PART TWO–THE OLD WORLD VIEWS

PART II

THE OLD WORLD VIEWS

Chapter 4

THE PAGAN VIEW

THE pagan has a fatalistic outlook on life. He believes that the individual is helpless; that he is wholly at the mercy of relentless forces outside of himself; that there’s nothing he can do to improve his lot.

The vast majority of people have always been pagans. Most of them are still pagans. The superstition is deep-seated. It had its beginning back in prehistoric times.

Mythology tells how special gods were in charge of everything affecting human life. Some gods controlled thunder; some controlled lightning; some controlled rain. Others controlled the seasons, the bounty of the harvest, the multiplication of the flocks, and the birth of children.

There were sun-gods, love-gods, gods of jealousy, gods of hatred, and gods of war. Whimsical and prankish gods looked after everything. All that man could do was to keep peace with them by making such sacrifices, human and otherwise, as were dictated by tribal custom.

In ancient times, the pagan gods and goddesses were known by various names – Zeus, Isis, Osiris, Eros, Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, Venus, Mercury, Diana, Neptune, Pluto, Mars. In modern times, they are given more modern names, but the underlying idea is the same.

From the pagan viewpoint, man is not self-controlling, not responsible for his own acts. The pagan universe is timeless, changeless, static. There is no such thing as progress. Any apparent change is merely a human illusion. Man is passive. His place is fixed. He has no freedom of will. His fate is decreed. If he tries to resist, his efforts will be futile.

The pagan belief is similar to that of a very young child. The newborn babe has not yet learned how to control himself. He must be spanked before he can even breathe, and for a long time he will kick himself in the eye when he tries to taste his toes. He cannot get food; he is fed. He is uncomfortable, and he is turned over. Warmth, comfort, cleanliness – all are given to him by some power outside himself, enormously stronger than he. This power controls the conditions of his life, but it does not control him. Did you ever try to stop a baby’s squalling when he merely wanted to squall?

If babies were able to think and speak, no doubt any baby – all babies – would contend that some great power controls the lives of babies. But babies grow up, and in time the normal baby becomes a self-controlling human being. Yet, throughout all history, down to and including modern times, few adult persons have ever discovered that they are really free.

An Ancient Superstition

Most human beings cling to the ancient superstition that they are not self-controlling and not responsible for their own acts. For thousands of years, the majority has always believed that men are passive objects controlled by some superhuman or superindividual authority – and for thousands of years, people have gone hungry.

One of the oldest, if not the oldest, form of pagan worship is based on the idea that human destiny is controlled by the over-all will-of-the-tribe, rather than by the initiative and free will of the individual persons who make up the tribe. It is true that human beings must exchange mutual aid with each other on this inhospitable and dangerous planet. Perhaps from a dim sense of this natural kinship – the brotherhood of man – savages in prehistoric times came to believe that they were governed by the spirit of Demos, a superindividual will of the “mass,” endowed with omnipotent power and authority.

The welfare of this mystic being is called “the common good,” which is supposed to be more important than the good of the individual – just as the health of a human body is more important than the life of any cell in it. It is in this concept that we find the origin of human sacrifice to the pagan gods. No one hesitates to destroy the cells of the hair on his head nor of the nails on his fingers or toes. They are not important in themselves. Their only value is their use to the body as a whole. Thus, for that “common good” they are sacrificed without a moment’s thought or pity.

It was precisely in that spirit that the ancient Aztec priest thrust a knife into the human victim on the altar and, with holy incantations, tore out the bleeding heart. In that same spirit, the Cretans sacrificed their loveliest daughters to the Minoan bull, and the Carthaginians burned their living babies to placate the great god, Moloch.

Some insects actually do seem to be controlled by an authority outside themselves. The honeybee, for example, appears to be wholly lacking in self-faith and individual initiative. A will-of-the-swarm seems to control it. The bee’s life is exhausted in selfless, changeless toil for the common good. The swarm itself seems to be the living creature. If the queen is taken away, a hundred thousand bees die, just as a headless body dies.

Man versus Bee

The collectivists, ancient and modern, contend that human society should be set up like the beehive. In a way, it is an appealing concept – at least to the theorists, including the majority of professional writers. It is much simpler to assume that human beings “stay put” or that there should be some overriding authority that would make them stay put. But to think that way is to think like a bee – if a bee really thinks.

The plain fact of the matter is that human beings, with their hopes and aspirations and the faculty for reasoning, are very different from bees. Man combines conscious curiosity with the lessons of experience and, when permitted to do so, makes the combination pay continuous dividends. In contrast to the lower animals, he includes himself and his social affairs within the scope of his curiosity.

Bees, down through the ages, continue to act like automatons and keep on building the same little cells of wax. But human society is made up of unpredictable relationships between individual persons. It is boy meeting girl, Mrs. Jones telephoning Mrs. Smith, Robinson buying a cigar, the motorist stopping for gas, the minister making his round of calls, the postman delivering mail, the lobbyist tipping the bellboy and meeting a congressman, the school child bargaining for bubble gum, the dentist saying, “Wider, please!” Society is the innumerable relationships of persons in their infinite variety in space and in time.

The Purpose of Society

And what is the one constant element in all these relationships? Why does one person want to meet another person? What is the human purpose in society?

It is to exchange one good for another good more desired. Putting it on a personal basis, it is a matter of benefiting yourself by getting something you desire from another person who, at the same time, benefits himself by getting something that he desires from you. The object of such contacts is the peaceful exchange of benefits, mutual aid, co-operation – for each person’s gain. The incalculable sum of all these meetings is human society, which is simply all the individual human actions that express the brotherhood of man.

To discuss the welfare and responsibilities of society as an abstract whole, as if it were like a bee swarm, is an oversimplification and a fantasy. The real human world is made by persons, not by societies. The only human development is the self-development of the individual person. There is no short cut!

But even today, many civilized persons – nice people, cultured, gentle, and kind, our friends and our neighbors, almost all of us at some time or another – have harbored the pagan belief that the sacrifice of the individual person serves a higher good. The superstition lingers in the false ideal of selflessness – which emphasizes conformity to the will-of-the-mass – as against the Christian virtues of self-reliance, self-improvement, self-faith, self-respect, self-discipline, and a recognition of one’s duties as well as one’s rights.

Such thinking is promoted under the banner of social reform, but it gives rise to the tyrants of “do-goodism” – the führers, the dictators, the overlords – who slaughter their own subjects, the very people who look to them for the more abundant life and for protection against harm.

Today such killings are called “liquidation,” “blood purge,” “social engineering”; but they are defended on the basis of pagan barbarism – a sacrifice of the individual under the alibi of what is claimed to be the “common good.”

The Humanitarian with the Guillotine

In her discerning book, The God of the Machine, Isabel Paterson draws important distinctions between Christian kindliness directed toward the relief of distress, and the misguided efforts of those who would make it a vehicle for self-aggrandizement.

She points out that most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own. “It is at this point,” she says, “that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine.”¹

Although prompted by good intentions, such a program is usually the outgrowth of egomania fanned by self-hypnotism. As stated before, it is based on this idea: “I am right. Those who disagree are wrong. If they can’t be forced into line, they must be destroyed.”

Egoism, a natural human trait, is constructive when kept within bounds. But it is highly presumptuous of any mortal man to assume that he is endowed with such fantastic ability that he can run the affairs of all his fellowmen better than they, as individuals, can run their own personal affairs.

As Miss Paterson observes, the harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional “do-gooders,” who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others – with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means.

But it is a mistake to assume that the do-gooders are insincere. The danger lies in the fact that their faith is just as devout and just as ardent as that of the ancient Aztec priest.

¹ The direct quotations and specific references used in this book are numbered consecutively and the sources are listed on page 266.

Chapter 5

SOCIALISM AND/OR COMMUNISM

The nearest approach to the bee swarm is found in socialism or communism – whichever term you care to use. There is not much choice between the two; they both aim at world collectivism. The only difference is a variation of viewpoint as to what tactics and procedures should be used to bring it about.

Up to 1917, the words socialism and communism were used as synonymous and interchangeable terms. But incident to the Russian Revolution, they began to be used to distinguish between the Second International and the Third International.

Perhaps we had better go back a little and briefly review the events that led to the present-day confusion. In the middle of the 19th century, a German named Karl Heinrich Marx, with the support of the wealthy Friedrich Engels, presented the ancient will-of-the-swarm superstition in modern dress, embellished with pseudo-scientific theories. His voluminous writings include The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867).

This was during the period when the so-called Industrial Revolution was just beginning to make headway in lifting the burden of heavy labor from the back of mankind. But Marx misinterpreted the trend. He mistook the new tools of freedom as being tools of further oppression. He contended that capitalism, under the Machine Age, would devour an increasing share of the wealth and that the workingman would be reduced to pitiable destitution unless all the peoples of the world could be organized on a uniform, socialistic basis.

Frederic Bastiat

It is interesting to note that in the early 1840’s, a brilliant young French economist, Frederic Bastiat, had reached the opposite conclusion. He said:

“In proportion as capital is accumulated, the absolute share of the total production going to the capitalist increases, and the proportional share going to the capitalist decreases; both the absolute and proportional share of the total production going to the laborer increases. The reverse of this happens when capital is decreased.”

Here are some hypothetical figures to illustrate Bastiat’s theory. The figures are used merely to indicate the direction of a relationship that occurs when capital accumulation increases:

	Units	To owners	To employees
When total national product is	50	10	40
“ “ “ product is	75	12	63
“ “ “ product is	100	14	86

The trend Bastiat predicted in the division of the national product is just what happened under increased capital formation in the free market of the U.S.A.^*

But Marx and his followers were laboring under the Old World delusion of a static economy. It was inconceivable to them that changes in the techniques of production would bring far-reaching changes in other directions.

They believed industrial capitalism to be the natural forerunner of socialism; that to bring about the world millenium they must concentrate, first of all, on highly developed capitalistic countries – using the processes of attrition, boring from within, fomenting dissension and class hatred, and promoting collectivist measures through existing governmental agencies. This is something like jujitsu, which has been described as the technique of defeating an opponent by turning his own strength against him.

In other words, it was a program of inducing capitalism to commit suicide, then stepping in and taking things over. The First International and the Second International Socialist parties were operated from that viewpoint.

Lenin

But at a London conference in 1903, just 20 years after the death of Marx, a young Russian named Vladimir Ilich Ulianov, who later became known as Lenin, split the Russian section of the Second International on a question of tactics. The process of obtaining power through political maneuvers and infiltration was too slow for him. Lenin insisted that, in the case of Russia, his professional terrorists could take over the government by force without waiting for that country to pass through the stage of modern capitalism.

Lenin and his followers set themselves up as the Third International, which came to be known as the Communist party. The shattered fragments of the Second International, including the British Labour party, continue to call themselves Socialists.

But there is really no distinction between the Socialists and the Communists, except from the standpoint of tactics in getting started; and that difference is less clearly defined than formerly because, outside of Russia, the Third International uses either force or intrigue, or a combination of the two – whichever seems propitious.

Socialism and communism, in fact all forms of collectivism, rest on the same will-of-the-swarm idea: The individualis nothing; the strength of the party is the only thing that matters!

Plutarch’s account of ancient Sparta (600 B.C.) is an apt description of communism as it is practiced today:

“Their discipline continued still after they were full-grown men. No one was allowed to live after his own fancy; but the city was a sort of [military] camp, in which every man had his share of provisions and business set out…. [Lycurgus] bred up his citizens in such a way that they neither would nor could live by themselves; they were to make themselves one with the public good, and, clustering like bees around their commander, be by their zeal and public spirit carried all but out of themselves.”²

The phrase “all but” is the obstinate difference between a man and a bee.

For a hundred years or more, the Spartans lived their Spartan lives in changeless routine. When King Agis IV tried to raise their standard of living, they killed him. Finally, their less communistic neighbors defeated them in war and ended the commune.

But the idea of the bee swarm still persists.

Law of Lek

After a visit to the Dinaric Alps in the 1920’s, Rose Wilder Lane reports:

“The Dukhagini in the Dinaric Alps were living in the same obedience to their Law of Lek. I tried for hours to convince some of them that a man can own a house.

“A dangerously radical woman of the village was demanding a house. She had helped her husband build it; now she was a childless widow, but she wanted to keep that house. It was an ordinary house; a small, stone-walled, stone-roofed hovel, without floor, window, or chimney.

“Obstinately anti-social, she doggedly repeated, ‘With these hands, my hands, I built up the walls. I laid the roof-stones with my hands. It is my house. I want my house.’

“The villagers said, ‘It is a madness. A spirit of the rocks, not human, has entered into her.’

“They were intelligent. My plea for the woman astounded them, but upon reflection they produced most of the sound arguments for communism: economic equality, economic security, social order.

“I said that in America a man owns a house. They could not believe it; they admired America. They had heard of its marvels; during the recent world war they had seen with their eyes the airplanes from that fabulous land.

Taxes

“They questioned me shrewdly. I staggered myself by mentioning taxes; I had to admit that an American pays the tribe for possession of a house. This seemed to concede that the American tribe does own the house. I was routed; their high opinion of my country was restored.

“They were unable to imagine that any security, order, or justice could exist among men who were not controlled by some intangible Authority, which could not permit an individual to own a house.”³

Collectivism versus Freedom

The practice of communism has not been confined to the Old World. The North American mound builders were probably communistic – certainly the American Indians were, and the Pilgrim Fathers established communism on the Mayflower and attempted to operate Plymouth as a commune.

But they found themselves up against the stern realities of a frontier wilderness. Their theories were overshadowed by the facts of the situation. Their lives depended on applying their individual energies to the providing of food and shelter. Half of them starved during the first winter, and the necessity for survival forced them to break up the commune and put each person on his own. They learned an important lesson; and from then on, they prospered.

But in later years, after the United States was formed, Americans and Europeans eagerly established communistic settlements from coast to coast.^*

One after another, these experiments have failed, despite the fact that they were close-knit communities made up of fervent volunteers who, generally speaking, were bound together by a common religious faith. The founders died off. The younger generation couldn’t help but notice what was going on in surrounding communities. The result was discontent and dissension. When a communistic community is set up alongside a community with a free economy, the contrast is too great to be ignored.

Regardless of the theory of the thing, human energies simply do not function in the manner of the bee swarm, and any attempt to govern the actions of multitudes of men always results in oppressive power being placed in the hands of the few.

Under communism, everything is run by the “masses.” At least, that’s the theory of the thing. But in actual practice, it doesn’t work out that way. There must be some strong person or small group of persons to sit in the saddle and eliminate any ideas that are opposed to the so-called common good – as determined by the strong person or small group of persons.

Thus, in order to put the theories into practice, it is admittedly necessary to employ methods that are diametrically opposed to what communism is supposed to represent; and the necessity becomes increasingly obvious when the attempt is made to extend communism over a wide area.

In line with the teachings of Marx, the proponents admit the necessity but argue that it is merely a temporary measure – that the dictatorship will automatically “wither away” just as soon as things get going. They contend that history decrees this withering away, but the facts do not bear out the theory. In all history, there is no evidence of any dictatorship ever withering away. Dictatorship always feeds on itself. The ruthless tactics necessary to get it started become increasingly ruthless in the efforts to conceal the errors and defects of a scheme that can’t be made to work.

Inevitable Result

Human energy and individual initiative are put in a strait jacket, and the inevitable result is poverty and distress leading into war. It may be internal rebellion, or it may be war of aggression against other people. Those in power naturally prefer the latter course. It provides the opportunity to draw attention away from failures at home, with the alluring possibility of taking wealth from others – and getting away with it.

Since the aim of communism is economic equality and security, those in charge must, in line with the practice of Lycurgus, set things up as a military camp – every man having his share of provisions and his business laid out for him. Thereafter, no person can be permitted to live and work “after his own fancy” because that would not be communism.

If some individual, on his own initiative, tries to act in a new way, to change living conditions – if, like King Agis IV, he tries to introduce money or, like the woman in the Dukhagin, to have a whole hovel for himself when the commune is not planned on such a high economic level; or if, as happened in Amana, Iowa in 1900, he wants to invent a motorcar – he has to get the consent of his comrades. And the chances are that they will not give their consent. To let him have his way would endanger the faith that keeps the commune in existence.

Artificial Respiration

In establishing a communistic state, it is possible to take advantage of everything that has gone before and to borrow techniques and ideas from other countries. It is also possible to set up and maintain bureaus of scientists, research workers, and inventors, under the control of the state.

But even under such a policy, the communistic state will lag behind those countries in which the opportunity for free initiative extends to the entire population instead of to a chosen few.

It was the goal of the Soviet dictators to industrialize Russia by raising its production to the American level of 1917. The program has continually lagged behind expectations, despite the fact that it has been greatly aided by materials, techniques, and personal services furnished by American industrialists and engineers.

Communism, regardless of the trimmings, is an attempt to make a static world in a dynamic and changing universe. To whatever degree it succeeds partially – for a length of time – it will be at the expense of progress. The scale of living will tend to remain at the same or a lower level than when the commune was first established.

There is abundant historical evidence in support of that statement; underlying such evidence is the indisputable fact that nothing but new and better ways of using human energy can raise a scale of living. And since human energy is generated and controlled by individual persons, any new way of using it must come from the efforts of an individual person to make something that does not now exist. (In a later chapter, this will be discussed in considerable detail.)

Fact and Fallacy

In all fairness, it must be said that communism recognizes human equality and the brotherhood of man – in theory at least. But it fails to recognize the real nature of man.

The Communist has not yet seen the fallacy in the ancient, infantile assumption that individual persons are controlled by some superindividual authority. He does not question this pagan superstition. He takes it for granted. To him, individuals are merely cells of a larger organism – the tribe, the people, society, the mass. Spartans called it Sparta; the villagers of Dukhagin called it the Law of Lek; Hegel and Treitschke called it the State; Karl Marx called it Economic Necessity; Lenin called it the Dictatorship of the Proletariat; Mussolini called it Immortal Italy; Hitler, the German Race.

But regardless of what it may be called, it is the self-surrender of the individual to the will of pagan authority, which the collectivists believe to be “the common good.” And so, with a fanatic zeal and a deep-seated conviction that the end justifies the means, they revert to pre-Christian savagery and revive the practice of human sacrifice in order to purge or cleanse society of all persons, classes, and races that do not share their views.

There is some refuge from certain other forms of tyranny. Generally speaking, these are less thoroughly organized and not so remorselessly armed with the self-righteousness of the “humanitarian with the guillotine.” But the misguided benevolence of complete social and economic power always leads to ruthless suppression of religious freedom, personal freedom, freedom of expression, and even freedom of thought.

^* The story of Frederic Bastiat is much in contrast to that of Karl Marx. Bastiat earned his own living and paid his own way. He was a brilliant writer, and his articles found a ready market. Just as the American revolutionists were the first to accept the Christian principle of man’s natural freedom as the foundation of a political structure, Bastiat was the first to apply the principle to economic analysis.

In contrast to Marx and Engels, he never forgot the spirit and soul of man; and, with hammer-blow logic brightened by a high sense of humor, he drove home the doctrine of liberation and attainment through individual effort. But Bastiat was no match for the highly organized proponents of class hatred, and he was defeated at the polls in 1848. Exhausted by overwork and robbed of his voice by tuberculosis, he continued to fight until his death in 1850, at the age of forty-nine.

Frederic Bastiat might be described as “the Tom Paine of economics.” To date, he has no successor; and the carrying on of his work should be a challenge to some freedom-loving American of the younger generation.

English translations of three of his brilliant and scintillating books are now available: Social Fallacies and Harmonies of Political Economy (Santa Ana, Calif.: Register Publishing Co., Ltd., 1944); The Law (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1950).

^* Examples are: Hancock, Harvard, Shirley, Tyringham in Massachusetts; Alfred and New Gloucester in Maine; Mount Lebanon, Watervliet, Groveland, Oneida (yes, Community Silver) in New York; South Union and Pleasant Hill in Kentucky; Bethlehem and Economy in Pennsylvania; Union Village, North Union, Watervliet, Whitewater, Zoar in Ohio; Wallingford and Enfield in Connecticut; Bishop Hill, Illinois; Amana, Iowa; Corning and Bethel in Missouri; Cedarvale, Kansas; Aurora, Oregon. In the flowering of New England, Emerson’s friends created the communist blossom, Brook Farm. Mr. Upton Sinclair, recently an almost-successful candidate for governor of California, began his fight for a glorious new future by founding the short-lived commune, Helicon Home Colony in New Jersey.

Chapter 6

THE LIVING AUTHORITIES

The pagan may lose confidence in one particular kind of authority. When his faith begins to waver, he is more likely to change the name of the imaginary authority – or to assume that it controls everyone except himself – than to accept the nonpagan view that human beings are self-controlling. Old World minds have rarely doubted that they are controlled by some authority outside themselves; but down through the ages, they have become inclined to the belief that the authority resides in a human form – either a living god or some exalted person who, by reason of birth, ancestry, class, race, or color, is endowed with divine or supernatural attributes which make him the living embodiment of God.

The pharaohs of Egypt, the Roman emperors, and the Japanese mikados were believed to be gods in human form. Until 1911, the empress of China was a sacred being. The Tibetans still believe that God is incarnate in their Grand Lama. In 1776, Continental Europeans, South and Central Americans, and most North Americans believed that their kings were God’s appointed agents, ruling by divine right. As recently as the first World War, most Europeans and all Asiatics took it for granted that anyone of royal blood was endowed with divine qualities.

In all cases, such beliefs rest on the pagan superstition that the individual is not responsible for his acts; that he must depend on these superhuman persons who have both the right and the power to control the lives of people assumed to be their natural inferiors.

Whether the monarch is looked upon as a living god or as God’s personal agent, all property is at his disposal; and in practice, he bestows great wealth and the exercise of some authority on a few persons, who then form a superior class – nobles, samurai, aristocrats, bureaucratic ministers in control of this, that, and the other. Such men, headed by their emperor, their king, or their queen, are looked upon as the government.

Theory versus Practice

In theory, the change from ancient communism to an “omnipotent” living authority should not make much difference in the lives of the people; but in actual practice, it usually brings certain benefits. Those who rule by “divine right” are inclined to accept their inherited authority as a matter of course. Generally speaking, they do not have the ruthless ambition of the self-made dictator who rises to power in a collectivist society. And again generally speaking, they are not so remorselessly armed with the mystical self-righteousness of the “humanitarian with the guillotine.”

The superficialities of court life provide an outlet for royal energy that is less harmful, and far less expensive, than unintelligent meddling. The monarch does not live forever. He dies, and another monarch takes his place. Such interruptions, in contrast to the communistic state, are usually accompanied by changes in rules and regulations. The static routine is broken. Mystical fanaticism is reduced, and individual energy tends to assert itself to some degree.

So whenever and wherever any large number of persons has broken away from the changeless routine of ancient communism, their energies have worked a little, by fits and starts, to improve their living conditions.

For instance: During 60 centuries, human energy (already having the wheel) managed to get a cart onto two wheels and to attach knives to them in order to kill the subjects of their king’s enemy-king. Then, after a lapse that almost lost the wheel, human energy finally got a cart onto four wheels. But up to the time of George Washington, all the efforts of men to improve transportation had only been able to produce a coach – and only for the very rich. Gilded and supported on leather straps above four ironshod wheels, you may see it today in the carriage house at Mount Vernon.

Another instance: Three thousand years ago in Greece, men knew the principle of the steam engine. The Greeks spread their civilization over the known world after the Macedonians conquered it. Yet today on the Tigris and the Euphrates, men are still paddling logs hollowed out by fire or are drifting downstream in bowls of rawhide stretched on saplings. And from Baghdad, they walk back upstream for a thousand miles, just as American flatboatmen in colonial times used to walk back from New Orleans to Pittsburgh.

Another instance: For 40 centuries, men sailed boats. In addition to sails, the Phoenicians used oars. The Romans went a step further, using two or three banks of oars with slaves chained to each oar. Through overseers using whips, the captain had some control of the boat’s direction and speed. This questionable advance was lost, and Columbus sailed in ships dependent wholly on the winds. But by 1776, the French were again using the Roman galley system, with convicts chained to the oars.

Cause and Effect

The above are only a few examples illustrating that, under the living authorities, human energy has worked in jerks, so to speak. In any few hundred years of Old World history, we find a succession of convulsive efforts and collapses – as if a living thing were roped down and struggling.

That is precisely what was happening. Human energy could not get to work at its primary, natural job of producing and distributing the necessities of human life. Whenever men began to develop farming and crafts and trade, government stopped them.

Mind you, the government never intended to stop them; indeed, its honest aim was to help them. But the effect was the opposite, for the simple reason that efforts to help were based on the false notion that human energy and individual initiative can be directed and controlled through an overriding authority, using the brute force of military and police power.

Force and fear have their uses–we will come to that in a moment – but they are ineffective in stimulating ambition, initiative, creative effort, and perseverance. Threats of the concentration camp or the firing squad might make a man run a little faster or work a little harder – at least for a time – but fear reduces endurance and hastens fatigue. It also works at cross-purposes to mental development and moral growth. It depresses the higher nerve centers, and its continued use tends to paralyze the normal processes of thought.

Thus it is that slave labor has never been able to compete with free men in occupations requiring a high degree of initiative, resourcefulness, and persistence.

Furthermore, the unbridled use of arbitrary power, maintained through force and fear, always has a demoralizing and degenerating effect on those who use it. It breeds arrogance, intolerance, and sadism. Like the dope habit, it may start out innocently enough; but it feeds on itself, and things go from bad to worse. The more a person relies on it, the greater the temptation to increase the dose. Thus the “temporary” remedy becomes a pernicious habit, and it is almost impossible to turn back.

It is true that man has not yet attained the degree of intelligence which makes it possible to do away entirely with the use of force. When one man or a small group of men reverts to animal-like violence, decent people have only one choice: They must use force as a means of neutralizing the misuse of force.

Policemen are needed to deal with the occasional criminal, robber, or killer who hinders the constructive work of the majority. Where there is no police force, every man must be ready to defend himself and his property; and this takes time away from useful work.

Vigilance Committee

In the pioneer days of our own wild West, each man carried a gun. The need for force was rare, and few of them ever shot anybody. But everyone had to be armed and ready, on the off-chance that he might have to shoot it out with a “bad man.”

Being normal men, they did not like to lug guns around; they wanted to get on with their natural jobs – clearing land, planting crops, raising cattle, drilling oil wells, building towns. To do their work in security and peace, they had to get rid of the outlaw. So when emergencies arose, they would organize themselves into a vigilance committee, go after the outlaw, and string him up. They did this clear across the continent, from the Yadkin to the Rio Grande, the Golden Gate, and the Columbia.

Although the vigilance committee was created by honest citizens as a means of stopping thieves and murderers, it sometimes resulted in gangsterism. The right-thinking members were inclined to drop out as soon as the emergency was over because no right-thinking person likes the idea of killing a fellow man. But the less scrupulous would stay in; and once having broken the bond of human kinship that protects men from violence against each other, some of them became killers. Thus, it frequently happened that the vigilance committee degenerated into a group of lawless gangsters, and the situation was worse than before.^*

Orderly Solution

So it was only natural that peaceful men should organize a legal force to make a regular job of preserving law and order. They selected a few of their number and said to them, in effect: “You keep the peace. Sheriff, you carry the gun for all of us from now on. You, Judge, call on 12 of us to decide what to do with any ‘bad man’ that the sheriff catches alive. It’s your job to preserve law and order so that the rest of us can get our work done without interference. You give your whole time to it, and we’ll supply you with food, shelter, and other necessities.”

That is a good example of government stripped to its bare essentials. It is a justifiable use of force because it increases the general well-being and the productive output of normal citizens by enabling them to use their energies to the best advantage, without interference.

Moral versus Legal

Human energy cannot operate effectively except when men are free to act and to be responsible for their actions. But liberty does not mean license; for no one has a right to infringe upon the rights of others. Certain restraints are necessary, and they are provided in two ways:

1. Legal restraints – the passing of laws to be administered by governmental agencies and enforced by police power.

2. Moral restraints – which depend on individual self-discipline, logical reasoning, good sportsmanship, and a consideration for the rights of others.

Legal restraints, as already pointed out, are useful in curbing activities which are clearly injurious and which are generally recognized as being opposed to the best interests of all decent people. But legal restraints are inadequate when we get over into the area of questionable practices which cannot be sharply defined, or which are not easily detected, or which are not generally disapproved.

It’s easy to say “Let’s settle this or that by passing a law.” But laws on the statute books can never be an adequate substitute for moral restraint based on enlightened self-interest – which means a recognition of one’s duties as well as of one’s rights.

The extension of laws into areas where they cannot be enforced does more harm than good:

1. It takes emphasis away from personal responsibility and promotes the dangerous notion that legalized force can be used as a substitute for self-control and individual morality.

2. It increases red tape and government overhead, without accomplishing the intended result.

3. It weakens respect for the really necessary laws.

4. Law observance breaks down, and remedy is sought in bolstering the penalties and in passing additional laws.

5. Along with it all, the administrative and enforcement facilities are further increased, which means taking more and more people away from productive work.

Any attempt to give to government the responsibilities which properly belong to the individual citizens works at cross-purposes to the advancement of personal freedom. It retards progress – morally as well as along the lines of greater productivity. Look at it from any angle you please, but there’s no escaping the conclusion that moral restraints are more efficient than legal restraints – which, incidentally, is just another way of saying that honesty and decency are profitable.

Right here the objection may be raised that “to depend on moral restraints calls for quite a change in human behavior.” I won’t attempt to argue the point – except to say that changes and further improvements in the direction of enlightened self-interest and personal responsibility are not nearly so difficult to attain as the unnatural changes that are advocated by those who would repress individual development and reduce human beings to the status of the beehive.

Progress lies in working in harmony with the fundamental nature of man, not in reverting to the pagan superstition which, for over 6,000 years, has suppressed individual initiative and kept human energy in a strait jacket.

Regimentation

In modern times, this pagan superstition is known by the persuasive name planned economy, which is nothing more than a weasel word for socialism or communism or fascism. Call it anything you please, but it is still the pagan concept, based on a misunderstanding of human energy. It is an attempt to make a static world in a dynamic and changing universe. It is an attempt to make the gasoline engine run on steam or the steam engine run on gasoline. In brief, it is an attempt to do the impossible.

It is difficult for Americans to understand the stagnating effects of regimentation and how it leads to greater and greater oppressions. It is generally outside the range of our experience because we have lived in a new kind of world where human energy and initiative have usually worked under the natural control of the individual – which is the only way that they can ever work effectively.

For 160 years, during the greatest demonstration of progress that the world has ever known, each American has been mostly free to decide for himself how to earn money and whether to save or spend it; whether to go to school or go to work; whether to stick to his job or leave it and get another – or go into business on his own; whether to plant cotton or corn; whether to rent or buy or build a house; how much he would, or would not, pay for à shirt or a car; and what he would take for the Jersey calf or the old jalopy.

^* This same sequence of events had its parallel, on a huge and aggravated scale, in the kind of things that happened in Europe during the chaotic period between the two world wars.

Chapter 7

THE STATIC CENTER

THERE is no denying the fact that human beings progress and prosper in proportion to the degree to which individual initiative is permitted, or at least not prevented. But Old World government has always been based on the fallacious idea of an authority controlling a planned economy for the so-called common good. Actually, it is nothing more than the arbitrary use of physical force by persons upon persons; and regardless of the high motives and good intentions, the effect is the same – it always slows down progress and hinders the production and distribution of the necessities of life.

This explains the historical fact – at first surprising – that a sincere, conscientious, hard-working ruler always does the most harm to his own subjects. The lazy, dissolute ruler neglects his job. Caligula, for instance, merely wasted goods in riotous extravagance and tortured just a few hundred of his subjects for his personal enjoyment. The majority of the people always get along comparatively well under a ruler like Caligula.

It was the sober, ascetic, industrious Augustus Caesar, toiling for the welfare of his Empire and its people, who began the destruction of Rome and laid the foundation for the misery and human degradation which Europeans suffered for centuries thereafter. He launched a planned economy which was to serve as the basis for the Roman world peace. The Roman legions gave it to all the people of the then-known world – as fast as they could be conquered. From Africa and Asia to England that peace extended, and it was designed to last forever.

The hairsplitting economic regulations were perfected by Diocletian, whose stern directives were so efficiently administered that farmers could no longer farm; and many of the small businessmen, faced with starvation, committed suicide in preference to being executed for black marketing.

There was no work for the workingman, so the beneficent government stepped in and, by taxing the rich, managed for a while to provide the populace with bread and circus tickets.

But that was no solution. The improvement was shortlived. Money can’t buy goods unless the goods are produced.

The mounting taxes put more and more people out of business. An increasing number of workers were forced onto tax-supported relief until there was not enough productive energy at work to pay the tax bills. The great Roman Empire – with its plans for a thousand years of peace and security – collapsed into the Dark Ages.

That was the work of the best of emperors.

British Empire

At the other extreme, let us turn to England, which, for many centuries, was blessed with some of the worst rulers ever to wear a crown. If Richard the Lion-Hearted had stayed at home and tended to his job, or if King John had been half as good a ruler as his grandfather, there never would have been a Magna Charta for freedom.

The only able Tudor was Queen Elizabeth, whose father, Henry VIII, had left England so uncontrolled that it took all her energy and wit just to hold on to her throne. There was no time left for her to rule, and never was a realm so loosely governed. She built up the British Navy by doing nothing for it. She told her sea captains to act on their own responsibility and at their own expense. She wouldn’t even pay for the powder and lead they used in defending England against the Spanish Armada. Her plan was to do no planning. With great firmness of character and consistency of purpose, she always decided to decide nothing. By this highly intelligent means, she let her subjects found the British Empire.

The good Queen Bess was succeeded by the Stuarts – a charming, self-indulgent breed of “divine right” kings, the poodle dogs of their species, with not a moral under their curly wigs. They governed so negligently that the butchers and bakers and candlestick makers chucked them off the throne and made ex-brewer Cromwell the ruler of England.

Even after such a lesson, the Stuarts later came back to power so lazily that Charles II gave his parliament the order: “I pray, contrive any good short bills which may improve the industry of the nation.”⁴

That was all. And while the King uttered such idle words, his police were so few that it was no longer necessary to bribe them. Thousands of smugglers took over, and boomed British foreign trade from every port and cove. They were so numerous that a wit described “Merrie England” as a piece of land entirely surrounded by smugglers!

Woolen Shrouds

At that time, Continental weavers depended on England for raw wool, which they wove into cloth far superior to the product of English looms. To protect the domestic manufacturers, Parliament prohibited any further export of English wool. Of course, this measure would have ruined the English woolgrowers; but as always in all history, realistic tradesmen rescued commerce.

And when the prospering English woolgrowers expanded production so rapidly that the black marketeers could no longer handle all the export trade, Charles offered only one little remedy for “overproduction.” He decreed that in England no corpse could be buried that was not wrapped in a woolen shroud of domestic manufacture.

The measure was strictly enforced; the wool was buried, but ghouls dug up the corpses and stole the shrouds, which, through bootlegging, finally covered the naked legs of London’s workingmen.

Germany and France

The Continental rulers with their powerful police forces were more efficient, especially in the Germanies where everything was so thoroughly regulated that production and commerce almost ceased to exist. And here is Buckle’s comment, with particular reference to France:

“In every quarter, and at every moment, the hand of government was felt. Duties on importation, and duties on exportation; bounties to raise up a losing trade, and taxes to pull down a remunerative one; this branch of industry forbidden, and that branch of industry encouraged; one article of commerce must not be grown, because it was grown in the colonies, another article might be grown and bought, but not sold again, while a third article might be bought and sold, but not leave the country. Then, too, we find laws to regulate wages; laws to regulate prices; laws to regulate profits; laws to regulate the interest of money; custom-house arrangements of the most vexatious kind, aided by a complicated scheme, which was well called the sliding scale, – a scheme of such perverse ingenuity, that the duties constantly varied on the same article, and no man could calculate beforehand what he would have to pay…. The tolls were so onerous, as to double and often quadruple the cost of production.… A large part of all this was by way of protection: that is to say, the money was avowedly raised, and the inconvenience suffered, not for the use of the government, but for the benefit of the people; in other words, the industrious classes were robbed, in order that industry might thrive.

“… the first inevitable consequence was, that, in every part of Europe, there arose numerous and powerful gangs of armed smugglers, who lived by disobeying the laws which their ignorant rulers had imposed. These men, desperate from fear of punishment … spread, wherever they came, drunkenness, theft, and dissoluteness; and familiarized their associates with those coarse and swinish debaucheries, which were the natural habits of so vagrant and lawless a life.”⁵

Indeed, nothing but smuggling kept the French from starving to death under the care of their state, benevolently planned for their welfare.

During the reign of Louis XIV, the French weavers went through a whole season without moving a shuttle. While the people were waiting for clothes, the weavers were waiting for the government to tell them what kind of cloth they would be allowed to weave, what color it should be, and how many threads would be permitted for each inch of warp and woof.

The regulations on the textile industry alone covered over 3,000 pages, and they were different for each district. The manufacturers of Saint-Maixent, for example, had to negotiate for four years before the government allowed them to use black warp, and they never did get permission to use black woof.

Human energy simply does not work the way the despots and dictators would like to have it work. It works only under its natural control. Any attempt to make it work through the use of police force has always failed and has held back civilization.

Weak Alibi

It is contended by some that the people of the Old World are more interested in the higher things of life, that they have never had any desire for what is scornfully called the “material civilization” of the Western world.

Perhaps. And perhaps slaves carrying loads on their backs were not permitted to invent a four-wheeled wagon. It’s hard to say. But surely, human beings – all human beings – have always wanted food. Yet for 6,000 years, they have been hungry and dying of hunger. Under such conditions, there is not much chance for widespread improvement along cultural and moral lines. (This will be dealt with more fully in a later chapter.)

Egyptians erected their stately pyramids – and sold their daughters to brothels because they could not feed them. Athenians built their proud Parthenon and went to their democratic elections – while desolate wails came from pottery jars along their streets, where babies were dying. A mother’s friends would put her baby into a jar to die slowly, in the forlorn hope that it might be rescued by someone who could afford to feed a child.

Perpetual Famines

In Asia and Africa famines have never ceased. In Europe, the working people have never yet obtained enough milk, butter, fruit. Over the greater part of this earth, women as well as men continue to give 16 hours of literally killing labor for the day’s meager food. In peaceful Shanghai’s most prosperous days, every morning at dawn the policemen gathered up from the streets the bodies of the men, women, and children who had died of hunger during the night. It was a routine job!

So much for progress during the past 6,000 years. But why consider such a short period?

As far back as 250,000 years ago, people lived in caves in France and Spain. People still live in caves in France and Spain. The cliffs of Chinchilla are still inhabited. At Coria, the pottery workers live as they have always lived – along the banks of the Guadalquivir, in holes without floors or windows. In Italy, in Greece, in Yugoslavia, in Russia, many people still live underground.

Ancestral Habitat

Mrs. Lane writes:

“When American Red Cross workers went into the Balkans after the first World War, they found families living in a clay bank at Montenegro’s largest city. They were horrified. So was I. I wrote a piece about those homeless victims of war that should have wrung dollars from the stoniest American pocketbook. Only, before I finished it, I went back with an interpreter to give some first aid to those miserable refugees. My sympathetic questions bewildered them. They were living as they always had lived, in their ancestral homes.”^3-a

If men and women do not want to live like that – if they do not want to be always in destitution, always on the verge of starvation – they must come to realize that they, and they alone, can control their human energies.

The state is called the government, but it cannot actually govern the individual acts of any person because of the nature of human energy. Men in public office are only men, and no man can control another’s thoughts, speech, or creative actions. No possible use of physical force can compel anyone to think, speak, or act. It can only limit, hinder, and prevent.

In the last analysis, and stripped of all the furbelows, government is nothing more than a legal monopoly of the use of physical force – by persons upon persons. And the monopoly is permitted by common consent. No government can exist without the consent and economic support of the people.

This important fact is quite obvious when you consider the frontier sheriff who was elected to protect the good men against the “bad man.” It is somewhat less obvious in the case of the Old World tyrants and dictators, but the fact remains that their power rests on the consent and support of the people. The best evidence of this is that the pages of history are full of rebellions against earthly rulers.

Revolts versus Revolutions

All men who have ever obeyed a living authority have in time revolted against it. Look at the history of Assyria, Persia, Egypt, Rome, Spain, France, England; look at any record of any people living anywhere at any time in the Old World’s history. Sooner or later, they revolted.

But with minor exceptions, such revolts have been directed against a particular authority, without disturbing the pagan belief that some authority should control their lives and be responsible for their welfare.

When such people do not get enough to eat, they merely conclude that the existing authority does not control them properly; that everything would be all right if they were governed by a new authority, or a stronger and wiser authority – one which would really make good on the age-old and alluring promise of “something for nothing.”

So they rebel against their king and set up another king. At a later date, they rebel against him and set up still another. Then as time goes on, they rebel against monarchy itself and set up some other kind of authority.

Every imaginable kind of living authority has been tried, also every possible combination – the priest and the king, the king who is the priest, the king who is a god, the king and a senate, the king and the senate and a majority, the senate and a tyrant, the tyrant and the aristocrats. Think of any combination that comes to mind. Somewhere it has been tried. Somewhere on this earth, most of them are being tried right today.

Down through the ages, century after century, time and time again, men have killed their rulers and have slaughtered one another in untold millions, in the effort to find an authority that would improve their conditions. Such rebellions sometimes bring temporary benefits. They interrupt the mechanism of attempted control and permit human energy to work a little – for a little while.

In a Circle

But the Old World revolutions are not real revolutions. They are revolutions only in the sense of a wheel rotating around a motionless center. Under the pagan view, the standard pattern has always been to overthrow one form of authority merely to replace it with another form of authority – from priest to king, from king to oligarchy, from oligarchy to despot, from despot to majority, from majority to bureaucracy, from bureaucracy to dictator, from dictator to king, from king to … and so on, and so on. There have been 6,000 years of it; and for 6,000 years, people have gone hungry. The simple reason is that human energy cannot be made to work efficiently except in an atmosphere of individual freedom and voluntary co-operation, based on enlightened self-interest and moral responsibility.

For Human Freedom

There has never been but one real revolution. It is the revolution against pagan fatalism – the revolution for human freedom.