Left wing, Right wing, Chickenwing with Buffilo Sauce PART II

Examples of counterproductive or dishonest definitions occur frequently in partisan or sophistical writing. Marxism consists of little more than promoting popular economic errors under a set of vague and misleading definitions: real economists regard Marxism as a type of “word-fetishism”, where Marx merely defines a term for rhetorical effect.

7. An Example of a Word Fetish

A prime example of a word-fetish is the word “Capitalism” which Marx coined in order to imply that the free market rested on a power structure, a set of laws and customs and institutions, whose true nature is to oppress the poor and serve the self-interests of investors, whom Marx misidentified as a class (like knights or yeomen) and which he further misidentified as having a common interest and common unity of purpose.

All egregious error, of course. Economists from before Marx’s time had already investigated and corrected these misconceptions. Marx was apparently not even aware of the state of the literature at the time he wrote.

Capitalists are not a class: any man who invests can enter this role, whether or not he also touches the economy in other roles, such as wage-earner or consumer.

There is no necessary unity of interests between investors. If I have invested in Macy’s, I am a capitalist, but I do not want you to shop at Gimbel’s: my self-interest and the self-interest of any investors in that competing store are at odds. I am still, according to proper economic nomenclature, a capitalist if I invest capital, even if I am a poor farmer with a retirement fund who buys a sliver of stock in Macy’s.

And in any case, the free market does not favor or serve the interests of an investor who makes a bad investment; indeed, all that the market will do, if allowed to operate, is force him to lose money until he liquidates the malinvestment and invests where the consumers, by their aggregate decisions of buying and not buying, direct him to invest.

So why invent a word like “Capitalism” if it does not mean anything, and if it obscures, rather than clarifies, the investigation of economic truths? It is a non-word, an anti-word.

Its purpose is to halt clear thought on the topic. Marx could not criticize the free market on rational ground, nor could he erect a cogent argument on sound economic principles. Instead, he retreated into word-fetishism. He merely defines a thing to mean it’s opposite. When someone says “free market” Marx wants you to have the same emotional reaction as if you saw Rich Uncle Pennybags from the Monopoly game kicking the crutch away from Tiny Tim. Marx wants you to think that wage-earners are slaves, so he calls them “wage-slaves” and he makes no attempt to put forward a sound economic argument on the point.

The definition of “Left and Right” along a spectrum of Progress versus Reaction amounts to much the same thing, from much the same school of thought: It is a socialist conceit.

8. The Dishonesty of Misleading Terms

I submit to the reader’s candid judgment that, no matter how old or well respected the definitions of “Right and Left” might be, the model of placing all political factions on a spectrum that measures their “progressiveness” is a misleading nonessential, and misleading to the point of deceiving those who use it, so that they are unable to have a rational conversation about certain political issues.

(I speak here from experience: I can list several conversations I have had where, due to improper terminology, and nothing else, the audience was unable to think logically about the issues raised.)

It is dishonest for the same reason that, when drawing a boundary line between your land and your neighbor’s, you ought not draw the line in the wrong spot to get a choice bit of his land, a well, a timber stand, or some other amenity. Definitions draw the boundaries of ideas. To draw the line in the wrong spot misrepresents the idea. When this is done negligently, it is merely unfortunate, a source of confusion; when done deliberately, for rhetorical effect, it is a lie.

Such rhetoric is not merely useful, in the modern world, it is nearly all-powerful. A hypothetical example: if a mad feminist convinced the consensus of writers and thinkers to adopt a terminology where the two sexes were defined as being “females” and “rapists”, then this would be a remarkably dishonest terminology. “Boys” would be defined as “potential rapists” chaste married men would be defined as institutional or serial rapists, lovers whose fornication was entirely voluntary on both sides would be defined as voluntary co-rapists, and so on. The stream of nonsense and paradox would never cease.

The whole point of a dishonest terminology is to “blot out” certain concepts, to make them have no proper name, so that they are either (1) never discussed or (2) discussed only with an audience who is misled into false-to-facts associations. Under the hypothetical example of our “mad feminist”, one could not discuss chaste and voluntary relations between the sexes without recourse to an awkward make-shift phrase, such as “those rapists who only have sex with partners where the act is entirely voluntary on both sides.”

When a conversation requires these kinds of circumlocutions, it is safe to assume that dishonest definitions have corrupted the available vocabulary. It is safe to assume that propagandists have been diligently at work in order to “blot out” certain concepts.

Please note that this is exactly the position anyone of my political beliefs must adopt in a political discussion. The vocabulary and terminology used by the consensus, allows me no clear words to describe my position, which is, oddly enough, the mainstream majority political position of the Enlightenment.

9. The Idea With No Name

My political position is this: I favor constitutional representative democracy, where the lawmakers have powers curtailed by separation of powers, checks and balances, limited by the natural rights of man, and confined to specific spheres that they may not overstep; I favor the rule of law and the equality of man; I favor the common law and rational continuity of legal precedent; I favor private property, the free market and free trade; freedom of speech and of the press; and the right to bear arms.

This political philosophy is opposed implacably to established privilege and to socialist intervention into the market place. This political philosophy in one sense is very radical.

The free market unleashes the imaginative energy and industry of man, and nothing is conserved in such an environment. The free market is no respecter of persons: the son of a poor man can be a millionaire, the son of a millionaire can be a poor man, depending on the aggregate decision of the consumers.  The free market is a system of laws and customs that gives sovereignty to the productive consumers: in an unhindered free market, the productive consumer, no one else, determines the success or failures of businesses, their lines of production, and indirectly the consumer consensus defined even such factors as working conditions, prices, rate of return on investment, wage-rates, rents, and interest-rates.

This political philosophy is radical in the sense that it calls for fundamental change: the overthrow of settled intuitions and establishments that oppose these enumerated principles.

(Now, not to confuse matters, but my social philosophy is very conservative. Practical wisdom tells me that that political values mentioned, from the equality of man to the custom of consistency in the common law, depend on shared cultural values and virtues that the consensus of the culture must pursue, lest the institutions fail. Hence, this political philosophy differs from Libertarianism in that it emphasizes the need of traditional cultural values and customs, such as respect for human life, respect for marriage, courage, temperance, moderation, justice, fair-dealing in business, chastity, a work ethic, and so on. Those on the left who make no distinction between society and politics would call this a political philosophy: but I would say the one impinges on the other only in areas of family law, marriages and wills and so on. One might even call them “canon law” issues.)

Now, what is the term for this political philosophy? Historically speaking, the correct term is “Liberal”, for this is the philosophy of liberty that springs from the political thought of the Enlightenment.

10. The Evolution or Corruption of the Term Liberal

However, the Liberals of the last century came to regard as an equal opponent to liberty, and as an equal bastion of settled privilege, not just the privileged aristocracy and established clergy, but also the price system, private property and the free market, yes, that never-to-be-sufficiently-damned boogieman called “Capitalism”.

In order to preserve liberty, this faction proposed that the system of laws and customs which take advantage of the specialization of labor should be abolished, and the price mechanism for establishing the relative value of goods and services replaced with rationing, which means, by arbitrary and economically irrational fiat.

They may or may not have known this is what they were proposing: socialism is nothing but a tissue of popular and unscientific errors regarding economics. No one buying into this faulty system can have any very clear idea of what the specific results of a proposed policy would be. In that sense, it is wishful thinking, that is, thinking that never takes into account the connection between cause and effect. When someone proposes a cause A that leads to effect B, but wishfully daydreams that instead cause A might, for no reason, lead to effect C, it becomes a matter for a psychiatrist, not a philosopher, to determine if that dreamer “really” knew they were supporting B. As far as a philosopher is concerned, we can say this faction supported the replacement of free market institutions by rationing and irrational fiat, whether they admit it or not, know it or not.

This faction still called itself, in good faith, Liberal, but were, by that point, Socialists, and became enemies (whether they know it or not) of liberty. They are so-called advocates of liberty forever calling for ever more intrusive and complete state control of every aspect of human life. In the name of liberty, they wish to abolish liberty altogether.

Why is socialism incompatible with liberty? Socialist intervention in the market always requires, encourages, and necessitates rationing; and rationing always requires, encourages, and necessitates intrusion of government into the private sphere. For example, welfare agents check to see if you are lawfully married, or whether your child is going to school, or where and how you are seeking work; and they regulate or create incentives and disincentives for all these matters. Socialism is opposed implacably to private property, free trade, and the free market, and therefore, whether intentionally or not, is also opposed to individual liberty. You cannot tell the welfare agent to mind his own business if you are a dependent of the state, because you are his business. If everyone is a dependent of the state, an employee of the state, a conscript of the state, the state cannot mind its own business, because you are state property: a human natural resource, just as much as a timber stand or a coal deposit. Your home is no longer, in the eyes of the law, your castle, and the king need not ask permission to enter. Your home is something made with state funds and state resources, to be used as the state directs. It is a communal dormitory.

One cannot control the economic activities of free men and consider such men free in any real sense of the term. To gain ever more control his labor, his goods, his time, the price of what he sells and the wages and return on investment he receives, is eventually to have absolute power over him. A man without property, and dependent upon the state for his daily bread, is a serf, or less than a serf. Serfs, at least, had rights in a court of law. Socialism is opposed to the rule of law.

10. No Replacement Term for Liberal

So what do we call the political philosophy which once was called Liberal? What do we call the beliefs and theories of the Sons of Liberty?

We cannot call them “Rightwing.” Rightwing (in the consensus view) means siding with established privilege. Established privilege mean inequality of law, either of an establish church, a special canon law code for clerics, or a bifurcated legal code that grants special rights, based on birth, to aristocrats and royalty. By this definition, the “Right” is opposed implacably to the rule of law and the equality of man.

We cannot call them “Conservative” unless we specify a nation and a historical period where the Sons-of-Liberty values are now, or were in the very recent past, the core values of the nation or the people that the Sons of Liberty wish to preserve against a threatened change. As stated above, this term changes its meaning with its background, like a chameleon.

12. The Myth of the Consensus

Here is why the consensus terminology, offends me personally: the consensus terminology makes no allowance for my existence at all. There is no word to describe my position, nor the position of the jurists, statesmen, and philosophers who support the tradition I follow.

The consensus terminology assumes and promotes the idea that all politics whatsoever are concerned with a single issue: the struggle between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. The Sons of Light are the forces of progressivism and socialism. The Sons of Darkness are the forces of established privilege and aristocracy. For some odd reason, perhaps due to historical accident, perhaps due to an outrageous lie, any number of disparate groups (such as the military, the church) are lumped with the forces of established privilege along with the free market, which is, in reality, the natural foe of established privilege.

So the consensus terminology divides all political factions into four groups: on the Far Right are the violent and totalitarian defenders of established privilege and foes of Progress: that is, Nazis and Fascists. In the Center Right are law-abiding and democratic or parliamentarian defenders of established privilege and foes of Progress, a coalition of nationalists, Puritans, monopolists and military Napoleons, churchmen and aristocrats. In the Center Left are law-abiding and democratic or parliamentarian defenders of Progress and foes of established privilege, a coalition of internationalists, pacifists, partisans of Free Love, labor unions and proletarians, defender of the weak and dispossessed and ethnic minorities. On the Far Left are violent and totalitarian defenders of Progress and foes of established privilege, that is, Communists.

This narrative is socialist mythology through and through. It has little or no bearing on reality. The falsehoods and misleading assumptions of this narrative are myriad. In this space, I will mention but two.

First and foremost, even a cursory examination of the laws, principles, speeches, actions, values and customs of the Nazis and Fascists reveal that they are socialists. The word Nazi is an abbreviation for “National Socialist People’s Worker’s Party.” The laws in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy sought to combine, control, and unify all aspects of society. They were collectivists. They hated the free market and regulated wages, prices, working conditions; the fascist state was a Bismarckian Welfare state. The popular economic errors they believed were the same as the popular errors Socialists believe. They were radical, and sought to suborn all social institutions to their unitive collectivist end. There was no sphere of human life beyond the reach of national socialist law. The parallels to Communism cannot be overlooked. The only difference is that Communist political and economic theory is better articulated; Communists were internationalists rather than nationalists; Communists sought the outright destruction, rather than merely the subordination, of established institutions. 

Second, the socialist myth attributes self-interest to the Right and selflessness to the Left. The parties on the Right, either the Center-Right coalition of monopolists and military goons or the Far Right militarist racist Nazis, are thought to be acting to preserve their own established privileges. The Right is assumed to be struggling to retain control of the social mechanisms by which the poor and oppressed are exploited and milked. The Nazis are seen merely as more desperate versions of the monopolist and the military goon, those driven by fear of Progress into violent totalitarianism. Meanwhile, both Center-Left and Far Left are friends of the poor and dispossessed. The violence and totalitarian lawlessness of the Far Left is merely an unwelcome aberration, or a corruption of a good idea, or a necessary evil.

All this is ahistorical. The appeal of fascism to the folk of Germany and Italy was not based on a Lockean appeal to their self-interest, but a semi-religious or romantic appeal to their spirit of self-sacrifice. It was an appeal to their yearning for unity, a herd instinct, to a patriotism that despised selfish class war and sought in the illusion of a totally militarized society the utter subordination of selfish interests to esprit de corps.

It was an appeal to how pretty the blond beasts looked in snappy black uniforms. It was an appeal to the machinelike unity of a goose-stepping collective.

The appeal of any military metaphor in political rhetoric is an appeal to self-sacrifice; an appeal to “team spirit”, to the ashes of one’s fathers and the altars of one’s gods. The soldier, the hero, is one who sacrifices himself for the common good. The fascist myth of unity told all the stupid partisans of this ideology that they could be heroes, like soldiers, if they sacrificed their neighbor’s liberties and sacrificed their neighbors to the Moloch of the Good of the People. 

13. The Nowhere Man  

Nowhere in this tissue of political myth, the Apocalypse of the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, is there room for someone who is not a friend and not a foe of historically inevitable socialist Progress.

Nowhere is there room for someone who does not want the state to run the economy.

Nowhere is there room for someone who neither favors the rich against the poor, nor favors the poor against the rich.

Nowhere is there mention of one who seeks (wherever possible) to harmonize the interests of investors and wage-earners through neutral laws, virtuous customs, and the rational mechanisms of the free market.

Nowhere in this political spectrum is there a self-made man.

Nowhere is there a man who neither exploits nor is exploited, a man with no special privileges and no need for government hand-outs.

I am someone who believes there is a natural harmony between those in the wage-earner role in the economy and those in the investor role.  (Note that I do not say “rich class and poor class” because class means a set of legal privileges or burdens; and economic roles are independent of wealth levels (as they even were in Marx’s time. His error on this point is inexcusable).) Where am I on this spectrum?

But this stupid, dishonest, unscientific, misleading political spectrum says that there are two and only two political factions: those who want to eat the rich to feed the poor, and those who want to eat the poor to feed the rich. In the middle are the peaceful law-abiding cannibals, who seek power through parliamentary means, and at either extreme are the violent cannibals, who seek power through mass-murder, mass-terror and violent, stupid thuggery.

Where do we put someone who is on nobody’s side in the foolish and self-destructive war between Privilege and Progress, but who is absolutely opposed to both? 

Where do we put someone who is not a political cannibal?

Nowhere am I.

For I am the person the consensus terminology blots out of everyone’s mind. I am one this world view will not allow its true believers to believe exists.

To them, I am either a Center-Right “conservative” which (to them) means a defender of the exploitation of the poor by a privileged class above the law; or I am a Center-Left “liberal”, one who defends the equality of rights of all men and minorities against class privilege. But neither label even comes close to describing me.

My ideas, the political tradition and political faction I represent, all the writers and statesmen and thinkers of my position are the ideas and people the consensus definitions define out of existence.

Why should I use, or even admit as valid, a terminology whose sole point is a rhetorical trick meant to silence me?

14. A Final Question: The Right to Bear Arms

Reason might suggest that if our model, our classification system by which we determine the Linnaean taxonomy of political factions and opinion distorts, blots out, and ignores the mainstream opinion of an entire nation or an entire age of history, then our classification system is inaccurate.

If it causes us to classify the object as the opposite of what it is, it is misleading.

If it was the intent of those who erected and support the classification system to elude discussion of the object so misclassified, it is not a classification system at all, it is Orwellian Newspeak: mere propaganda, a word fetish.

Keeping this in mind, let us ponder a final question:

I am someone who believes in the right to bear arms as the central, perhaps the only, fundamental human right. No tyrant ever prevailed in a nation whose people were armed and drilled in the use of arms. I am a Virginian. Sic Semper Tyrranis. That is the sum and motto of my political philosophy.

So where do I fit on this political spectrum? Am I on the “Right” as a near neighbor and partisan of mild form of Nazism, or am I on the “Left” as a near neighbor and partisan of mild form of Communist? Am I a friend or foe of Progress?

Neither Far Right nor Far Left allow for private ownership of arms.

Am I somewhere in the Center? The Near Left distrusts private ownership of anything, and seeks the dependency of all subjects on the state, and so it cannot support the private ownership of arms. By the consensus classification, the Near Right are partisans of class privilege, or privileges of powerful but small groups of monopolists or military elites. Surely the privileged classes recognize that an armed commonality is a massive threat to their oppressive power structure?

Indeed, the very definition of the aristocratic class was that it and it alone possessed the right to bear arms vice an unarmed class of commoners. The Near Right by the consensus definition should be the foes, not the supporters, of militia or the private use of arms in self-defense. The ability to man the barricades with armed citizens (or even to shoot a damn Yankee reviewer) cannot be said to be a policy that supports an elite regime. A man with a shotgun who says “Git off my land” to the bulldozers either of Big Business or Big Government is no ally of the Powers That Be, not a friend of the rich, and not a supporter of the Military-Industrial Complex. Where does he stand, the self-made man? Where is the little man who has ironclad individual rights?

One who calls for the blood of patriots and tyrants to mingle and liberally to water in the roots of the tree of liberty cannot be called a “conservative”, if that term has any real meaning. No call more revolutionary has ever been made.

I suggest instead that there is only one real political spectrum, running from white through gray to black. White are those who favor the right of free men to bear arms; gray are those who seek to curtail that right, seeking in illusory security; black are those villains who seek to abolish that right, enemies of mankind and enemies of the only practical and meaningful measure of human freedom, the freedom of arms.

That is the only real political spectrum. Everything else is just talk.