Tony Rubolotta

Two Golden Rules
August 27, 2009

The Golden Rule of Socialism, from each according to their ability and to each according to their need, has an emotional appeal despite its severe logical flaws and unstated assumptions. One of those never stated but obvious assumptions is that ability and need must be determined by arbiters acting for the collective. These arbiters must make decisions about individual abilities based on collective needs and about individual needs based on collective abilities. If the arbiters decide the collective needs less music and more iron, it will reason, for example that anyone capable of playing a guitar can just as well manage a shovel, with few exceptions. If the collective is unable to feed everyone, the arbiters will decide who eats and how much.

Who are these arbiters? They may come to power by force, or they may be democratically elected. If they are elected, every calculation of ability and need is a political calculation to gain and hold power. Who must they appease and who can they safely ignore? What lies will be believed and what truths can be attacked? What groups must be enlisted and what groups must be ridiculed? The idea the arbiters will be dispassionate, just and unselfish is unrealistic, especially in a democracy.

The Golden Rule of Socialism requires an act of faith to believe that a society governed by that rule will improve the human condition. The rule appeals to our sense of fairness and fairness, one might argue improves the human condition. If we measured the human condition by bread alone, that is material needs, than socialism can only promise to equalize the human condition, and that may or may not be an improvement. Of course, the arbiters of ability and need would have to have extraordinary intelligence, wisdom and self-discipline to equalize the human condition, let alone make it better.

There is another unstated assumption of the rule that if we are all treated fairly, that is equally, we would all be happy. The Golden Rule of Socialism makes no mention of wants and aspirations, and are these not at the root of what makes us happy? Will the person who aspires to be a musician be happy when told to drop his guitar and pick up a shovel because his ability to dig is needed more than his music? Will the person denied medical treatment be happy that the arbiters of need have decided fairly that the collective’s resources would better be used elsewhere? Would you be happy with three bowls of generic mush a day because that is what everyone gets and is the best the collective can provide?

The way socialism is peddled, you would believe it is the answer to all problems. How could you have envy in a society where everyone has the same things and private property doesn’t exist? People would not lie, cheat or steal because the arbiters of need give them everything they need. People would happily march off to work, doing what they have been told to do because they know everyone else is doing what they have been told to do to support the collective. And surely everyone must be happy that the more intelligent among us make all of these important decisions for us, which reduces our stress and anxiety. Isn’t that what they are selling?

Despite the historic failures of socialism to live up to any of its promises, the elite of the movement believe they can succeed. But succeed at what? People like Obama made it clear what they mean when they stated that we, as a nation, spend too much on health care. That is all you need to know about his plan and where it is going. Obama and his kind want to be the arbiters of ability and need. They want to decide what we spend on everything. If they decide that 5 percent of GDP is the right amount for health care, that is what we will spend and not a penny more or less. If the public complains about the quality of care or rationing, they may ratchet that up to 5.5 percent in time for the next election. The legitimate debate in their minds is not the flaws of socialized medicine, but how much the collective spends on medicine. The correct amount in their minds is the minimum required to minimize public discontent, at least while we still have a democracy. That will be the formula for all expenditures.

The arbiters of ability and need in the past have been a mix of saints and sinners. The God fearing and hard working people of Plymouth colony couldn’t make socialism work. The fortune seekers of Jamestown colony couldn’t make it work. Both colonies would have starved to death if they had not abandoned socialism. The well intended founders of New Harmony had political disputes that ended their experiment. Stalin’s collectivization of farms resulted in mass famine. He starved the countryside and diverted food to the cities to avoid the risk of a revolt. Hitler couldn’t make socialism work without conscripting slave labor and taking property in the countries he conquered. Mao and Pol Pot murdered those opponents they didn’t work or starve to death in their agrarian Utopias. Castro created an island hell-hole based on socialist economic principles. Mugabe and Chavez have brought food shortages where none existed before. Europe is in a state of demographic self-destruction as it imports poor minorities to do the jobs more sophisticated socialist Europeans won’t do. Ted Turner’s description of thin but happy North Koreans on bicycles would be laughable if not so tragic.

Obama may not be Hitler, but he isn’t a Pilgrim either. Making the Golden Rule of Socialism work with himself as chief arbiter may be his dream; I just don’t want it to be our nightmare. We have a better country because people have aspired to be and do more than what others thought of their abilities. We have a better country because people wanted a better life and were not content just to meet their needs. That defies the simple rule the arbiters of ability and need rely upon. How does one become an arbiter of aspirations and wants? It is only the elite arbiters of ability and need that have the audacity and snobbery to tell people like Joe the Plumber that his aspirations are too high. But Joe shouldn’t feel picked upon because they would have done the same thing with Edison, Salk, Bell, Ford and Westinghouse, just to name of few.

Freedom appears to be chaotic, yet ordinary people make order of it and succeed everyday. Others may fail and most come away wiser from their experience. Some simply chose not to participate or compete, and that too is their prerogative in a free society with a free economy. A free people have no need for the self-inflated intellectuals that would be the arbiters of ability and need. A free people are allowed to act on their aspirations and wants, and that has indisputably improved the human condition. The arbiters indeed may be more intelligent, sophisticated and glamorous than the unwashed masses they say they care so much about, but the masses are doing fine without them, and would do much better if they would just "shut up and get out of the way”.

As for the truly less fortunate whose abilities are limited by no fault of their own or whose misfortunes are not of their own doing, many conservatives have a Golden Rule too: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That rule covers acts of kindness and charity, and it applies to me personally, not some impersonal collective. Unlike the arbiters of ability and need, I don’t have to calculate the politics of my kindness and charity based on an election cycle, or worry about being overthrown by the victims of tyranny. The author of my Golden Rule was Jesus Christ. The pontificator of the socialist golden rule was Karl Marx. I would say that’s point, set and match.