Posted by
Zorro on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 2:12:20 AM
So, concerning Marxism. I haven’t read that guy, but I’ve
thought about his supposed theory that history naturally tends toward
socialism. I think this is wrong. I suspect he saw the progress toward
Democracy, and saw its conclusion. The logical conclusion of Democracy is, I
believe, socialism. If we define democracy as a government where all citizens
have one vote, and the majority vote determines policy there is an equalizing force
moving all outliers toward the median. Those that have more wealth than the
median will tend to have their wealth redistributed by the majority (and anyone
above median will have more wealth than the majority). Those that have less
wealth than the median (which are 50%) will tend to redistribute wealth in
their favor.
There are only two ultimate checks on this:
extragovernmental power, and ethics.
By extragovernmental power, I mean things like the power of
violent force, and of money. By ethics I mean, of course, that those with the
political power to redistribute wealth do not do so because they feel it is
wrong.
But most people’s ideal of democracy is that it supersedes
all extragovernmental power. Hence, the lament of the influence of money in politics.
Whether they say it or not, most people have the ideal that money should not
have an influence in politics. The same goes for violence or threat of
violence. Thus, the ideal of democracy (and I’ve been referring to it as an
ideal this whole time) leaves only one check on the tendency to socialism:
ethics.