Collective Conscious

Who said this?

“Free­dom con­sists in the trans­for­ma­tion of the state from an organ dom­i­nant over soci­ety into an organ sub­or­di­nate to soci­ety. And today, too, the var­i­ous exist­ing forms of state are free or not free in the mea­sure in which they cir­cum­scribe the free­dom of the state.”

If you guessed Adam Smith, or Mil­ton Fried­man, or F.A. Hayek, you’d be wrong.

If you guessed Karl Marx, you’d be right.

I came across this quo­ta­tion for the first time today, and it really struck a chord with me. As reg­u­lar read­ers will know, a good deal of my recent work focuses on the sta­tism inher­ent in much of the con­tem­po­rary con­ser­v­a­tive world­view. In par­tic­u­lar, the neo­con­ser­v­a­tive ‘security-​​statist’ mind­set is one which threat­ens our polit­i­cal and eco­nomic free­dom, even though con­ser­v­a­tives are con­stantly yam­mer­ing about how so-​​called lib­eral sta­tists want to imple­ment gov­ern­ment con­trol of just about everything.

Marx’s quote strikes more to the core of what the lib­eral ‘big-​​government’ project is about. It’s about cre­at­ing a gov­ern­ment that is, as Marx says, “sub­or­di­nate” to soci­ety. Its proper func­tion is to col­lec­tivize our risks, pro­duce or sub­si­dize pub­lic goods, solve coor­di­na­tion prob­lems, and so on and so forth, as every good econ­o­mist will agree. A good gov­ern­ment, whether a repub­lic or a  liberal/​social democ­racy or a social cap­i­tal­ist or an out­right social­ist or com­mu­nist arrange­ment, will meet these needs in response to the desires of the pop­u­lace, not in response to the prof­its of the cor­po­ra­tions within in.

If it does the lat­ter, then we see sit­u­a­tions in which the biggest firms engage in mas­sive rent-​​seeking, and by that path extract resources from the gov­ern­ment rather than con­tribut­ing to it. This is the dan­ger of pure cap­i­tal­ism, of the con­cen­tra­tion of eco­nomic and polit­i­cal power in the hands of the few. This is the route to sta­tism, where the gov­ern­ment is the ser­vant of busi­ness and the oppres­sor of the peo­ple. This is the neo­con­ser­v­a­tive vision of gov­ern­ment, and this is the state of affairs which lib­er­als ought vehe­mently oppose.