Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83 based; site hound.UUCP
Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!houxm!hound!rwsh
From: rwsh@hound.UUCP (R.STUBBLEFIELD)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Politics and Ethics--Socialism, Libertarianism, and Capitalism
Message-ID: <1547@hound.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Dec-85 22:48:33 EST
Article-I.D.: hound.1547
Posted: Sun Dec  8 22:48:33 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Dec-85 21:51:44 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 63


			Politics and Ethics

Political labels seem to be treated rather loosely on the net.  There
are people who believe that socialism promotes freedom; and there
are others who think that libertarianism does.  I think that such beliefs
can only be held by treating those concepts as floating abstractions--i.e.,
by not carefully identifying the facts that give rise to the terms.

Politics is a normative science.  It deals with how society should be organized
to achieve certain ends.  The "how" is the means and might be anarchy,
democracy, monarchy, a constitutional republic, or some other form.
The means are important; but more important yet are the ends.  Throughout
history there have been only two variants--the end is the good of the collective
or the end is the good of the individual.  Even the social systems of
absolute rulers were seen as preserving the tribe, the race, the nation,
or the empire.  To date only one nation has explicitly been designed to
promote the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the individual.  A
political system is embodied in a code of laws that define how man should
act when living in a social context.  Principles which guide man's actions
are moral principles.  Thus, a political system rests on a basis
of a moral system--a code of ethics.

Capitalism is a political system where the social environment supports
individual ownership of the instruments of production.  More broadly,
capitalism is the system that protects the rights of individuals.  The
ethical base of capitalism is (in a loaded term) selfishness.  The unit of
value in a capitalist society is the individual.  A capitalist government
uses its monopoly on legal coercion to prohibit the initiation of force.
It uses force only in retaliation against criminals, allowing its citizens
to pursue their own rational self-interest free from the arbitrary use of
force by others in society.  Thus a capitalist society is a free society.

Equivocations by some notwithstanding, the unit of value of socialism is
a group--just as it is for all other forms of collectivism.  The ethical
base of socialism is the opposite of selfishness--i.e., self-sacrifice.
There is a point in any collective political system where the individual
is sacrificed for some collective good.  This can be seen when the state
initiates force against individuals to achieve some "public good."  At
some point (in fact at more and more points as time goes on) whoever decides
for the state says to the individual, "In this matter you are not free to
decide for yourself.  Do as I command."  Collectivist states are slave states.

The world is full of collectivist states--especially totalitarian socialist
ones; but there are no capitalist nations today.  The United States has come
closest but is now that unstable system known as a welfare state--part slave,
part free--drifting in the direction of more sacrifice and less freedom.

Some of you on the net would like to reverse our drift into slavery and have
chosen to fight under the libertarian banner.  Please reconsider.
The concept of libertarianism allows people to pretend they are in favor of
a particular political system (one that promotes liberty) without committing
to any particular ethics.  The libertarian umbrella shelters conservative
"capitalists" who dare not speak in favor of selfishness, hippies who believe
in communal living, pragmatists who believe crime can be rational for
criminals, anarchists who believe that the concept of contract has meaning
in the absence of government, and anyone else who proclaims to be in favor
of liberty.  This is the sense in which libertarianism takes liberty as an
axiom.  And this is the reason that libertarianism is anti-philosophical.

If it is freedom you want, it is capitalism and rational egoism you have
to defend.
-- 
Bob Stubblefield ihnp4!hound!rwsh 201-949-2846