I have been taken to task for my comments that a national health service or a system of comprehensive education have no relation to socialism. This is good, and I welcome such input as these things must be debated and clarified because of the bastardisation of our language and our political narrative by the free marketers and neoliberals amongst us. These people are liars and scoundrels whose sole aim is to destroy all our values and our ethical system in the pursuit of unrestricted profit making, and the best way to do this is to brand anything that is remotely collectivist and socially driven as socialism. If there are any of our American friends reading this I ask you to do so with an open and critical mind because I am quite convinced that the average American has not a clue what socialism actually is, and cannot discriminate between genuine social measures and socialist measures.
You see, as I have indicated before in this blog, the human being is a social being. As it is a social being it is also a regulatory being. Human beings are collective by nature, that is they live a communal existence in groups and in interactive interdependence with other human beings. The individual of free market mythology does not, nor cannot exist, they are a fiction. I repeat, the starting point for the analysis of human society and human economic behaviour by Adam Smith, the so-called founder of market economic theory is that the human being is social by nature. Adam Smith was most definitely not a free market individualist.The human environment must be subject to regulation, therefore human activity must be planned activity to a certain level. If all planned activity is to be branded socialist, then the United States is a socialist society because it plans its economic activities around its tax income and its borrowing, and borrowing is a collective activity on behalf of the American people. So, both taxation and borrowing are collective activities with a social purpose. It is really as simple as that. What differentiates a planned economy from a market economy is the level of planning involved, not the fact of planning. Again, to my American friends I ask you, what are the opening words of your Declaration of Independence? "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal." Equality is not a dirty word, nor is it a socialist word, if it is then Thomas Jefferson must have been a socialist. Distinctions between human beings are all social artefacts, they are man-made and unnatural. Differences between human beings are natural, inequalities are socially devised and the point the founding fathers were making was that no monarch, regardless of his/her position was entitled to do the things the British monarch was doing to the American colonies, and they were absolutely correct. The great tragedy in this country is that a significant majority of the British people have become infected by this free market poison, a poison that is slowly killing the engine of the British economy, the welfare state.
Therefore, planning, equality, taxation, these are not socialist words or concepts, they are the facts of human social life. By the same token paying taxes to educate children and provide health care are the hallmarks of a civilised society, and if they are socialist then they are still a good idea, indeed they are a necessary part of civilisation. Opposing a national health scheme is uncivilised and barbarian. I happily pay my taxes towards the British national health service in the deepest hope that I never need to use it. If that helps other people, then that may well be labelled socialist, but it is also Christian and has my full support because I never know when I may have to access it, despite what a crazed Bible bashing Republican might try to argue. You see, Christianity does not have a monopoly on human goodness or charity, indeed in many areas socialist societies are far more Christian than the Christians themselves. Indeed if we are talking about Christians, can I direct you to what the Pope called the dominant American economic model, when he labelled it 'the dung of the devil.' Therefore, let us have a mature and informed debate about the role of the state, welfare, morality etc. because this is what the free marketer is genuinely terrified of. Why? because they will be weighed in the balances and found wanting. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
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