The Naked Socialist

by Paul B Skousen

  Whenever those who produce the most are not properly compensated, as the free market does, the producers eventually tire of the fruitless endeavors and stop producing—despite the appealing allure of the socialists’ promises. That is human nature at work, and such failings show up everywhere in history, even as far back as Caveman Dad.

  Learning to Recognize Socialism

  What are some of the “beautiful promises” that socialism puts forward? What are some of the reasons why people are so intrigued by these?

  In John Lennon’s song Imagine he suggests a perfect world with certain changes. Can any of these changes be made without the use of force? Explain.

  What appears to be the meaning behind Lennon’s lyrics, “Imagine there’s no heaven” and “no religion, too”? What is Lennon advocating regarding the worship and belief in God?

  After the Russians and Chinese fought their revolutionary wars and took over how many people died to establish socialist societies? After the Constitutional Convention, how many Americans died to establish their Constitutional Republic? Why the difference? Explain.

  Are the people in communist and socialist nations enjoying the “beautiful” future that the socialists promised them?

  Who holds all the political and military power in those socialist nations?

  What castes or classes exist in the U.S.? In which class would you consider yourself most closely associated?

  Name some services or things that are held “in common” (public monopolies) in the U.S. Can you name private businesses that are successfully competing with any of these?

  Name five activities or processes in America that are regulated by the federal government. Do you think the States could do the same job better? Why?

  How do you get your news every day? Do you trust those sources? Name some news outlets that you no longer trust because you found them to be biased, or with an ulterior agenda.

  Make a list of movies, songs and books that you have encountered that delivered messages opposite to your beliefs and standards. Do these promote freedom and choice, private control over property, freedom to associate? Give examples to support your answer.

  Is the media is an effective form of information control? Explain.

  Do you feel that any of today’s news outlets have an agenda to promote in one fashion or another, the establishment of Ruler’s Law? Name a few and explain.

  Name five elements of Ruler’s Law.

  Name five elements of People’s Law.

  What are the three parts of an unalienable right? What is a vested right? Which of the two may not be revoked by a morally sound government?

  Name your eight unalienable rights or categories of rights. Which of these are being threatened by the government today? Give examples. List a related responsibility for each right.

  Is health care an unalienable right? How about eating? Smoking? Employment? Housing? Explain why or why not.

  What do socialists stir inside of people to justify the use of force to control and change society?

  Do you catch yourself falling for these same tactics (see #19), and find yourself supporting coercive solutions that violate the rights of others, in the name of fairness? In other words, can you admit that sometimes you think like a socialist? Give examples.

  What is offered as a good working definition of socialism? Can you improve on that, or craft a more descriptive definition?

  Part II--SOCIALISM IN ANCIENT HISTORY

  “Socialism is a time-released poison pill with a 100 percent success rate.”

  * * *

  88 Anthony Bond, “Expat Israeli couple living in Belgium are told they can’t call their newborn daughter Jerusalem,” Mail Online, August 20, 2013.

  89 The New York Times, May 30, 1918.

  90 Cleveland.com, August 20, 2010, “High-tech carts will tell on Cleveland residents who don’t recycle ... and they face $100 fine.”

  91 Oregonlive.com, August 4, 2010, “Portland lemonade stand runs into health inspectors, needs $120 license to operate.”

  92 Department of Justice press release, January 7, 2009, “Justice Department Seeks Injunction Against New Black Panther Party.”

  93 “Jonas, 32 sewed up his own leg after ER wait,” The Local (Sweden), August 4, 2010.

  94 The Guardian, “Christine Handrahan describes hours of tension in ER,” 7/29/10.

  95 Stephen Adams, “Doctors ask: Did Great Ormond Street boss cover up hospital’s role in Baby P Affair?”, The Telegraph, October 16, 2011.

  96 Andy Bloxham, “100,000 terminally ill ...’,” The Telegraph, July 1, 2011.

  97 Mail Online, “You can’t join NHS post-natal depression support group”, June 30, 2011.

  98 Stephen Adams, “Hospitals leaking patient data to ‘no win no fee’ firms, claims MEP,” The Telegraph, June 28, 2011.

  99 Nick Collins, “Rules on Foreign doctors ‘put patient safety at risk,’” The Telegraph, June 29, 2011.

  100 Jenny Hope, “GP bonuses ‘lead to poor patient care,’” MailOnline, June 29, 2011.

  101 The Telegraph, “Burned girl ‘turned away’ from hospital,” March 21, 2010.

  102 The Telegraph, “Man left infertile after wrong testicle removed,” March 29, 2010.

  103 Sara McCorquodale, “Jade’s death unnecessary,” MailOnline March 20, 2010.

  104 The 18th amendment ratified January 16, 1919; repealed by 21st amendment ratified December 5, 1933. Utah was the 36th state to ratify, making the repeal official on that day..

  105 “Survival in Auschwitz,” Primo Levi.

  Chapter 9: First There Was Force

  The earliest records are scant, but they show that socialism in its most raw form existed more than 6,000 years ago.

  Some researchers believe that socialism is a natural state of ancient cooperation. They surmise that at the dawn of human history the earliest peoples voluntarily resorted to communal living as a necessary part of staying alive. The theory suggests that only by living in large, strong groups with things in common could the huddled masses procure food and provide mutual protection.

  This theory further surmises that the invention of farming and irrigation made food more accessible, and introduced independent living. Researchers speculate this is the period when the concept of private property ownership entered the world, and all the world’s conflicts began—I planted this field, it’s all mine, now get out!

  Difficult Questions—If this idea is true—that socialism is natural, and therefore, in harmony with the natural man and, therefore, good—then the “early communal” theory leaves unanswered a number of critical questions: Who assigned the workers to their various labors, or did they all just jump in like bees in a hive? Could people be lazy and not be punished and live off the labors of others? Who directed the distribution of food? What if the director showed favoritism? In times of scarcity, what about the needs of the very young, the sick, or the very old? What was to prevent gangs of bullies rising up at harvest time and taking all that they pleased?106

  Caveman Dad—One solution might have been the family—parents directing children to participate in providing food and protection. But that doesn’t resolve the constant risk of other families raiding a village or campground. Hunger awakens the beast in all creation.

  It’s a story that may never be known. However, history shows that communal or collectivist living in any setting required leadership directed by someone, and that dictatorship was fraught with the numerous built-in problems of rules, regulations, fairness, obedience, punishment—and the ever-present use of force. Here’s a sampling of the seven pillars of socialism in operation down through history—

  * * *

  106 Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, (1922), “Theories of the Evolution of Property,” pp. 41-44.

  Chapte
r 10: Ancient Sumer, the Earliest Socialists

  It’s difficult to peg a start date for Sumer, but many scholars estimate this civilization took form before 4000 B.C.

  STORY: Ancient Sumerians built their form of socialism around their temples in a dozen city-states at the south end of today’s Iraq. Eventually there were about 30 large and small cities, some with populations of 10,000 or more. The whole region was known as Sumer. Their prosperity came from intensive year-round cultivation and large-scale irrigation projects. With a reliable source of storable food the people could settle down in one place instead of migrating to greener pastures, as was their ancestors’ custom.

  The temples were the center of everyone’s life. The priestly governor (ensi) or king (lugal) was both civic leader and spokesman for the gods. From him came the commands to keep the temple granaries full and the workers tightly organized and busy.

  The societies of Sumer were highly stratified: a ruling class with all power; an aristocracy or nobility class that leeched off everyone; and the lowly workers.

  Peasants Doing All the Work, As Usual

  The common workers were owned by the temple, and their sole purpose in life was to work the lands that supported the temple. Everything necessary to raise food was given to them, including a place to live. They had no private property and couldn’t store or save anything as their own.

  The earliest Sumerian cuneiform records don’t indicate many slaves in Sumerian society. The soldiers won plenty of wars, but rarely brought back prisoners—a strong indicator that the defeated foes were executed on the battle field or marched to death camps.

  The Central Storehouse

  The storehouse was central to everything in the Sumerian cities. The workers’ equipment, the animals, the seed grain, and a monthly sustenance all flowed from the storehouse. Quotas were important. The storehouse got stingy if workers failed to reach the quota. If a harvest came in leaner than what had been ordered, the workers were expected to make up the difference the following year—or suffer accordingly.

  Igor Shafarevich provides several good examples of life in ancient civilizations in his book, The Socialist Phenomenon.107 Among those is the Sumerians’ Temple of Bau, built about 2500 B.C. in Lagash. Temple priests controlled the whole region, and were supplied by the “Shub-Iugal,” a workforce that received small land grants and government-issued plows, grain, cattle, yokes, collars, tools, etc. The Shub-Iugal were supervised by chief farmers who monitored all of their labors and free time.

  Everything the Bau culture produced had to be given to the storehouse without compensation. Even the skin of a dead animal belonged to Bau. Craftsmen who were bonded to the temple used the skins and other materials to manufacture clothing, tools, artwork, and necessities—all of it surrendered back again to the central storehouse.

  Other industries were obligated to do the same. The fishermen had to deliver their entire catch, the foresters their entire load, and the cattlemen every head to the storehouse coffers.

  Miserable Mortality Rates

  The cost for these operations was horrific. Copious baked-clay tablets meticulously included the word “deceased” next to names of those who died from the strenuous work. Researchers calculate that 35 percent of the field workers died each year. Many of these were women and children involved in unskilled labor and the physical taxing work to haul barges. The average mortality rate was calculated to be 20-25 percent. Over the centuries, the aristocracy grew fat and lazy while the peasants worked, toiled, and poured out their lives until death—all of this to benefit the storehouse.

  State Control Creates State Collapse

  At its peak the Sumerian’s main city of Ur was considered the largest in the world with 65,000 inhabitants. Here they built a temple to the moon god Nanna during the 21st century B.C. Today, its remains are known as the Great Ziggurat of Ur.

  With the passage of many centuries of heavy-handed regulation, the huge bureaucratic Sumerian state was ripe for collapse. It had been repeatedly attacked over the years without success, but by 1940 B.C., conditions were right for the Elamites. That year they attacked and conquered the great city of Ur, and the rest of the cities fell soon thereafter.

  Old Masters, New Masters

  So great was their loss, the Sumerians wrote a lament for Ur, similar to the book of Lamentations in the Bible. In the aftermath of the destruction of their cities, they described complete wreckage—corpses decaying in the streets, the storehouses stripped down, the towns destroyed, women kidnapped to foreign lands, and other Sumerian cities falling to the sword. Their long and stifling experiment in socialism had ended with every life ultimately sacrificed for the strength and endurance of the all-important central storehouse.108

  Human Nature at Work

  There is a tendency among humans to accept the commands and demands of a ruling party. They generally don’t consider revolting until tyranny becomes unbearable, but the outcome is typically another radical ruler who installs new masters and new rules.

  John Stuart Mill put it this way, “It is the common error of socialists to overlook the natural indolence of mankind; their tendency to be passive, to be the slaves of habit, to persist indefinitely in a course once chosen. Let them once attain any state of existence which they consider tolerable, and the danger to be apprehended is that they will thenceforth stagnate; will not exert themselves to improve, and by letting their faculties rust, will lose even the energy required to preserve them from deterioration. Competition may not be the best conceivable stimulus, but it is at present a necessary one, and no one can foresee the time when it will not be indispensable to progress.”109

  The Seven Pillars

  Sumerian society used all the classic forms of force and violation of unalienable rights throughout its history and genealogies—

  Ruler. The presence of tyrannical top-down control around 4000 B.C. foreshadowed a common theme of human domination that would recreate itself thousands of times for thousands of years. Ruler’s Law apparently was easily imposed on the early Sumer people. The human tendency to relinquish responsibility to the initiatives of another person served well to sustain their leaders, a series of men who claimed to be a god or god’s representative for temple worship.

  Caste. Sumer’s stratified society was protected, sustained and enforced with death. The rulers and nobility kept it this way to protect their own selfish lives and perpetuate power. As a result, untold thousands or millions were denied their contributions to a better society.

  Things in Common. It’s easy to manipulate people who have been suckled on the fiction that all things belong to the mystical and mysterious god-like ruler. Even if they didn’t believe it, the point of the spear was the ruler’s backup plan. The ruler claimed ownership over all things and dispatched his properties to be used in common to support the temple and the city. With no private ownership, there prevailed a sense of detachment from responsibility—and with it, an acceptance of brutal force as the insurance that all the production be provided by the whole and for the whole.

  Natural Rights. Central control meant very few natural rights, if any at all. The people were obligated to obey every command from the ruler. It was a harsh way of living.

  Regimentation. All aspects of the Sumerian society were controlled by a crude form of modern Communism’s “scientific method.” This is where the community’s needs were anticipated, whether they materialized or not, and laborers were compelled to fulfill those needs. The free market system does a much better job of informing the innovators when a need exists.

  Information. The people were controlled and probably pacified by a spirit of superstition and ignorance that was cultivated around them. By promoting a continuous fear of pending warfare, and preying upon the people’s mythical delusions to support temple worship, the rulers kept them focused and grateful for the Ruler’s benevolence and protection.

  F
orce. Violent retribution for the least infraction made strong control feasible in Sumer. Complainers could have their tongues cut out, or worse. Finally, by around 1800 B.C., Hammurabi brought some order to these laws, but they remained severe. A doctor whose patient did not get better, especially if the person got worse, was liable—even unto death. If a house collapsed because of an architect’s bad design, he could be executed. On the other hand, if you were in an upper class, it made a big difference. A noble blinding another noble or breaking his bone could be punished by being blinded with a hot poker or having his own bone broken by a heavy club. However, if a noble blinded or broke the bone of someone in a lower class, he only had to pay a fine.

  So went Sumer for many centuries, wasting the capacity of the whole populous to serve the selfish pursuits of the few.

  The Beginning Place

  Sumer is a good beginning place to see the framework and structure of the seven pillars of socialism at work in ancient times. After Sumer, what followed during the succeeding six millennia was not a variation of a theme, but the theme itself, hammered home in so many horrible ways. Unfortunately, each and every society that fell for the seven pillars of socialism didn’t actually see what was coming. The people apparently believed that violating natural laws and true principles might work this time if only we make a few changes.

  But nothing did change. Those who didn’t understand socialism fell for it every time, and all the predictable consequences that came with it.