Socialism Eats the Seed Grain; G. Pearson

vation began immediately. Of course, starvation of the body is not as great a tragedy as starvation of the soul, if you believe in a soul. The materi alistic socialists, who theoretically believe only in this life, should be especially offended by starvation the ultimate indignity if there is no soul. Some will point to Russia and China as examples of socialist coun tries which have accumulated capi tal and passed the starvation point. But those who do so are very unin formed about how much capital was already there. Perhaps they do not know about how much outside help Russia and China always have re ceived by fair means and foul. Also, they must not know about how much free enterprise is actually allowed in Russia and China and how impor tant it is to their survival. And, fiSOCIALISM EATS THE SEED GRAIN 695 nally, they are tragically unaware of how well Russia and China con ceal the realities of life in some areas within their spheres of influence.

Hints of horror continually drift out of the nations that have been caught in the webs of these giant spiders. With a few oft-repeated and care fully-selected releases, the liberal media, which preside over the minds of most of the West, tell us what they want us to believe as· the following comments from one who was once one of them reveal: It is not surprising, in view of this state of affairs, [The ruthless power Russia ex erts on the foreign press.] that the world has been consistently misinformed about Russia, and that the Soviet Government has been able to put across a lot of bogus propaganda. It is fantastic, for instance, that there should still be any doubt about the question of forced labour and rell gious persecution, and Val uta [Money, especially gold and silver coins, that has other than fiat value.] extortion, and peasant shootings, and, in general, the character of corrupt dictatorship. But there is. (Like It Was, The Diaries ofMal colm Muggeridge, Selected and Edited by John Bright-Holmes; William Morrow and Company, Inc.: New York, 1982, p.

54) ... I managed to make my way by my self to the Ukraine and the Caucasus to report on the famine conditions there as a result of Stalin's enforced collectiviza tion of agriculture. The. articles I wrote describing the suffering and privations of the peasants, and the monstrous bru tality of their treatment, were dispatched to the Guq,rdian by diplomatic bag to avoid the censorship, and I knew that when they were published my posi tion would be untenfible. The articles duly appeared, heavily sub-edited, but even so caused some stir. In. both the Guardian and the New Statestnan letters were pub lished calling me a liar. For confirmation of the truth of my report I had to wait for Khruschev's speech at the 20th Party Conference in 1956~ in which he gave his account of the 1938 famine and its con sequences, showing mine to have been, if anything, an understatement .... (Ibid., pp. 73, 74.) ... Winter In Moscow had appeared and been reprinted, but, if anything, it ham pered my efforts to get a job in Fleet Street. As I discovered, taking a strongly critical view of the! Soviet regime and its bosses was a handicap rather than a help as far as the nat.onal press was con cerned; the more so in my case because my abhorrence of a Marxist dictatorship as operated from 'the Kremlin did not make me any better disposed towards a capitalist economy as operated from the City of London or Wall Street. Although I did not recogni~e it then, the liberal consensus which was to provide the or thodoxy or Party-Line of the so-called free world, was already in process of forma tion, and beginning to be enforced. (Ibid., p.77.) But physical silIffering is never as tragic or long-l~sting as spiritual suffering. Great [spiritual damage is done to people who are led to believe that economic problems can be solved without savingsr-the accumulation of capital. The virtue of frugality and the evils of profligacy are the subject 696 THE FREEMAN November of many pages in the great religious books of all world religions. The rea sons are· easily seen by thoughtful people of all faiths, and even by those who claim no faith. In the early days of the American frontier there was a saying worth pondering long: "Don't eat the seed grain." Socialism regularly eats the seed grain.

The Steps to Progress The free market proceeds in a very orderly, step-by-step, manner. Step one is vision. The poor, but free, man sees himself improved by his own la bor. His is not the vision of a robber whose soul covets the rewards of an other man's toil. And it is not the vision of a fool who can be enticed into a get-rich-quick scheme: he doesn't plan to give his meager sur plus, when he has saved it, to some one who presents an image of clev erness and strength superior to his own. He will rely on his own arm. and the help that lies at the end of it. So his vision is clear and specific. He knows always just what he needs in order to do more efficiently just what he does well already. Step two is to go through the sac rifice and self-denial of living on less than he earns for however long he must to save enough to purchase some tool or capital good that he needs to increase his productivity.

He has vision for muscle and hope for fat to keep him going. He even may have to beg to get to the point where he can save. The socialist world has forgotten that it is better to beg than to steal, that it is better to give what is your own than what you took from another, and that it is better to look for those in need than to wait until they unite and break down your door. Socialists visualize a utopia where hungry mouths are filled with legal plunder. And they forget the blood and tears that fol low the plunderers, the tax men. Step three is the purchase of the capital item. It may be nothing more than a cultivator to take the place of a hoe to use in a garden that will now produce more-maybe enough for a wayside fruit and vegetable stand. Or it may be enough to pur chase a fast-food franchise so the family can have a business instead of a lifetime of the bondage of wage earning and unemployment lines. To a nineteenth-century Jewish or Ital ian immigrant it may have been a push -cart for a vending business which, from that humble beginning, could have grown, in one lifetime, to a million dollar enterprise ifthe same virtues that started the business were perpetuated when it succeeded.

Self-Control The common element of all vir tues is self-denial. If you would not murder, deny yourself the luxury of anger. If you would practice moral rectitude, deny your mind evil thoughts and your eyes enticing im1982 SOCIALISM EATS THE SEED GRAIN 697 (~onsumption an end in itself or he will lose the virtu.e that saved him from starvation in the first place. ages. If you wish to possess the soul of one who can be trusted with other men's money and goods, kill your covetousness by being quick to give the poor what they need when they rhe Socialist Program ask if you are able. Don't send them The first step in the socialist pro away with a promise of future gen-gram of improvement also begins erosity if you have the means to do with vision. But it is not the vision it right now. This will make it pos-of an individual itrying to improve sible to be wealthy and yet not feel his lot with his own labor and his guilty in your wealth like the rich own capital, saved, begged or bor prophets of socialism do. Socialism rowed. It is the !Vision of conspira takes this pleasure and virtue of tors who have looked at the misery giving away from you. Remember, a of mankind and have appointed bitter fountain cannot bring forth themselves as the saviors of the un good water. Charity must be volun-fortunate. Calling them conspira tary to be virtuous. Those who prac-tors is neither overly dramatic nor tice voluntary charity are improved an exaggeration. They fit any rea by it. The reason it works is that sonable standard for the use of the self-denial becomes a habit, a way of word. It is an interesting fact that it life; and it is the fuel which runs all is almost impossible to get good peo those who achieve great and good pIe to conspire to do anything. They goals-those whose labor is the mostly want to be about their own foundation of all the good produc-business and rarely presume to know tion of this world. enough to plan the lives of others.

Step four, of course, is that careful Yes, "big business" has been and industrious use of the capital caught in conspiracies quite regu item purchased from savings. And larly during the :wastseveral decades. step five is the same process all over But, other than those cases that are again-vision and self-denial prac-misrepresentations and of the sort ticed on a high enough level to in-that fit the damned-if-you-do and sure replacement of the capital item ' damned-if-you-don't dilemmas served when it is worn out. And more: there up by government agencies, it can must be a greater savings than be-be shown that g~vernment planners fore because there is greater income. either handed them the opportunity And one who can start this kind of or forced them into it. Almost noth program for the purpose of greater ing that is going on in American consumption-improvement of the business today 'is pure free enter living standard-must not make prise. Indeed, no business activity is 698 THE FREEMAN November untouched by the laws, bureaus and regulations that burden and warp the free market. However, set American business aside and think of the typ ical model of socialism. In that case, you surely have a set of planners who have come into power by a conspir acy. It is their vision that is step one in the socialist plan of improvement.

Step two is the production plan ning session where they decide how many cars, widgets, tooth brushes, and the like they shall manufacture. They never get it quite right even though they peek at the free mar ket, as Ludwig von Mises was the first to point out. Step three is the allocation of re sources. Of course, step two and step three have to be coordinated or done together. The one asks, "What shall we make?" The other asks, "How much capital will we be able to get our hands on to do it?" Step four is the confiscation of or gathering of capital. Theoretically a socialist state already has all the capital that exists in the country. But, since there is never enough capital to wage the perennial wars of socialism and feed, clothe and shelter the masses, the socialists must be ever alert for new sources of revenue. There are the countries they have "liberated" to be stripped and an eye must be kept on the sneaky peasants who find ways to save from their meager allotments.

So socialist countries have taxes, too. And they have rules against hoard ing things that could add to capital for socialist production. After all, it takes capital to produce whether the economic system is socialist or pri vate. In the socialist system the cap ital is "appropriated" by some com pulsory (involuntary) means. In the private enterprise system, it is ac cumulated by savings based on vol untary self-denial. The socialist step five is the pro duction step. It is common knowl edge that production rarely meets any of the goals set by the planners. This has led to many purges. The socialist mind tends to believe that the solution to greater production lies in the quality of the supervisors rather than in the quality of the sys tem. This results in grave injustices in who knows how many cases. And it creates a system of cruelty and jeopardy. Also, it trains the masses to lay blame on the government for all problems instead of developing self-reliance.

SavingDiscouraged That's how socialism eats the seed grain: it uses up and eliminates all desire to save. It punishes and dis courages all savers. There is no mo tivation to do anything but con sume-get one's share and eat it up. It is like opening day of fishing sea son: many fishermen want to follow the stocking trucks and get "their" limit. They expect the state to keep 1982 SOCIALISM EATS THE SEED GRAIN 699 the waters stocked with catchables. If the fishing is bad, they grumble and feel that the state has failed them. The care of the back and the belly becomes the immediate and pressing need, the whole object of occupation and preoccupation ex cept for the circus. There must be the circus in addition to the bread. It comes in different packages from country to country and time to time. People are the most important as set of a nation when they are free to be productive and responsible for their own capital. But, when weak and discouraged, they are the great est liability. Then a man may just as well be an alimentary canal with a funnel for a mouth, wrapped in an overcoat and housed in a mobile la trine. All the things of the soul cease to have meaning. (f) IDEAS ON LIBERTY Saving, Foreign Aid, and Growth THE MAIN resources and the main effort for growt~ must come from the growing nations themselves. American aid can !usefully complement, but can never replace, their own means and endeajVors.Indeed, gifts and loans are not the major contribution we can ma~e to economic growth abroad. More important is that we maintain a fully and efficiently em ployed and expanding economy of our own and ~hat we maintain free access to this economy by the rest of the world. In neither good sense nor in good conscience can we expend our resources on foreign aid while at the same time leaving clogged the channels of foreign trade and investment.

Finally, we must appreciate that the world is acomplicated place. In important respects, it is far more complicated and discouraging for to day's economically underdeveloped countries than it was for the under developed nations, including the U.S., of 150 or 200 years ago. In America, the cultural background; the supp1y of acquired skills of workers and of experienced investors and managers; the legal, religious, and economic institutions; the climate; the end0wment of natural re sources; the ratio of population to other resources-all were favorable to growth and, by and large, remain favorable to continued growth. Not all areas of the world are so blessed. And even if they were, the living standard of this part of the world is now far higher than that of most regions-and it is very likely that the size of t:Qe gap will grow much larger during the next several decades. WILLIAMR. ALLEN A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK JOHN CHAMBERLAIN BLAMING TECHNOLOGY WHEN Samuel C. Florman, the vice president of a construction com pany, wrote a provocative book called The Existential Pleasures of Engi nee"ring,he found himself invited to take part in dozens of debates with proponents of the anti-technological movement. Visiting the college campuses, he discovered that profes sors could be deceptively serene. Jo vial at dinner, they nonetheless car ried theories "under their tweeds like stilettos." Their students, "after dis arming a visitor with wide-eyed veneration," delighted in tossing up "challenging statements like cherry bombs." A scientist by training, Mr.