Liberty Alone

Over at the Libertarian Alliance you Sean Gabb has put up some interviews made in 1991 for a documentary about Liberty.

One of the interviews is with Ian Anderson of the National Front. In it, he espouses a very socialist and Marxist view of liberalism. The free market, he states, allows for accumulation of wealth which leads to oppression of the masses by the rich. He trots out many of the same (incorrect) arguments against liberalism that the socialist does.
The only difference I can tell is a focus on ‘racial problems’ and enforced segregation.
Although he claims that he’s not a socialist because he wants power to be ‘given to the British people’ not to the government. However his focus on enforcing particular solutions (collective ownership by the workers) is distinctly socialist in the broader sense.

I think this really does show that National Socialism, is not simply a form of fascism, its also a form of socialism.

The scariest thing for me is that if you took away the context of Nationalism and the National Front, much of it would be agreed upon by many Liberal Democrats.

Here’s the video:

I’ve just seen a hint at an idea which is very interesting.

There is an important debate amongst economists starting in the 1920s with Ludwig von Mises’s critique of socialism. This is the Calculation Debate which brings an argument that the socialist economy cannot allocate resources and the calculations needed are not possible. Personally I think this is settled against socialism, at least in the case where we have a non-static economy. Since for the improvement of the situation of people we need a non-static economy and the fact that not everything can be controlled, I think this debate shows that economic socialism is not possible.

A student of Mises, Murray Rothbard, it appears, took this idea further and showed that this economic calculation problem sets a limit on the size of corporations. Anyone who has worked in a large organisation knows that diseconomies of scale really do come into effect. Its interesting to see this outline of an economic argument as to why this happens.

Why then don’t small businesses run rings around big corporations? The answer is that government intervention and regulation favours the big, established concerns.
Like much taxation, regulation costs those with lower income a greater portion of their income. Regulation increases startup costs, big business has more resources to devote to lobbying politicians.

Contrary to what many think, it is not the free market which gives big companies the advantage, it is the lack of free market which panders to them.

The tradition of destroying people’s lives that is.

Chavez’s brand of socialism* is destroying people’s lives by putting private business out of business. Price controls are stifling the market, huge subsidies to worker’s cooperatives** are adding to the pressure.
This is not the usual healthy competition of the market place in which some may get hurt but the systematic destruction of people’s livelyhoods through government policy.

Propaganda is also whipping up resentment against private farmers, they are made to feel like villains. How long until this becomes violence with Zimbabwe like scenes of ‘veterans’ evicting farmers only to let their land fall to ruin?

It may be true that in a market economy some businesses fail, but others are free to be created and those that fail will fail due to not being competitive rather than being hounded out of business by government, and competition drives up standards rather than encouraging the favoured methods of an elite (in this case ’socialist’ methods).

* not so different from other forms.
** not that there’s anything wrong with worker’s cooperatives - so long as they’re on the same legal footing as any other business.

Hugo Chavez is following in Mugabe’s footsteps and seizing land to ‘redistribute’ and install collective farming.

This policy has recently been tried in Zimbabwe and has been a spectacular failure, taking the country from being the breadbasket of Africa to being a country of rampant inflation and massive food shortages.

Of course, Zimbabwe isn’t the only country to have tried this. China tried it during the ‘great leap forward’. What were the results? Famine and death.
It was even tried by some early settlers in the Americas. They tried collective farming and almost starved, it was only when private farming and the ability to trade was introduced that they prospered.

Collectivisation and nationalisation is a recipe for disaster. The disaster may be staved off due to Venezuela’s oil wealth, but that will only serve to prop up a rich, corrupt elite and prevent the liberal reform which would disperse wealth more and provide opportunity for the masses.

I’m sure the left in the west will continue lauding Chavez, even as his errors become manifest, if only because he’s anti-American and claims to be standing up for the poor against the exploitative capitalist.

It is with great sadness that I look at the events in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez is taking more and more power, he now officially has the power of rule by decree (before he had to rubber stamp things through the parliament crammed with his supporters). He has abolished term limits, setting himself up to be dictator for life (I’m sure there’ll be ‘elections’ but the USSR had ‘elections’, even North Korea has ‘elections’).
He’s restricting free speech and the freedom of the press, he’s nationalising the economy.

The scenario of F.A. Hayek’s The Road To Serfdom is being played out again, before our very eyes.

The Social Democracy he once espoused has given way (as it must) to authoritarianism. A solution is ‘needed’ to the problems caused by his own policies, and he is that solution. He’s setting up a false enemy, calling George W Bush ‘Satan’ and making America into a scapegoat (I suppose at least its not an internal minority - although perhaps that’s still to come).
His rhetoric is the rhetoric of the fascist - ‘Fatherland, Socialism or Death!’,

Even through this, the left are still clinging to their new hero. They are claiming a golden age of socialism will arise in Venezuela, showing those evil Americans (who are authoritarian, Chavez clearly isn’t) what a mistake they’re making. They’re even claiming that the USSR didn’t fail because of its economy being fatally flawed and that somehow freedom will be expanded by reducing it.

I feel a great sense of pity for those who will be impoverished by the nationalist and socialist policies of Chavez, but I hold those who sit in their comfy, middle-class houses making pronouncements about the wonders of socialism, in the deepest contempt.