Experiments in Collectivism; M. Barger

EXPERIMENTS IN COLLECTIVISM ACCORDING to an article that appeared several years ago in a popular men's magazine, a Bret Harte classic was once rejected for production on the Kraft Theatre be cause the sponsor thought it promoted communism. The article was an expose of sponsor control of TV programming. Obviously enjoying his task, author Al Morgan drew an unflattering picture of the average busi ness sponsor. He was timid, petty, narrow-minded, fear ful, and sometimes stupid. And since he saw Bret Harte (who died in 1902) as an ally of the Kremlin, he was obviously irrational about communism. Here is what the sponsor objected to as being com munistic, according to Mr. Morgan: In one scene, a group of miners got together and agreed that they would share equally in any ore that came out of the mine they were working. 1 1 Al Morgan, "And Now, a Word from the Sponsor," Playboy, December, 1959, p. 95.

Mr. Barger is Editor of The Flying A, company magazine of the Aeroquip Corporation at Jackson, Michigan. 45 46 MELVIN D. BARGER Well, if that was the chief reason for the shelving of Bret Harte's classic, then the business sponsor did have a lot to learn about communism. And while Mr. Mor gan's example doesn't prove conclusively whether spon sor control is right or wrong, it does typify a popular misconception about Soviet communism. For despite all the twists and turns communism has taken since 1918, there are people around who still believe that it is essen tially equalitarian in the sharing of economic goods, and that this is its chief distinction. Numerous USSR ex perts have assured us that the opposite is true, that there are highly privileged groups in the Soviet Union, and that incentive plans are used in industry. Though "equal sharing" may still have a place in communist dogma, it has little existence in the real world.

But a more serious error is present here. For even if the Soviets had been able to follow their original aims on "equal sharing," their version differs radically from that practiced by Mr. Harte's miners. In every sense of the word, the miners' collective experiment was volun tary. They agreed that they would share equally of their ore, and presumably any of them could withdraw from the bargain whenever he became dissatisfied with it. Far from being a kind of communism, their mining venture was simply a variation of free enterprise. There probably have been millions of similar group ventures in the United States, involving everything from berrypicking to the formation of giant steel companies. In many cases, people probably have shared in such a way as to un wittingly carry out the Marxist idea of "from each acEXPERIMENTS IN COLLECTIVISM 47 cording to his ability, to each according to his need."

But it is not unjust if all the parties involved agreed to it, if no fraud was involved, and, if they were not forced against their will to subscribe to the arrangement. When we turn to real communist theory, we find something far more sinister than Mr. Harte's amusing ex ample. Another element is added: the iron fist of govern ment police power. Under communism, the collective ex periment is no longer voluntary, and the miners are forced to submit to the arrangement no matter how much they might dislike it. And even their right to share equally of their ore has been diluted, for now it has become the property of the state rather than of the men who extracted it. Early Christian Communities Let us not, however, belabor Mr. Harte. For, it is not only fictional experiments in collectivism that have been misidentified as communistic. Occasionally one reads, or hears, that the early Christian community of the first century was communistic. We know, for example, that "all that believed were together, and had all things com mon; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, asevery man had need."2 But no state police power was present to enforce this, and indeed, the authorities of the day used their police power to perse cute the community. And it is certain that individual rights were still greatly protected even in this voluntary 2 Acts, 2: 44-45.

48 MELVIN D. BARGER collective order. It was very obviously a free association. Another venture in collectivism was the community established by Robert Owen, a wealthy British mill owner, in New Harmony, Indiana, early in the last century. A man of socialist leanings whom John Cham berlain identifies as the real author of "Fabianism," Owen founded at New Harmony "a Community of Equality, based on the principle of common property."3 The experiment quickly ran into rough weather, but its establishment was hardly a communist experiment, as some may mistakenly believe today. Owen had volun tarily put up his own money for the venture, and the participants had come of their own accord and were free to leave. No police coercion was involved, although Chamberlain advises us that Owen did become some thing of a dictator in his last frantic attempts to make the project succeed. The New Harmony colony, like the early Christian communal system and collective arrangements in the Jamestown and Plymouth settlements, failed to achieve the idealistic goal of economic equality. Its downfall came because of very understandable and predictable reasons: people simply do not put forth their best efforts in communes, and diligent workers soon catch on to the fact that they are supporting free loaders. Even excep tionally capable people could hardly make a permanent success of a collective, but the New Harmonites, John Chamberlain surmises, "must have been the most glori8 John Chamberlain, The Roots of Capitalism (Princeton, N. .T.: D. Van Nostrand, 1959), Chapter VI.

EXPERIMENTS IN COLLECfIVISM 49 OUS collection of deadbeats ever assembled together in one place."4 ·An Inherent Weakness But collectivism doesn't fail simply because of betrayal by deadbeats. It also failed in the early Christian com munity, a gathering of inspired people lifted up by a powerful spiritual idea. There must have been dissension and dissatisfaction even in this saintly group, for the time came when the apostle Paul had to remind that "if any would not work, neither should he eat."5 After that, communal living did not seem to survive for long in the Christian church, although it has been resurrected occasionally by small sects, who have eventually aban doned it. 6 The verdict of all these experiments in collec tivism is that they do not work, even when their organ izers move heaven and earth to make them succeed. Despite everything the record shows, libertarians who point to these ventures as proof that communism goes against human nature are wasting their time in argu ments with disciplined communists. For communists have known this right along, and have never intended to establish a new social order by proving that pilot collectives could be productive. Karl Marx called such utopian experiments (as the New Harmony fiasco) 4 Ibid.

II II Thessalonians, 3:10. 6 The community living of certain religious orders, such as Trappist monks, has no bearing on this subject, since vows of poverty, obedience, and other disciplines prevent possible causes of dispute.

50 MELVIN D. BARGER "castles in the air," and ended his sweeping Manifesto by stating: "The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions."1 To Karl Marx and his followers, the miners in Bret Harte's story would have been just greedy entrepreneurs trying to become capitalists themselves. It hadn't the slightest. resemblance to Marx's concept of collectivism. He advocated, without apology or concealment, a totali tarian doctrine. 7 Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (Gateway Edition; Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1954), Chapters III and IV.