a horse doctor, dig in a quarry or work at any other occupation that the wise men in authority may decide he is best adapted to. I shall have something to say about these same wise men directly and how they got there.

I hope there is no difficulty about understanding that under Socialism neither man nor boy could choose his own vocation. They assure us that every man must work, and as the State would decide the kind and quantity of the work to be done, it would also select the employees which it considered the best adapted to perform the different kinds of work necessary for the proper support and comfort of society.

Cannot any average intelligence grasp the fact that this in itself would be slavery black and damnable? Each toiler, in whatever calling, performing an allotted task at something in which he had no choice, perhaps, against which his every inclination was in rebellion. And all for what? That he might live? No, but that he might exist. That he might eat, drink and sleep like a hog to-day, to the end that he could do the same to-morrow. No hope of better things; no gratifying of honest pride in wife or child. No lifting up of those he loves through the ennobling process of hardships suffered and toil endured in behalf of hearth and home and those that go to make that home the toiler's all in all on earth. But all this is but an introduction to the slave market. Let us see how this system is to be inaugurated and conducted. To do so I must go back somewhat to be clearly understood.

I have never yet heard the most advanced Socialist advance the theory that human nature could be changed by either a majority vote, a united vote of all the people, or by legislative enactment. I think I am therefore justified in saying that human nature is a fixed and unalterable quantity with which even the Socialists would have to deal. What, then, is the source from which flows every injustice of which we justly complain? Is it not the inordinately selfish desire of the unscrupulous and dishonest to get the best of their fellow men? This is the very thing that the Socialists themselves declare they are going to checkmate, and especially do they complain of and condemn the politicians as professional human cormorants, gorging themselves at the expense of the people whom they betray. Well, how is it that these bad men get into office? Has not every man a vote? And is it not we that elect these very men of whom we complain?

Socialist Venezuela imposes 'forced labor' to fight food shortage By Andrew Moran

http://economiccollapsenews.com/2016/08/02/socialist-venezuela-imposes-forced-labor-to-fight-food-shortage

I will tell you, my Socialistic friend, and you, business man. They get there for two reasons. First, because they want to, and secondly because we, the complainers, don't care a straw about our neighbors or the community's interests. It's ourselves that we are interested in. Let us see what bearing this has upon the question at issue.

Take away from man the incentive to accumulate, and thereby deprive him of the chance, hope or opportunity to gratify his tastes or desires; leave him without the chance to rise through enterprise in commerce, labor or the arts, and to what will he turn for an outlet for his natural energy and laudable ambition to climb above his fellows? (This is an inborn desire in the heart of man that even slavery cannot quench.) He could only turn to politics. As the only preferment under Socialism must come through the State, all would of a necessity be political preferment. Then would we become a nation of politicians and office seekers. Now, here is what I want to ask the Socialists, the working men or any man: Who do you think would get there under Socialism; in a word, who would rule; who would at all times hold the reins of power and conduct the affairs of the State? As a matter of course, it would be the very class of men who have ruled the world since the beginning, and will rule until time is no more; the men of intellect and force of character, and the more forceful and unscrupulous, the surer would they be to rule, as ruling would be the only outlet for their ambition. Neither would there be any other occupation or diversion for the viciously inclined, the rogue, the cheat, the sneak-thief, the hold-up man and all their kind, except that of turning their ability and cunning to the gaining of office, as henchmen to political aspirants. They and their kind would become the overseers and foremen whose commands the honest workman must obey. To preserve order and conduct business there must be men in authority, and the men in authority must receive their commission from the government, granted of course through political influence.

To my mind there is just one method, and only one, by which the State's business could be carried on; namely, the system under which the Roman legions were organized, or the government of the Incas in Peru. There would be chiefs of departments all the way from the President, cabinet or head governing Council down to the veriest petty foreman. Let us say a corporal who would have charge of ten men. The corporal would be responsible and report to a sergeant, who in turn would be over ten corporals. The sergeants would report to their captains; the captains to the colonels, and so on up to the highest authority.

Working men, pause here and just think a little about what such a system would mean to you. Every man in authority from the corporal or foreman up would represent the law. He would be the Law. He must of necessity enforce his every command, or all law would be at an end and chaos and disorder would follow. He would be a soldier or policeman, and must arrest all lawbreakers or law defiers, and to disobey him would be to defy the law. The average man is not an angel, but what would be the condition of the country if the cunning and unscrupulous sought office and desired to rise in office by a display of vigilance that might pass for efficiency? What kind of a hell, I ask, is the honest working man who embraces Socialism trying to create for himself? The State or Nation would become one vast system of militarism. Every working man would cease to be a man and become a thing, a pawn on the political chess board, to somebody higher up whose position is something and whose office is somewhere. This is the promised Utopia where all men are to be equal and all are to be treated upon the equality principle.

I will now deal with this same equality and how it will figure out when we come to distribution. Under Socialism every honest man at least is entitled to the same treatment, and to an equal share of everything, and why not, if he is an equal owner in all wealth?

Now here is one of the Socialistic problems that I cannot solve: How are they to give the people something that is not? There is no such thing as equality, either in Heaven or in earth. Are the Socialists going to manufacture it? Can they make the earth produce fruits of equal flavor, or make every part of a steer, sheep, goat or hog, equally tender, palatable and acceptable? Can they produce enough silk, satin, and fine linen to clothe all the people? I think they will admit that they cannot do all or any of these things. There are hundreds of other things they cannot do, yet equally necessary to be done before we could begin to think of an equal distribution of this world's wealth, but the above is enough for my purpose. I would now ask the advocates of Socialism or any thinking man: who will wear silk, satin, fine linen and broadcloth, eat the porterhouse steaks, lamb chops, fried oysters and turtle soup, drink champagne and ride in automobiles, and who will eat the plainest and poorest food, drink the cheaper grades of tea and coffee, wear overalls, hobnail shoes, and hickory shirts? Will it be the politicians and the office holders, the men in command, their wives and children, or the men commanded, that will have the choice? Who will live the better, the man of honest toil or the scheming trickster, the man who lies and fawns and carries stories, the inferior who reports your every weakness, your every shortcoming, and, worst of all for you at least, reports your every opposition to the powers that be? What a prospect lies in the change!

Working men of America, what is the most sacred, the most cherished, and, as it ought to be, the most highly prized thing of which you are in possession of to-day? In spite of all your hardships, poverty and perpetual struggle for existence, IS IT NOT YOUR INDEPENDENCE, your right to work for whom you choose; your right to refuse to work at any kind of work you do not like, or for any man whom you dislike; your right to strike against injustice? In a word, your right to assert your manhood and your independence as a freeman? Could you do this under Socialism? YOU COULD NOT. To combine or form a union to protect the laborer against real or fancied wrongs would be an act of conspiracy and treason against the government. To protest upon the public platform would be sedition. TO STRIKE WOULD BE REBELLION. Every Socialist expounder asserts that under Socialism labor will not only have justice but that poverty will disappear and that Jack would be upon an equal footing with John. But not one Socialist has ever defined the plan by which they propose to operate, and in all friendship and with every respect for their blind faith in their mythical cause, I challenge them individually or as a body to formulate and present a working plan whereby Socialism could be made operative, while leaving to mankind that which has cost him so many thousands of years to achieve: His Liberty, Individuality and Personal Independence.

In trying to paint conditions as they surely would, and must, exist under this kind of governmental rule. I am wholly unable to place before others my realization of the horrible state of injustice, indignity, suffering and slavery that would inevitably be the lot of the toiling masses, could Socialism prevail. I do not write this because I am afraid of Socialistic control, but in the hope that I may be the means of keeping some honest men, however few, from blindly joining in a propaganda they do not understand, simply taking it for granted that the promised change will be for the better as far as they are concerned.

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-The Political Economy (Economics) Blog by Heinz Schmitz

Capitalism & Human Progress by Ludwig von Mises

Capitalism and Human Progress by Ludwig von Mises

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I WANT TO START...WITH THE RELATION between economics and human practical life, and the consequences of the development of the theory of economics.

Kipling said, "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." Differences between the East and the West have certainly existed for thousands of years. The East never developed the idea of scientific research — the search for knowledge and truth for its own sake — which the Greeks gave to civilization. A second achievement of the Greeks, which has always been foreign to the East, is the idea of political liberty of government — of political responsibility of the individual citizen. These ideas, widely accepted in the West, never found counterparts in the East. Even today, only a small group of Eastern intellectuals follow these ideas. Nevertheless, the world was more or less one world, in spite of these ideas, until about 250 years ago.

Social relations and living conditions were more or less the same all over the world until 250 years ago. The average standard of living varied little between East and West. Modern methods of production and standards of consumption, technological knowledge, and equality under the law were unknown. Today we would consider most unsatisfactory the conditions that prevailed then. Aside from its political meaning, Wendell Willkie s word, "One World," was more applicable then than now.

The general improvement in political tranquility, which had reached a certain degree about 250 years ago, contributed to an increase in population. This additional population was too much for the social system of those ages. The countries where political conditions were most favorable became infested with robbers, thieves, and murderers — people for whom there was no place under the existing economic situation.

Then something occurred in Europe — first in western Europe, Great Britain, and the Netherlands — which spread over the rest of the Western world. It was this movement that led to considerable differences between the East and the West. This movement is called by historians the Industrial Revolution. Radical changes were brought about by preceding radical intellectual changes, that is, by the intellectual movement that produced economics as an autonomous branch of human knowledge. These radical changes multiplied population figures and changed the face of the world.

Because it was considered a crime to depart from traditional methods of production and trade — and any changes are necessarily always innovations — we are apt to ignore another development, a new idea heretofore unknown. We are blind to the great changes that took place, not only in production, but also in consumption. We see the mass production, but fail to see that this mass production was produced for the satisfaction of the needs of the masses. The guilds and handicraftsmen of the Middle Ages had produced for the well-to-do. Before the Industrial Revolution, and in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, there was a great trade in second-hand clothing. Clothes that were made to order for the well-to-do were bought secondhand by the poor. This trade in secondhand clothing, a really important part of the economy, disappeared as a result of the development of modern methods of production.

The Industrial Revolution started by producing for the needs of the poor, of the masses. Mass production started by producing the cheapest and the poorest things. The cotton industry was one of the early developments of the Industrial Revolution. Cotton was a poor man's material — no member of the upper or middle classes wanted cotton. The quality of mass production improved only when the conditions of the masses improved to the extent that they also became biased against cheap products. Not so long ago no lady or gentlemen would have bought factory-made shoes, or ready-made clothes. Not until 100 or 120 years ago could one even buy a ready-made shirt in Germany All these industries have developed during the last 100 to 150 years.

As a consequence of the Industrial Revolution in the West, an enormous gulf developed, a gulf which today separates the West from the East. The East still clings to the idea that once hindered the development of capital in the Western world, the idea that one man's wealth is the cause of the poverty of others. The concept of the "underdeveloped nations" has arisen and the idea that it is necessary to give them technological advice, i.e., "know-how." This is really ridiculous! There are lots of Indians, Chinese, and students from other countries in our universities who are very capable persons and who are acquiring know-how. And even if they weren't, many Americans would be willing to go to those countries to work and to give advice. What they really need is the capital. What is lacking is capitalism.

One of the consequences of the Industrial Revolution was that the world is now populated by many more people than could have been supported before. Each individual in the capitalist countries also lives at a much higher standard of living than before. This means that the average length of life is much longer. The growth in population was not achieved by an increase in the birth rate, but by a decrease in the mortality rate, especially of infants. Queen Anne of England, the last reigning member of the Stuarts, had seventeen children, but not a single one lived to reach adulthood. This situation had serious significance for England; it created the historical and religious problem of the Protestant succession. As further evidence of the extent of infant mortality, most of the charming children in the Habsburg families that Velasquez painted died in childhood. You may call the improvement of living standards brought about by the Industrial Revolution "materialism." But from the point of view of the parents, the improved life expectancy of their children may not have seemed merely materialistic.

Engels said people must eat before they can develop philosophical ideas. With this I can agree. The Europeans are now claiming that they are fighting the "Coca-Cola civilization," but it would be a mistake to say that capitalism has developed nothing but Coca-Cola. Capitalism has certainly led to philosophical and theological improvements also. In the light of the great scientific discoveries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to say that the capitalist economy is the "Coca-Cola civilization" would not seem to be an "unbiased" statement.

The peaceful exchange of ideas and the peaceful coexistence of people with various ideas were in triumphal progress at the beginning of the nineteenth century There was then a development toward freedom and peace, especially toward intellectual freedom for ideas, toward the elimination of government cruelty in punishment and of government torture in criminal procedure, and also toward an improvement in the standard of living. People came to believe that this development toward freedom and peace was inevitable. In the nineteenth century they were truly convinced that nothing could stop this trend toward more freedom. The Manchester Chamber of Commerce in Great Britain even declared in the 1820s that the age of war was gone forever. That was the bloodless economic theory.
There need be no war if there was free trade and representative government.

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