Why Do "They" Turn to Socialism; E. Opitz

The Reverend Mr. Opitz is a member of the staff of the Foundation for Economic Educa tion, a seminar lecturer, and author of' the book, Reli~ion and Capitalism: Allies Not Enemies. II cialism? The twentieth century faces Left, and nation after nation suc cumbs to a "progressive" ideology. Marxism, of the Moscow or the Peking variety, is the official faith of hundreds of millions of people the world over. Countless others may reject Marxism, but they em brace a "liberal" ideology; tpey advocate national planning, state regulation of key industries, pub lic works, welfarism. Add up these millions and you ask: Who else is there ? Well, there are a few peo ple in today's world who are firmly grounded in the tradition of eight eenth century Whiggism, or Clas sical Liberalism; who acknowledge the political wisdom of The Fed eralist,. who embrace the free market economic theories of the Manchester and Austrian Schools.

There are able scholars in this camp whose writings demolish col lectivist theory and marshall solid, carefully reasoned moral and in tellectual arguments on behalf of 429 430 THE FREEMAN July the free economy jfree society po sition. The soundness of this freedom philosophy is attested even by its opponents, that is to say, by the triviality of Left-wing analysis and criticism of it. The Left rarely attempts to make the case against the philosophy of the free society by meeting its arguments on their own level. We may be sure that if the Left had such a case they'd use it. The Left opposes the free society position, of course, but seldom by argument, that is, intel lectually. Opponents of the free economy position have several typ ical ways of dealing with it. The first tactic is to ignore it; don't discuss; pretend it isn't there. The second line of defense is: If you can't ignore it, misstate the posi tion; then knock the straw man down. Third, call names. Useful epithets are "reactionary," "eight eenth century idea," "capitalist,"

"outdated." Fourth, allege hard heartedness toward the plight of "the poor." This last is almost hilarious. To the extent that the free econ omy has been allowed to function in a given nation, in like measure has the free economy eleva ted more poor people further out of poverty in less time than any other system! What amalgam of igno rance, stupidity and malice does it take to bring this charge against the free economy, that it neglects "the poor"? The record shows that the government handout system, by contrast, not only fails to help "the poor," it keeps them that way - and demeans them to boot! Attacks Rooted in Envy The system of liberty has solid intellectual and moral founda tions; why, then, do not more peo ple find the case persuasive? Why do so many people gravitate to ward freedom's opposite, jostling one another as they crowd the road to serfdom? Is there some human trait which, released from moral controls, is readily enlisted under the banners of Socialism?

The answer is Yes; there is such a trait - envy. Envy, and its twin, covetousness, are unlovely facets of human nature, and only moral energy keeps them bottled up. But when envy and covetousness are uncorked they work against free dom and for Socialism. Ask the man in the street what he understands by Socialism, and he'll tell you that it's a scheme for dividing up the wealth; "the equal division of unequal earnings," as someone put it; soaking the rich to pay "the poor." Spellbinders of the Left play upon the feelings of envy and covetousness with prac ticed skill, setting person against person, class against class. These ugly traits of human nature have 1975 WHY DO "THEY" TURN TO SOCIALISM? 431 caused trouble since time immemo rial. "Thou shalt not covet," is one of the Ten Commandments; envy and covetousness are two of the Seven Deadly Sins. Our forebears, aware of the destructive potential of these traits, endeavored to neu tralize them by making their con trol a religious duty.

But if the egalitarian drive is to pick up momentum, it needs the fuel only envy and covetousness can supply. Socialism uses envy, and exploits the new morality whose energumens tell people that they should covet their neighbor's goods. Roll your own Ten Com mandments, and remember that there are easier ways of getting your hands on a buck than work ing for it! The society is first di vided into the Haves and the Have nots. Then the Have-nots must be convinced that their lack of the amenities is somehow the fault of the Haves; that the man who earns twenty-five thousand dollars a year is somehow to blame for the fact that another man earns only seventy-five hundred. With a part of ourselves we'd like to believe this, so it is not sur prising that a lot of people are re luctant to utter a mea culpa in the case of their own failures and shortcomings; they find it gratify ing to learn that someone who seems more successful than they, is the reason they are not doing better. Such sentiments as these are music to our ears, but they cannot survive even a limited ex posure to economic reasoning.

Advantages 01 Trade We can learn from economics, if we will, that the free economy is not like a zero sum game where one man's gain inevitably means another man's loss. In a poker game, as one man's stack of chips grows higher and higher there is a corresponding shrinkage of the other players' stacks. In the mar ket economy, by contrast, there is a progressive increase in the num ber of chips (so to speak) avail able to every player; and every man earns precisely what consum ers think hIs services are worth. Now, in his secret thoughts, Ev eryman knows he is worth a great deal more than consumers think he's worth! It is only experience and self-discipline that allows the reality sense in most people to be brought into play and prevail in the end. But economic understand ing, and reasonable considerations such as these, must be squelched in order to inflame more acutely the envy of the Have-nots.

But envy is only the first half of the story; the inflamed envy of the Have-nots must be orchestrated in to harmony with the aroused guilt of the Haves. Now, a person whose wealth has been obtained by force 432 THE FREEMAN July and fraud should feel guilty; if there is no guilt feeling associ ated with advantages gained at another's expense there is evidence of a moral blind spot. Parentheti cally, there are scores of millions in this category - gaining advan tages at someone else's expense every person on the welfare state's subsidy list! And paradoxically, most of these would be thought of as heing in the Have-not category, and would so place themselves, and they would attach great virtue to the particular means by which they obtain an income! Consumers Make the Awards Everyone of us in a free soci ety is rewarded by his peers ac cording to the value willing buyers attach to the goods and services he offers for exchange. This mar ket place assessment is made by consumers who are ignorant, venal, biased, stupid; in short, by people very much like you and me! This does seem to be a clumsy way of deciding how much or how little of this world's goods shall be put at this or that man's disposal. Isn't there an alternative? Yes, there's an alternative, and it occurred to people more than two millenia ago.

We'll invite the wise and the good to come down from Olympus to sit as a council among men, and we'll appear before them one by one, to be judged on personal merit and rewarded accordingly. Then we'll be assured that those who make a million really deserve it, and those who are paupers belong at that level; and we'll all be contented and happy. What lunacy! The gen uinely wise and good would not accept such a role, and I quote the words of the highest authority de clining it: "Who made me a judge over you?" Anyone who applied for such a role would cast grave doubt on his wisdom and goodness by the mere fact of applying! The market place decision that this man shall earn twenty-five thousand, this one ten, and so on, is not, of course, marked by su pernal wisdom; no one claims this. But it is infinitely better than So cialism's alternative, which is to recast consumers into voters, who will elect a body of politicians, who will appoint bureaucrats to divvy up the wealth by governmental legerdemain. This mad scheme backs away from the imperfect and crashes into the impossible!

There are no perfect arrange ments in human affairs, but the fairest distribution of material rewards attainable by imperfect men is to let a man's customers decide how much he should earn; this method will distribute eco nomic goods unequally, but never theless equitably. Parenthetically, it should be un derstood that the market does not 1975 WHY DO "THEY" TURN TO SOCIALISM? 433 measure the true worth of a man or a woman. If it did, we would have to rate all who make a lot of money as superior beings - rock music stars, producers of porno films, publishers of dirty books, television commentators, authors of best sellers - and they're not superior. To the contrary! But such people constitute only a tiny sector of the· free economy, and they are a very small price to pay Jor the blessings of liberty we enjoy. A Guilt Complex In a free society, those who earn more than the national average are entitled to enjoy their possessions, for they've gained them in a sys tem of voluntary exchange; the well-being they enjoy is matched by the well-being they have be stowed upon other people! There are no valid reasons for anyone to be plagued by feelings of guilt on this score. There is genuine reci procity in the free society, but its opponents are blind to the market's built-in mutuality. The Left, there fore, will make a determined ef fort to instill a guilty conscience in everyone who lives above the pov erty level. They use Karl Marx's exploitation theory which alleges that the man who works for wages produces, over and above his wage, a "surplus value" which is gar nisheed by his employer. To be employed is to be exploited, and the whole capitalist class should feel guilty for denying the working class its due!

This naive notion was demol ished by B6hm-Bawerkeven while Marx lived, and it is not now de fended even by Communist theore ticians. But the "surplus value" idea accords with feelings of envy and guilt, so it is still useful as propaganda. Given a century and more of Marxist propaganda and it is not surprising that there are a lot of guilt-ridden millionaires and sons of millionaires, as well as many captains of industry and top ex ecutives whose hearts bleed for "the poor." Envious Have-nots and guilty Haves: fertile breeding ground for Socialistic propaganda! It is not only among individ uals that wealth differentials are exploited; there are Have and Have-not nations. The Have-not nations are those to whom Ameri cans have given upwards of two hundred billions of dollars worth of goods since the end of World War II. But despite this incred ible bounty (for which the nations of the world rise up and call us blessed!) we still have too much, in the eyes of our critics. The words vary but the music is al ways the same: Americans who represent only 7 per cent of the world's population consume 20 per 434 THE FREEMAN July cent of the world's food, drive 75 per cent of the world's automo biles, have 75 per cent of the world's television sets, and so on and on and on.

Now, I'm an amateur critic of the quality·of life lived in America, and for those who insist on having my opinion I'd say that Americans do eat too much, and they stuff themselves with food of the wrong kind. It would be good for them to leave the car in the garage occa sionally, and walk, or ride a bi cycle. Furthermore, no mixture of ease, comfort, speed and gadgetry will add up to the good life - as most persons would agree. But all this is by the way; the matter at issue here is not the desirability of a more Spartan or Stoic style of life - which, incidentally, is not practiced by the rich of Asia, Af rica, Europe, or you name it. It's just that more people in these fifty states are enabled to enj oy more material wealth than all but a handful of people elsewhere, and so we are conspicuous enough to provoke the carefully nurtured envy of the rest of the world. Should Americans deliberately low er their living standards? Well, per haps there are good reasons for a return to plain living, hard work and the Puritan ethic.:.- but defer ring to local liberals and critics from the Have-not nations is not one of them!

Productivity the Key Americans do consume more on the average than the people of other nations. It might be interest ing to ask why. The answer is clear: Americans consume more because Americans produce more. If the people of India want to con sume more, they'll have to learn to become more productive. And America' is bursting with people who would be delighted to tell them how to increase their produc tivity. You merely have to accumu late" capital at a faster rate than population growth, so that each worker will have more and more machinery, tools, and equipment. Productive efficiency, in other words, requires institutional in centives for capital accumulation - such as widespread belief in the sacredness of private property; an ethic which exalts honesty, thrift, and hard work; the idea of inher ent rights, and so on. A nation that builds on a foundation like this is bound to prosper, as Amer ica has.

Suppose the American govern ment continues to yield to the pressure of envy stemming from the Have-not nations, and incre·as es the tax bite on American citi zens so that they will consume less. Suppose, in other words, that a larger and larger percentage of the goods produced here annually is siphoned off and shipped abroad.

1975 WHY DO "THEY" TURN TO SOCIALISM? 435 What will happen to production here when our people are prevent ed from enjoying its fruits? You know what will happen to it; pro duction will decline, inevitably. Why does a man produce? He pro duces in order to consume; con sumption is the end in view of all productive activities. If everything a man produces is taken from· him he'll stop working; and if fifty per cent is taken from him he'll slow down. The upshot is that the worst help we can give to the Have-not nations is to inflict policies upon Americans which will inevitably make us dollars poorer without making the Have-not nations a penny richer. This envy/guilt syndrome pro vides an interesting glimpse into the Socialist mentality, which has little concern with production, with the way material goods come into existence. Socialists are preoccu pied with the political redistribu tion of the already existing stock.

There is, in fact, only one way to make economic goods appear, and that is to apply human energy, augmented by tools and machinery, to raw material. Human labor ap plied to natural resources is the only way to produce food, clothing, shelter, and the amenities; but the Left has no interest in this· proc ess, let alone in increasing its ef ficiency. .Tax and Subsidize The attention of the Left is fo cused on taxing producers and sub sidizing consumers. Assuming that production occurs by magic, auto matically, Socialism has no pro gram except to seize property from the Haves and distribute it to the Have-nots. The guaranteed end re sult of this to to enforce domestic poverty and spread hunger around the globe. But a certain glamour attaches to any Robin Hood opera tion which promises to take from the rich and give to the poor - and some of this glamour lingers even after it has become plain that Rob in the Hood is actually robbing both rich and poor for the benefit of Robin!

As a result of economic progress, a society moves up from a situa tion where just about everybody is poor to one characterized by gen eral prosperity, shared by all but a few. That is to say, there will be pockets of poverty in any prosper ous society, and the contrast be tween rich and poor makes the residual poverty painfully obvious to all compassionate people. Indig nation suggests a remedy which ap pears obvious to those who respond emotionally, without thinking. If some are better off than others, why pass a law to deprive the for mer of a portion of their property and dole it out to those in need! Not an efficient procedure, by the way; 436 THE FREEMAN July it costs the government several dol lars to give one dollar to "the poor." Imagine a system of medicine where doctors blamed sickness on the healthy, and sought to cure ill ness by making the well sick! This is madness, and if this tactic were used in medicine few patients would survive. Economic distress like wise; poverty cannot be relieved unless we known its cause, and this means that we must also learn the cause of prosperity, for poverty can be overcome by productivity, and in no other way.

Prosperity in a nation is gen erated by efficiency in production, and productive efficiency demands such things as a climate of free dom, security for property, the ac cumulation of capital, progressive technology, good work habits, skill ful management, and the like. It follows that any impairment of the functioning of any or all of the fac tors that cause prosperity makes people poorer. Here are some ex amples of political interventions which hamper productivity: con fiscatory taxation which diminishes the supply of capital; minimum wage laws which disemploy large numbers of people; monopoly un ionism which institutionalizes un employment by exacting an above the-market wage and imposing a rigid wage structure; price and wage controls; inflation. Such political interventions as these do no one any good, and they do some people immense harm. Those most severely affected are the very ones whose plight arouses our sympathy and causes some shortsighted citizens to demand drastic government action to cor rect disparities in income! The only sound strategy is to apply the for mula for prosperity across the boards; and this means that we must find some way of stopping government from hurting people by unwise legislation. Unshackle production, turn the market loose, and everyone will share - more or less - in the ever-increasing pros perity.

Of course, it is not enough for a nation to be merely prosperous; riches don't bring happiness. A happy person is one who has some thing to live for, whose way of life challenges him to draw upon his powers and exert his full potential. Material well-being - food to nour ish you, clothing to keep you warm, shelter against the elements - ma terial well-being is one element in the good life. But in our time this one element looms so large in the eyes of many that evidence of eco nomic distress anywhere is all the excuse they need to demand a pro gram that will wreck the system which produced our prosperity! It is as if a doctor had treated a com pletely paralyzed patient with some miracle drug which restored func1975 WHY DO "THEY" TURN TO SOCIALISM? 437 tion to arms and legs but left the former patient with one stiff knee, and was then accused of malprac tice and blamed for the man's game leg!

Justice and Charity Justice first;. no legislation de signed to give some an economic ad vantage at the expense of others, no arbitrary controls which pre vent people from being as produc tive as they choose to be. Then, after justice, charity - which is simply an acknowledgement that some handicapped people can't cope. The scope of private philanthropy is still enormous, even after a gen eration of government welfare schemes. The springs of compassion have not run dry, and it is obvious that they run more freely in the voluntary sector of society than in the coercive governmental sector. The coercive sector hits John Doe with heavy taxation during his pro ductive years and uses his money to finance programs he's against. Doe is tens of thousands of dollars poorer as a result. During the same period the Social Security tax de prives this man of thousands more. And all the while government is in flating the currency which increas es the price of everything John Doe buys. When retirement comes, the government leaves John Doe with a lot less money than he actually earned during his productive pe riod, and it cheapens the value of every dollar it gives him during his latter years. This is how govern ment takes care of the poor!

There is no doubt in my mind that envy, covetousness and guilt plus plain stupidity and ignorance - are of Socialism's essence. Social ism would stall at ground level if it could not inflame these feelings and shortcomings. But there are other causes contributory to the advance of Socialism in our time. There's idolatrous religion. We live in a period when the traditional reli gious faiths no longer exert the hold they once had over the minds of millions of people. The predomi nant world view is earthbound, with little or no place for the di mension of transcendence, or the sacred. Unable or unwilling, there fore, to make a religion of Religion, many twentieth century people make a religion of politics or eco nomics. A Religious Impulse The term religion has reference, on the one hand, to intensity of be lief and devotion; and, on the other hand, it has to do with the object which inspires this intense belief and devotion. Lacking a transcen dent object, God, because of the prevailing earthbound world view, intense belief and devotion' will af fix itself to some object whose na ture does not merit worship, such as the State, or Revolution. Thus 438 THE FREEMAN July Socialism or Communism becomes an ersatz religion for millions of people in our time.

The case of H. G. Wells is in structive. Wells was an early Fa bian, and until the disillusionment of his late years, worked tirelessly for the advancement of Socialism. "Socialism," he wrote, "is to me a very great thing indeed, the form and substance of my ideal life, and the only religion I possess. I am, by a sort of predestination, a Social ist." Similar sentiments have been voiced by a multitude of the intel lectual, literary, scientific, and po litical leaders of our time. Per versely, the low ebb of spiritual re ligion in our time has affected the churches, making it possible for men whose real religion is reform or revolution to capture large seg ments of the church for Socialism - by controlling various sounding boards, such as editorial offices, teaching and preaching posts, so cial action committees, interchurch ~ouncils. And just as the religious impulse has been bent to the uses of Social ism, so has the artistic impulse.

The artist cannot "let nature take its course"; he must impose signifi cant form upon it, bringing his kind of order out of what appears to him to be chaos. Twist the artis tic vision around to society, and 10 ! the planned economy! The untu tored mind does not sense the magnificent and intricate order in a free society, which is the result of human action but not the conse quence of human design. Merely enforce a few simple rules against theft, fraud and murder, enforce contracts, redress inj ury - and within these few rules people act ing freely and productively will project an order so complicated that it defies human understanding. Could we fully understand it, eco nomic calculation apart from a market would be feasible - which it is not. The artist in us dislikes loose ends, insists on tidying things up, is caught up in a vision it feels bound to realize. Fine, on canvas! But if you insist on a certain pre planned order and pattern as an end result in your society - the na tion as a work of art - it is obvi ous that this overall goal cannot be achieved if· everyone in the society is free to pursue his own peaceful goals. There is no way to achieve a unitary National Goal except by nullifying individual goals.

Diversity Encouraged The free society not only tole rates individual differences, it en courages diversity on the ground that each person has his unique contribution to make to the total richness. This position runs counter to the pressure for uniformity in this age of mass man. The advocate 1975 WHY DO "THEY" TURN TO SOCIALISM? 439 of the free society, therefore, runs the risk of rubbing people the wrong way; often he has to make his case against the grain of human nature which hates dissent. In or der that a society may be free, a great many people must exhibit a much higher level of tolerance for individual eccentricity than has hitherto prevailed. The believer in freedom, then, is like a salesman trying to persuade people to buy a product, by telling them that, chances are, there are things about it they won't much like after they get it! That's a hard sell! Freedom means putting up with a lot of things you don't like, and living with a lot of people you can barely stand. Freedom of speech and press, of religion and economics, means that other people will say, print, believe and produce things which we might find dis tasteful. Freedom doesn't come cheap; it costs, and those unable or unwilling to pay the price will never achieve freedom, nor will they retain the freedom they now enjoy.

The late Dean lnge used to say that labels are libels! How shall we la.bel the social system of America, England, and some European na tions in the period between the Civil War and the New Deal? It was an age marked by a great expansion of science and technology, so we might speak of the Age of Science. A fine historian characterized the period as the Age of Materialism. Democ racy took over as the kings depart ed, and that label is popular. The mode of production during this century was "capitalist," the label given currency by Marx. It suited the Communists to use one label, "Capitalism," for the social sys tem they wanted to destroy, rather than, say, "Democracy." A Deadly Label Now, a modern western nation is an exceedingly complex affair, and it takes patient analysis to under sta.nd any single phenomenon of the many it exhibits. A social evil demands attention and it takes knowledge and skill to trace out its root causes. Much simpler to blame everything that goes wrong on Capitalism! Why poverty? Capi talism! Why the Great War? Capi talism! Why the Great Depression?

Capitalism! Why unhappiness? Capitalism ! Nothing was better calculated to deaden the analytical and critical faculties of several generations of intellectuals than this Marxist strategy; it worked; "social scientists" were conditioned to salivate on demand over the prospect that they had been chosen to lead humanity into the promised land. Some able men are attracted to Socialism because it pretends to be scientific and progressive; and they 440 THE FREEMAN July regard themselves as scientific and progressive. But it is obvious that the mass of ordinary people are quite otherwise; they are stubborn and backward, and consequently, they make a mess of things. They refuse to accept the best scientific information available to them, pre ferring instead to be sloppy and unscientific. Witness their life style, their eating habits, the way they rear children, their resistance to new trends in schooling, the fool ish way they spend their money, their superstitions! The indict men t against the man in the street is a lengthy one, and the conclusion is that ignorant people such as this cannot be trusted to run their own lives. Any volunteers for the job of running people's lives for them? Of course! Lots of highbrows believe themselves competent to operate a progressive society along scientific lines, all for the people's own good, of course.

Who Shall Live Your Lile? Now, it may be true that a lot of people exercise but little wisdom in running their own lives, but it is a non sequitur to deduce from this that A's situation will be improved if B runs A's life for him against A's will! We know that this cannot work because it violates the basic law of life, a law as fundamental in human affairs as the law of gravity in Newtonian physics: Each person is in control of his own life, and if he doesn't take charge of himself no one can assume this responsi bility for him. Life is a chancy thing, and of course we all make mistakes. But the mistakes we make while run ning our own affairs will teach us something, and we're on earth to learn. As St. Augustine put it, "We are here schooled for life eternal." Unless we are allowed to make our own mistakes, to pick ourselves up after every failure, and stand taller with every success, the learning process is stymied. The great issue here is between those who regard human beings as mere things to be manipulated into some social pat tern, versus those who believe that persons need liberty, because with out it they cannot work out their proper destiny, which requires this life and the life to come for ful fillment.

The attention so far in this paper has been directed at "them," people of the Left, Liberals, Socialists. What about "us"; free enterpris ers, capitalists, businessmen? Do people get turned Qn to Socialism because of us? I'm afraid they do. Now, no one can really blame an ordinary businessman for not un derstanding the theory of the free economy, and for his inability to articulate its concepts clearly. The blame, if any is to be laid, attaches to intellectuals who dig no deeper 1975 WHY DO "THEY" TURN TO SOCIALISM? 441 than this for their understanding of the free economy. Admittedly, however, it does not make our chore any easier when business organiza tions seek government favors for their members, or rush for"ward to praise wage and price controls. But the real problem is else where. A sharp distinction must be made between the economic theory of the free market and the ideolo gies erected around market theory by its self-proclaimed defenders.

How many potential supporters of the free economy have been turned off by hearing certain ideologues of capitalism loudly proclaim that you have to be an atheist before you can become a genuine capitalist! Or you have to be a rationalist. Or a utilitarian. Or an anarchist. Fur thermore, it is difficult for an out sider to judge the arguments for the free market on their economic merits if he has to wade through dubious notions of history, art, literature, psychology, ethics and religion to get to them! High level arguments in economic theory coupled with low level arguments in the ideological framework are not very damaging to Socialism, but they can make a shambles of Capi talisnl! It is only within the right philosophical structure that the market becomes the market econ omy, and that structure needs shor ing up. Economic action is necessary to survival, but by itself it cannot generate the free economy. The food, clothing, and shelter without which no people can exist are pro duced by human exertion on nat ural resources, and there is no other way. The division of labor is as old as mankind; people have al ways traded and bartered. These interlocking events constitute the market, and the market is ubiqui tous. But the ever-present market does not become the market econ omy by spontaneous generation; nonmarket factors must be present to act as catalytic agents. Create a political structure around belief in the inviolability of the individual person and you have a context of liberty and justice for all in which property is respected and free choice maximized. The market, then, is insti tu tionalized as the free economy. Neglect this necessary political framework - the one we inherited from the eighteenth cen tury - and aB it decays it will take the free economy down with it.

Our Fear of Freedom There is something in human na ture itself which makes us ambiv alent toward freedom. Human be ings would never strive for a free society unless the urge to be free were a dri ve deeply rooted in human nature; and we wouldn't have to strive for freedom - nor periodi cally lapse into despotism - were 442 THE FREEMAN July there not a paradoxical strain in our make-up which fears freedom. Let me try to elucidate. Each. of .us has his own life to live, his own ends to achieve. We are purposive beings, so we project a series of goals which constitute our lifelong pursuits, and we set up various targets for occasional en deavors. It is a self-evident truth that each of us wants maxim urn freedom to live the life that is ours and to pursue the goals we have chosen for ourselves. It is incon ceivable that anyone in his right mind would deliberately invite other people to impair his freedom of action, for no one can set goals for himself and simultaneously ask other people to prevent him from reaching them! If, in some bizarre situation, a person does ask another to restrain him, then his real goal is to be restrained - no matter what he says his goal is.

The most evil tyrant imaginable, whose goal is to extinguish human liberty, does not want impediments placed between himself and his goal; he wants to be free to wield power unconditionally. Everyone, in short, desires his own freedom; but not everyone is seriously con cerned that all other persons have as much freedom of action as he has. Very few people, as a matter of fact,favor equal freedom - a so cial condition of maximum freedom of action for everyone. And there's the rub! Freedom for yourself is a biological urge; the win to equal freedom for everyone stems from a more complex facet of our nature. Man Must Think and Choose No person can help wanting free dom for himself. This is part of our fight for survival, the struggle to continue in existence. Man shares this with every other living thing. But every living organism - except man - has a built-in servomechan ism which preserves the nature and guarantees the continuing identity of the organism in question, wheth er tree, tiger, oyster, or whatever.

The truly human person, however, is a different kind of creature; we cannot complete our nature - real ize our potential to the full-with out deliberately willing to do so. Our inner freedom is so flexible that each person has a lot of lati tude in choosing what he will make of his life. Your final destiny de pends on the wisdom of your daily resolves. Each of these daily and hourly decisions we make, breeds consequences - for which we must assume responsibility, and with which we have to live. This is in trinsic to the human situation. Things would be much simpler if we could just sit back and let Nature take its course with us, as Nature does take its course with animals. It'll never happen! Nor can we be wound up like robots to 1975 WHY DO "THEY" TURN TO SOCIALISM? 443 function as we should, as T. H. Huxley once wIshed. Belying his name as "Darwin's bulldog," the famous scientist said, "If some great power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being wound up every morning be fore I got out of bed, I should in stantly close with the offer." Don't wait, the offer will never be made!

We are neither robots nor ani mals. We are persons, gifted with an inner freedom, which puts us under the necessity of choosing, where we face the constant risk of making wrong choices. We are re sponsible beings, and the burden weighs heavy on us. This is the freedom we dread - our unique freedom which forces us to strive constantly if we would attain our humanity. It is in this fear of free dom that Socialism takes root. So cialism offers the siren promise that we need not be individually re sponsible, either for ourselves or for anyone else. "They" will be re sponsible for us, and at the same time relieve us of any obligation toward others; the burden of being human will be lifted from our shoulders. Human nature, then, exhibits these two facets; the biological urge to be free, and the all-too-hu man wish to shirk responsibility. The biological drive to be free manifests itself in some types as a grab for power, a lust to dominate others. This is a constant threat latent in human nature, which is why every period in history has to contend with tyrants and dictators.

That history is not one unbroken record of tyranny, that freedom ebbs and flows, is due to the fact that this authoritarian thrust in human nature may be rechanneled. Such rechanneling is our first line of defense against tyranny, and it consists of moral and religious re straints on the will to power which the authoritarian accepts as bind ing upon himself. The energies of the might-have-been tyrant are re directed in constructive ways. There is a second line of defense against tyranny. This barrier is located in the hearts and minds of the to-be-tyrannized-over; it is a de,eply felt conviction which affirms, in the familiar words of the Eight eenth Century: "Resistance to tyr ants is obedience to God." Our an cestors believed that life and lib erty were inseparably joined; both were gifts of God. And because no one could fully serve his Maker un less he was free, freedom was just as precious as life itself. No person who acquiesced in tyranny could fulfill his life's purpose.

In a nation where both lines of defense are in working order there is maximum liberty for all persons. On the one hand, inner restraints 444 THE FREEMAN July quench the thirst for power; and on the other, a people, who know that the purpose of life cannot be realized unless they are free, will be alert to detect the slightest threat to their liberties. But when the would-be tyrant recognizes no inner curbs on power, and when the populace invites him to rule over them because they shirk the re sponsibility and burdens of being human, then the dictatorship is total. To be a person, means accepting full responsibility for our acts of choice and our conduct. But the prevailing earthbound ideology in structs us that we don't really pos sess free will, and because we are the mere end products of our nat ural and social environment we are not responsible for ourselves. Ac cept this blighting ideology and the 'will to freedom withers; you have optimum conditions for tyranny.

The same materialistic ideology which convinces the multitudes that they are not responsible con vinces authoritarians that there are no inner restraints on power. Dictatorship gets the message: All systems go! The tidal movement of Socialism in the twentieth century is no mystery. You'd like to roll back this tide? It's very simple! The social order outside of us is a reflection of the mental and moral situation inside of us. If there is social disorder, we may infer that there is disorder within, in our hearts and minds. The great Spanish philosopher, Ortega y Gasset, puts it this way: "Any explanation of the visible changes appearing on the surface of history which does not go deep down until it touches the mysteri ous and latent changes produced in the depths of the human soul is superficia1."l Each person, there fore, must first work on himself before his improved understanding can radiate to those in his orbit.

If only we could straighten out our own thinking we might order our lives aright, and if a significant number of people did this, then the society - which, after all, is but a reflection of ourselves - would be gin to square itself away. This is a slow way to go, but it is the only way. If we have looked back over his tory to learn the lessons taught by the rise and fall of nations, we know that societies never die of old age but only of autointoxication. We learn that civilizations have been, and can be, rej uvena ted from within! What other peoples have done in times past we can do today and tomorrow - provided we have the will to do it. We have all the ingredients for the restoration of our society; only the will is lack ing - and only individual decision can make that up! 1 What Is Philosophy?, p. 31.