Socialism, = economic, epistemological moral

Monty pelerins world

4. John Cooper says:
August 1, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Mr. Pelerin– It was a great article but I believe you missed a perfect opportunity to improve it. (Perhaps you were restricted to a certain number of words?) You explained how Hayek attacked socialism on economic grounds. You explained how von Mises attacked socialism on epistemological grounds. That would have been the perfect spot to include Ayn Rand’s attack on socialism on *moral* grounds – the real Achilles heel of socialism. I would have included something like:

“Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may disposed of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.”

…or perhaps:

“Whoever claims the “right” to “redistribute” the wealth produced by others is claiming the “right” to treat human beings as chattel.”

…or even:

“When one observes the nightmare of the desperate efforts made by hundreds of thousands of people struggling to escape from the socialized countries of Europe, to escape over barbed-wire fences, under machine-gun-fire –one can no longer believe that socialism, in any of its forms, is motivated by benevolence and the desire to achieve men’s welfare. No man of authentic benevolence could evade or ignore so great a horror on so vast a scale.”

Regards–

–John