Sozialized Sugar; L.E. Read

SOCIALIZED SUGAR THE STATE OF ALABAMA has authorized the city of Mo bile to float a bond issue (tax exempt, of course) to build a $12,000,000 sugar refining plant-another first for socialism. Government has not heretofore been in the sugar refining business in the U.S.A.-at least, not directly. With government's foot in this narrow-margined busi ness, the end of private production can be foreseen. Margins on sugar are not sufficient to enable private enterprise to compete with socialized, that is, with sub sidized operations. The case of socialized sugar is no more objectionable than socialized anything else. It has special significance only because the socialization, in this instance, is not accompanied by the usual socialistic excuses. For example, the original excuse for the now sprawl ing TVA was "a yardstick" against which government might check private enterprise pricing and efficiency.

Noone has the nerve to offer, again, this lame plausi bility for socializing such a consistently low-priced item as sugar. 153 154 LEONARD E. READ Water and sewerage systems, education, subways, and a host of other activities have been socialized on the thoughtless excuse that "government should do for the people what the people are unable to do for themselves."1 To apply such a cliche to sugar is to joke. For years our government has had laws backed by police force-quotas and tariffs-to keep sugar from flowing too freely into our country. Few if any foods are easier to produce and refine than sugar. Socalled underdeveloped countries produce sugar with the greatest of ease. Nor does the Marxian nonsense-"from each accord ing to ability, to each according to need"-apply. For is it not the "needy" of the world who can produce sugar? And, we must ask, who in Mobile is suffering from lack of sugar?

National defense is often used as the excuse to social ize an industry. For decades we have subsidized our own beet and cane growers on the grounds that we should not risk a reliance on foreign suppliers during hostili ties. And all for naught! As World War II got under way, the sugar beet growers who had been subsidized to assure us a wartime sugar supply deserted to more profit able crops. No, the people in Mobile are not using na tional defense as the excuse for their new excursion into socialized sugar refining. Socialism is the government ownership and control of the means of production. Municipal government is no less government than is the federal apparatus, nor is 1 See "Cliches of Socialism," Number 3. (Foundation for Eco nomic Education, Inc., Irvington, N. Y.) SOCIALIZED SUGAR 155 socialism any the less socialism because it is at the munic ipal level. About 1,900 municipalities have socialized power and light. There may be as many as 700 communities where water and sewerage services are still privately supplied; in all the rest-thousands of towns and cities-these serv ices are socialized. Cities are now operating hotels, grow ing wheat, producing fertilizer, marketing milk, produc ing asphalt and cement, operating parking lots, and even running cocktail bars!2 The Disturbing Trend The drift toward collectivization-decried as slavery when engineered by the Kremlin-is at an accelerating pace in the United States. And, astonishingly enough, this goes on without the aid of the customary socialistic rationalizationsl Is socialism advancing under some new force? Probably not. It is more than likely that the so cialistic excuses used in the past were nothing but catchy phrases, never reasons, and that most of us have been naIvely distracted by straw men while socialism has mushroomed unmolested.

The end of this road, be it municipal or federal, is omnipotent government which becomes harder to live with, more difficult to squelch, with each passing day. Effective squelching must rest on our knowing how to combat this rapidly spreading evil force. Our lack of 2 "Cities in Business," The Wall Street Journal, September 14, 1961.

156 LEONARD E. READ knowhow, I submit, stems from an unintelligent and im practical interpretation of self-interest and, also, a wan ing sense of common justice. Were we interpreting our self-interest intelligently, we would assist our neighbors in stamping out their socialistic fires as readily as we would our own. A con flagration destroys others than the one with whom it starts. But look at what happens: While the sugar folks are now crying "fire," all others shut out their annoying plea for help. Nor have the sugar refiners had ears for the M.D.'s warning, "Medicine is being socialized," or for the alarm sounded by the private utility people, "Power and light are being socialized." Those who lack concern except when their own ox is being gored are suspect; and, as a consequence, the populace merely yawns: they're getting what's coming to them. If each of us could see clearly his self-interest, he would recognize that the socialization of the other fellow's busi ness or industry is also an entering wedge or claim against his own life and liberty and property. The hun ger after political power is insatiable, each gulp but an appetizer for the next. And the more government regu lates and controls, the more it demands to cover costs and losses. The greater the federal deficits, the more urge to inflate the currency; and the sharper the inflation, the greater the temptation for individuals as well as govern ments at all levels to invest recklessly in all sorts of un economic ventures. Who knows the web of prior social ization that actually lies behind and leads up to this latest venture in socialized sugar at Mobile?

SOCIALIZED SUGAR An Endless Web 157 Permit the abrogation of any individual's God-given rights to life, liberty, and the fruits of his own labor, and the abrogation of one's own rights becomes an in extricable part of that policy. The proper defense was suggested by Milton Mayer: In the struggle for the rights of all men-which alone will save their skins and their souls-those who belong to minori ties must fight first of all for the rights of other minorities than their own; next for the rights of all men; and last, if at all, for their own. 3 Any physician worth his salt does more than treat the manifestations of a disease; he approaches the problem systematically, that is, he goes to the root of the matter. This procedure, applied to the socialistic virus, suggests that we be as alert to its attack upon others as upon our selves and that we help combat every outbreak, lest it reach epidemic proportions. This is not altruism; it is self-interest practically and intelligently at work.

Because it is easier to see faults other than our own, let me use a foreign example of a waning sense of com mon justice. A friend from Oslo reported that their opera could no longer be privately financed; that it had been turned over to government. I suggested that perhaps Oslo should have no opera unless it could be pri vately supported. "But what about our culture?" he asked, as though culture could be advanced by using 3 Milton Mayer, These Few (Chicago: Human Events Associates, 1947), p. 11.

158 LEONARD E. READ police force to take the fruits of the labor of those who have no taste for opera in order to subsidize the few who are opera lovers. He had given no thought to com mon justice, to the uncultural means he had approved to achieve his own idea of a cuItural end. Socialized opera by reason of a waning sense of common justice! And, it is this that contributes mightily to socialized sugar, medicine, power and light, housing, .mail, educa tion, cocktail bars, and whatever. Finally, in viewing the problem systemically, we have not the ghost of a chance of reversing the present social istic trend unless there is a revival of the revolutionary concept set forth in the Declaration of Independence that men's rights are endowments of the Creator. We either accept this or we must submit to the only possible alternative, namely, the absurd fallacy that men derive their rights from some man-concocted arrangement-a collective, in practical fact, the state!

If the sugar people would save their own industry, let them begin to help fight socialized medicine and socialized power and light. And let the Docs and the utility folks help fight socialized sugar. Not only will this procedure be good; it also will look good~ with every man standing for a just treatment of all men. My freedom depends on, yours; those who fail to help one another in this respect will lose their freedom, and de servedly. After all, the price of freedom is fair enough: intelligent interpretation of self-interest, a sense of com mon justice, and an appreciation that men's rights do not derive from government.