Posted: 10/31/2014
Trigger
I recently came across this 32-page article “THE MORAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM” written in 1887 by one of the founders of mathematical statistics. Karl Pearson and Francis Galton were not only close, but both were proponents of race based eugenics. Karl Pearson was also widely versed in German literature.
I find it fascinating how renowned scientists can be so foolish to be so completely and naively devoted to socialism. Recently, I wrote on Albert Einstein in this blog.
What fascinates me even more is my hypothesis that probably more scientists have published favorable papers concerning socialism than classical liberalism. One wonders and ponders!
Obsessed With Socialism
Salient excerpts from the above essay (emphasis and comment added):
- “I have spoken of Socialism as a recognised movement, but it is essentially necessary to mark the characteristics which distinguish it from other political movements of this century. The difference lies in the fact that the new polity is based upon a conception of morality differing in toto from the current christian ideal, which it does not hesitate to call anti-social and immoral.”
[Since when are the Ten Commandments immoral?] - “As the old religious faith breaks up, a new basis of morals is required more consonant with the reasoning spirit of the age.”
[Mr. Pearson is trying to establish socialism as a new religion.] - “The modern Socialistic theory of morality is based upon the agnostic treatment of the supersensuous. Man, in judging of conduct, is concerned only with the present life ; he has to make it as full and as joyous as he is able, and to do this consciously and scientifically with all the knowledge of the present, and all the experience of the past, pressed into his service. Not from fear of hell, not from hope of heaven, from no love of a tortured man-god, but solely for the sake of the society of which I am a member and the welfare of.”
[The new god is called state!] - “Socialism, as a more practical faith, teaches us that the first duty of man is to no general concept of humanity, but to the group of humans to which he belongs, and that man's veneration is due to the State which personifies that social group.”
[Humans are just ants!] - “Socialism arises from the recognition (i) that the sole aim of mankind is happiness in this life, and (2), that the course of evolution, and the struggle of group against group, has produced a strong social instinct in mankind, so that, directly and indirectly, the pleasure of the individual lies in forwarding the prosperity of the society, of which he is a member. Corporate Society the State, not the personified Humanity of Positivism, becomes the centre of the Socialist's faith.”
- “To the thinkers of today crucified gods, deified men, heaven and hell have become intolerable nonsense, only of value for the light they have cast on past stages of human development.”
[Mr. Pearson is so blissfully unaware of his own intolerable nonsense!] - “that Socialism, which gives us a rational motive for conduct, which demands of each individual service to Society, and reverence towards Society incorporated in the State, is destined to play such a large part in the reshaping of human institutions. Socialism, despite Hackel, despite Herbert Spencer, is consonant with the whole teaching of modern Science,
and with all the doctrines of modern Rationalism. It lays down no transcendental code of morality, it accepts no divine revelation as basis of conduct ;”
[Socialism has it all, a new religion and it claims to be a science. How wonderful is that!] - “[The new morality] To give all a like possibility of usefulness, to measure reward by the efficiency and magnitude of socially valuable work, is surely to favour the growth of the fittest within the group, and the survival of the fittest group in the world-contest of societies.”
[The marriage of socialism and Darwinism. What a stroke of genius!] - “At the present time it can hardly be said that there is any veneration whatever for personified Society, the State. The State is brought to our notice, not as the totality of the society in which we live, but as government, and government we are accustomed to look upon as a necessary evil ; we have no faith in its capacity for right ruling. To sacrifice our lives for government appears utterly ridiculous ; but to do so for the welfare of the State ought to be the truest heroism. It is the loss of veneration for the State, which has made our government in all its forms something nigh despicable. We have been content to allow the State to be served by self-seekers, by men whose all-absorbing object was to fill the pockets of themselves or of their family, whose highest patriotism was to conserve the anti-social monopolies of their class. We have chosen our senators neither for their experience nor their wisdom, but for the glibness of their tongues and the length of their purses. So it has come about that the very name of politician is a term of reproach.”
[What Mr. Pearson is so disgusted with that socialism is his salvation.] - “Our legislation, our government, has been a scarcely disguised warfare of classes, the crude struggle of individual interests, not the cautious direction of social progress by the selected few.”
- “To bring again to the fore a feeling of genuine respect for personified Society, the State, to purify executive government, is obviously a hard but primary necessity of socialistic action. We must aristocratise government at the same time as we democratise it ; the ultimate appeal to the many is hopeless, unless the many have foresight enough to place power in the hands of the fittest.”
[A demand for aristocracy or elite rule. Is that what socialism boils down to?] - “The spirit of antagonism between the Individual and the State must be destroyed.”
[What a brutal and violent suggestion is that? Pearson does not explain how he would achieve that destruction.] - “So long as there is a large group of persons, who find pleasure in ripping up the cushions of public carriages, in defacing public statues, in tearing down the hawthorn bushes in the parks, and in generally destroying what is intended for the convenience, or pleasure, of the whole community, above all so long as the rest of the community treat such offences lightly, so long it is hopeless to think of vastly extending the property of the State. Socialists have to inculcate that spirit which would give offenders against the State short shrift and the nearest lamp-post.”
[Does not nearest lamp post mean Pearson would hang all vandals etc.? Nice guys, these socialists!] - “[society] it sweeps away an anti-social class-monopoly and with it class-power."
- “You must either be working for the community or leave it," is the ultimatum of the Socialistic moral code to each and to all.”
[Forced labor anyone! Or labor camps everywhere!] - “If I interpret socialistic principles at all correctly, they primarily insist on the moral need that each individual should work for the community according to his powers. The man or woman who does not labour, but, owing to a traditional monopoly, is able to live on the labour of others, or the stored labour of the community which indeed requires, as a rule, present labour to utilise it will be treated as a moral leper. The moment the majority have adopted this code of morality and the economic development, taken in conjunction with the fact that the majority even at present do labour, will render its adoption rapid then the legislation, or measures of police, to be taken against the immoral and anti-social minority will form the political realisation of Socialism.”
[Certainly not a humanist this Mr. Pearson!] - “There may be differences of opinion as to how the elimination of idlers from the community may best take place, but the majority of Socialists are convinced that to destroy the private ownership of the physical resources of the country and of the stored labour of the past to socialise the land and to socialise the means of production are the only efficient and permanent means of restraining idleness, and the resulting misdirection of the labour-power of the community.”
[What is wrong with idleness? Concentration camps for idlers?] - “I propose to devote the remainder of this paper to a brief consideration of some of the more important of these arguments, which I may state as follows :
(1.) Socialism would destroy the rewards of successful competition, and so weaken the incentive to individual energy, which is of primary social value.
(2.) No Government can be trusted to fitly conduct the vast task of organisation, which Socialism would thrust upon it.
(3.) The proposed socialisation of land, and of stored labour, would destroy confidence, and check enterprise, to an extent which might have disastrous effects on the community, long before the socialised State could be got into working order.
(4.) The increase of population would very soon render nugatory any benefit to be derived from the socialisation of surplus-labour.
(5.) There is no means of measuring the value of an individual's contribution to the labour-stock of the community.” - “I hold that social distinction, public gratitude, and State recognition, are the only suitable rewards, and at the same time are quite sufficient incentive to individual energy.”
[What a hubris by a scientist!] - “I do not think any real danger to the incentive to energy is involved in the socialisation of industry, while literature, science and art have invariably been found to thrive best with a minimum of pecuniary honour, and a maximum of social recognition.”
[What a hubris by a scientist!] - “Socialists assert that under a State-control of industry, the recognition of a new inventor by the State would be as great an inducement to enterprise as the idea of twenty per cent profit is held to be at present ; more especially will such honour have weight in the educated community of the future.”
[What a pipe dreamer!] - “The acceptance of Socialism, in short, does not involve approval of the communistic principle of equalised distribution. It still leaves room for the socially healthy rivalry of individual workers”
- “It is the mission of Socialists to reintroduce the true conception of the State, to revivify respect for personified Society; to teach that the misappropriation of public property is the first of crimes, and that the mismanagement of public affairs is a disgrace, which, like the sin against the Holy Ghost, can never be condoned.”
- “I may point to the efficiency of the German post-office and to the scientific perfection of the military organisation of the same country, especially the readiness of both to discover and adopt real advances, as evidence that the State can successfully undertake and direct great enterprises. Even in our own country, where faith in the State is much lower, it is difficult to believe that a large railway company would be less efficiently conducted, if its managers were State officials, liable to instant dismissal if failing in their duties, than if they were private capitalists struggling to fill their own pockets.”
[Since when is the military an enterprise unless the military refers to militia or mercenaries? What a logical fallacy for a scientist to conclude because the state is able to run something special like the post office it could also run an entire economy.]] - “Socialism may well do likewise it can content itself by showing that the State is not inherently incapable of organising industry”
[If history is any guide, then even at Mr. Pearson’s time it was obvious and well known that governments are far worse in running businesses than individuals.] - “The Socialist has to teach that social approbation and public honour are worth more than pecuniary reward. The alteration of the standard of enjoyment from purely physical luxury to more intellectual forms of pleasure will do much to form a new goal for ambition, and so very materially lessen the evil effects which, it is asserted, must result from limiting the profits of private enterprise, and discouraging all monopoly of surplus-labour.”
[Since when are pecuniary rewards not a public honor and social approbation? What is wrong with money?] - “We may even say that Socialism is the logical outcome of the law of Malthus.”
[When scientists build their theories on other scientist’s empirical laws without much validation.] - “... and if the capitalist is always seeking to lower wages, and so the standard of life, by the introduction of machinery.”
[A scientist mired in fallacies of logic! Or a deep seated bias!] - “The monopoly, as opposed to the socialisation, of this surplus-labour is the great economic fact of our present social organisation. It does not stand or fall with Marx's theory that the essence of exchange-value is labour, but Marx's discussion of that theory has first placed the fact clearly before us in all its full hideousness.”
- “On the other hand the Socialist finds in the moral and economic changes in progress the development of mankind to a fuller enjoyment of life, the substitution for superstition of a faith in knowledge, the replacement of a worship of the unknowable by a veneration and reverence for concrete Society as embodied in the State. The Socialist teaches that the aim of industry is not supremacy in the world-markets, but the general welfare of the community, as evidenced by the raising of the general standard of physical comfort and intellectual development.”
What do we have here a scientist:
- Yearning for aristocracy of some kind and absolute veneration of the state
- Concocting a mix Marxism, Darwinism, and Malthusianism
- Pseudo rationalism and pretense of knowledge are his characteristics
- Violence and compulsion are his favorite means. The goals justify the means
- Advocating complete expropriation of private property
- Primitively condemning Christian faith
- Disliking entrepreneurs and their many achievements
- Disliking politicians and uneducated people
- Prefers a two class society of aristocrats and workers
In the end this concocted mix of socialism by this scientist is at least as worse as Christian religion so maligned by him.
Lessons Learnt!
Distrust scientists! Scientists are not as smart as they would like us to believe! Scientists do have their own biased agendas!
