RICHARD J GRANT: Perils of rising state power and dwindling personal rights
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Much of SA history over the past century can be explained by a simple observation: not all corruption is due to socialism, but all socialism brings corruption.
Apartheid was not a market phenomenon but a statist intervention to thwart the market relationships that would have brought people together in co-operative endeavours. The same is true of the current form of apartheid that is called, euphemistically, BEE and denoted by an evolving chain of Bs and Es. Corruption of language and thought is both a side effect of socialism and a deliberate technique employed by its vanguard or promoters.
The notion that “the people shall share in the country’s wealth” could imply that people are free to produce goods and services and trade some of their product for the different products offered by their fellows. The better the productive service to one another, the greater the mutual benefits each person can enjoy. Production and exchange in a culture of mutual respect for each fellow’s property, with the right to trade that property, is the true source of wealth. But the socialist portrayal of such wealth is that of a generic mass divorced from the ideas and efforts of the individuals who produced it yet owed equally to those who did not. And as we see each day, those with political power are more equal than others.
The power to tax, the power to regulate, and the power to spend public funds each entails the power to redistribute wealth by influencing incentives, prices and the flow of resources. The holders of such power have something to sell, and it should be no surprise that politics tends to attract those who are willing to sell it.
This is not the only reason socialism and other statist interventions bring corruption: the inevitable failures of any socialist project and the human suffering that comes with it can be sustained only through official lies and increasingly overt oppression. As Friedrich Hayek observed on “why the worst get on top”, only the worst among us would have the ruthlessness and callousness to inflict the injustices and oppression required to maintain a socialist system through which they enrich themselves at the expense of all those outside the ruling class.
None of this is mitigated when implemented by leaders with good intentions. As the SABC recently reported, “government has given the assurance that it has put in place mechanisms ...
Apartheid was not a market phenomenon but a statist intervention to thwart the market relationships that would have brought people together in co-operative endeavours. The same is true of the current form of apartheid that is called, euphemistically, BEE and denoted by an evolving chain of Bs and Es. Corruption of language and thought is both a side effect of socialism and a deliberate technique employed by its vanguard or promoters.
The notion that “the people shall share in the country’s wealth” could imply that people are free to produce goods and services and trade some of their product for the different products offered by their fellows. The better the productive service to one another, the greater the mutual benefits each person can enjoy. Production and exchange in a culture of mutual respect for each fellow’s property, with the right to trade that property, is the true source of wealth. But the socialist portrayal of such wealth is that of a generic mass divorced from the ideas and efforts of the individuals who produced it yet owed equally to those who did not. And as we see each day, those with political power are more equal than others.
The power to tax, the power to regulate, and the power to spend public funds each entails the power to redistribute wealth by influencing incentives, prices and the flow of resources. The holders of such power have something to sell, and it should be no surprise that politics tends to attract those who are willing to sell it.
This is not the only reason socialism and other statist interventions bring corruption: the inevitable failures of any socialist project and the human suffering that comes with it can be sustained only through official lies and increasingly overt oppression. As Friedrich Hayek observed on “why the worst get on top”, only the worst among us would have the ruthlessness and callousness to inflict the injustices and oppression required to maintain a socialist system through which they enrich themselves at the expense of all those outside the ruling class.
None of this is mitigated when implemented by leaders with good intentions. As the SABC recently reported, “government has given the assurance that it has put in place mechanisms ...