The New Collectivism

July 18, 1960

Though the old doctrinaire socialism “public ownership and operation of the means of production” is in disrepute in the Western world, a new brand of socialism is now on sale. It does not insist on the socialization of production but on the socialization of consumption.

The New Socialists—or perhaps they should be called the New Collectivists—are at last willing to admit that capitalism, private enterprise, is incomparably more productive than socialism. But they don’t like what it produces. For under capitalism, it seems, people spend the money they earn in foolish and trivial ways and show dreadful taste. The government, therefore, the bureaucrats, the “public servants,” should step in and seize this money from them by imposing far more drastic taxes than the piddling sums people pay today, and spend the money not on the things that people individually want, but on what they would want if they were competent to know their own interest.

The chief spokesman for this New Collectivism is J. Kenneth Galbraith, but he has been rapidly acquiring disciples, of whom Charles F. Darlington, author of a piece in The New York Times Magazine of Sunday, July 3, seems to be typical. His thesis is stated in his second paragraph: “Nations, like individuals, can make vices of their virtues. Private enterprise is a virtue as a successful method of organizing society for production, but it takes on the color of a vice when, as today in the United States, it is widely regarded as the ideal of society. It is a means to a good society, but we are making it society’s goal.”

MEANS AND ENDS

The title of Darlington’s piece is “Not the Goal, Only the Means.” This is a false antithesis. Many things may be both means and ends. An outstanding example is liberty. Liberty is an indispensable means of accomplishing all our other purposes; but it is also an end in itself. Lord Acton went so far as to say that liberty “is itself the highest political end.”

Now capitalism, or private enterprise, is simply another name for liberty in the economic sphere. It leaves the Individual free to produce what he wants and free to consume what he wants. It allows him to keep the fruits of his labor. It protects him in that right by the institution of private property. Private enterprise is not merely a means; it is not simply a remarkable gadget for production; it is also an end in itself. It is the system of economic liberty. Once economic liberty is abridged or destroyed all other liberty is abridged or destroyed with it. “Power over a man’s subsistence,” said Alexander Hamilton, “is power over his will.” The freedom to spend is only a little less important than the freedom to earn.

FREEDOM REDEFINED

Darlington wishes to deprive the individual of this freedom. To make his argument seem plausible he has to redefine freedom, individualism, private enterprise, and government.”Freedom, above all for a great people, is found in doing what is morally right.” Who is to decide what is morally right? Darlington replies that “we” (presumably he and Galbraith) “know what is right. . . . We know that it is right for the rich to succor the poor . . . at home and abroad.” And this can be interpreted to mean that the industrious and efficient must be drastically taxed to compel them to support the shiftless and inefficient at home and socialist experiments abroad.

The “mainspring” of private enterprise is “self-interest, which is highly useful in getting things done, but self-interest idealized approaches selfishness.” Here is another basic confusion. Private enterprise does leave people free to pursue their own purposes. But are these necessarily selfish purposes? Is a man who works to support a large family and send his children to college acting selfishly? Are people selfish just because they are free? And if we compel them, through the government apparatus of coercion, to support the purposes of the politicians in power, does this make them unselfish?

The essence of collectivism is to belittle the purposes of the individual in favor of those of some mystic collectivity. The “national purpose” is no different from the purposes of the individuals who compose the nation.