Socialism Is Dead, Long Live Socialism

A Quick Historical Perspective

I borrowed or recoined this phrase from the famous French expression: “Le roi est mort, vive le roi!” (The king is dead, long live the king). To clarify immediately, I am absolutely opposed to Socialism.

Friedrich August Hayek’s Road To Serfdom (1944) is a good source. Another one is perhaps, the second chapter “The Coming Slavery” in the book titled “The Man Versus The State” (1884) by Herbert Spencer.

Big Government

If you don’t like the term Socialism, you may substitute it for Big Government.

A Brief Definition Is In Order

Big Government is a government seeking ever larger control and command over substantial or critical parts of our lives and our economy. Big government is a form of government that treats people with disrespect and suspicion. Thus, central planning, price controls and increasingly intrusive laws and regulations are typical. The vicious cycle of the Spiral of Government Intervention is moving forward crushing freedom at every turn.

Lessons Of The Past 237 Years

Where has the Exceptional Experiment since the Declaration of Independence of 1776 led human kind?

We have painfully learnt over the past 237 years that Democracy, the Rule of Law, and a Constitution are no protection at all from Big Government. On the rear façade of the U.S. Supreme Court it reads “Justice The Guardian Of Liberty” (see also my blog post). Unfortunately, the Justices of this court miserably failed to do this, most recently Chief Judge John Roberts on ObamaCare. They have been too deferential or they rewrote the U.S. Constitution.

The American Founders, if they were to return today, would be terribly disappointed that they have wasted their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Alexis de Tocqueville would not travel to the USA anymore if he was still alive.

The Statue of Liberty gracing the harbor of New York was erected at a time when Liberty in the USA was probably already beginning to decline (another irony of history). She has been weeping ever since, but I suspect the majority of new immigrants have not noticed until the New Deal or later.

Eternal Struggle Of Humanity

Many philosophers etc. have espoused/postulated all kinds of struggles before. Karl Marx/Engels focused on class struggle, capitalists or bourgeois versus laborer and so on.

I agree with those who find that there is over the course of human history only one crucial struggle and that is the one between people who love power and control over other humans and those who love individual freedom and responsibility for their own life and for their fellow human beings.

Private property, free markets of ideas and products or services and competition are all expressions of free people.

The non-violent struggle will not end until government as we know it becomes obsolete or until we have defined and implemented a permanently small and limited government.