Post Liberal-Democrat

Some people are stamped in the womb with disadvantages; some are fashioned later by a disadvantaged childhood. This is a bleak fact.

Many noble people scramble to mitigate these conditions when they see them. Many of us seek out the disadvantaged and offer care and support. A good society has an abundance of caring people. America is richly endowed with caregivers.

Religions often teach followers to behave generously. Most religions teach adherents that care for the disadvantaged is a personal and social imperative.

America was swamped by a tidal wave in the early 1800's when technology and commerce converged to spew forth an horrific environment that shocked caring people. Urban populations exploded, wage earners massed in the streets, factories spewed coal smoke and children toiled in morbid conditions. Daily life abruptly changed, apparently for the worse. In England, Charles Dickens drew the vivid pictures of this garish new world that we all still see in our mind's eye.

The problems that created this shocking scene was considered pervasive. Many issued revolutionary calls to remedy the problem.

Social thinkers for the next 150 years ascribed the problem to commerce, particularly a vision of commerce called 'capitalism'. The proposed cures for this ill ranged from the creation of experimental utopian societies to violent revolutions. Socialism, anarchism and hundreds of other solutions were proposed, sought, attempted and in many cases implemented. Solutions involved hundreds of millions of people in Russia, China and South East Asia.

We are all familiar with the roots of this caring/anti-capitalist movement; we know the trunk as the socialist tree. We are particularly familiar with the gigantic branches: Soviet Russia and Maoist China, that have since fallen off. We are also aware that most of the leaves have fallen off the rest of this tree. Yet the tree still has a few branches with a few leaves. The leaves are found among academics, in Europe and KPFA radio listeners in Berkeley California.

I want to single out one particularly American, one particularly important, one iridescent branch of the socialist tree that best suits my argument. It is the branch of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. Bellamy's book was the primer for most American socialists. The actual title was Looking Backwards 2000 to 1887. 1887 was the publication date; the book sold over a million copies and was the bible of most American socialists for seventy-five years.

Bellamy argued that a perfect society was immediately at hand if we redistributed the existing wealth of the society. He was right in 1887. Everyone would be more comfortable, productive, appreciated, well off and decidedly happy. The title of the novel referred to the author purportedly looking back at the socialist paradise of Bellamy's imagination created for the 20th century. The novel contrasted his imagined 20th century with the horrors of the real capitalist 19th century.

Bellamy achieved his happy solution by redistributing wealth. Redistribute national wealth and roughly two thirds of all people would be better off, some much better off; a few, under 5%, much worse off.

My understanding of what has gone severely wrong with the tree of socialism is that Bellamy's argument for redistribution was only valid for the period before 1887. Before 1887 the world was relatively static. Enriching most people at the time and remaining in a static nation would have been beneficial. After 1887, Bellamy's people and the rest of the Socialist tree would have been better off only for a short time, living in a static nation. Other non-Bellamy nations would have remained on the 'dynamic ' upside of an Indy race car to prosperity. The vigor of commerce and technology kept accelerating.

'Bellamy's nation' was created in Cuba in 1962. Forty years later it remains egalitarian and static.

Look at any historic period where land was the primary source of wealth (most of the last few thousand years),the society was static. That prolonged agrarian period is mother to our moral values, religions, our view of poverty, caring and social responsibility. These values dominated and suited that landscape. They are still imbedded in many minds today. The socialist tree had its roots in the agrarian reaction to erupting commerce and technology.

One characteristic defines that agrarian period of history: life was a zero sum game. In a zero sum game, one player must always gain at the expense of another. The total gain of one player or one side must equal the total loss for the other side. Nearly all games have that quality: checkers, chess, poker etc. A winner, a loser.

Agrarian land-based societies are winner-loser worlds. The owner of the most productive piece of land benefits at the expense of the less productive pieces of land. The poor lost out on the grab for land. Generation after generation.

Military might was a zero sum operation, too. Warfare usually produced a winner and a loser or several losers. No net gains.

Government, elected and bureaucratic, always has the zero sum quality.

Religion and academia are zero sum. Religions gain and lose at each other's expense.

Academia is a hierarchy, from the top person who is a department head at Harvard down to the part time instructor at a community college. Climbers gain at the expense of displacing professors higher in the hierarchy.

Where do we look to get out of a zero sum game?

Commerce and technology are the two zest-filled human efforts that offer gain for all participants. They are not zero sum games.

Adam Smith was first to recognize that commerce produced more than it consumed. Merely exchanging what-I-have-that-you-want for what-you-have-that-I-want, makes both of us happier. Voluntarily. Furthermore, if we each specialize in producing more goods than we need, especially using technology, everyone around us benefits too.

Commerce and technology began their joint euphoric eruption of prosperity in the19th century. By the1880's they were reaching their stride. Life span was stairstepping ahead; the middle class was aborning. Ordinary Americans dined year round on bananas and oranges, they dressed in silks, dwelt in illuminated cities and traveled faster, more elegantly than royalty of earlier centuries.

Herein lies the moral and political quandary of our era. Liberal democrats still think caring for the disadvantaged should be solved with the ideology of an era before the blooming of commerce and technology; their intellectual resources root in an arid period when life was a zero sum game. In that ancient zero sum era, redistribution was the only solution to the inequities of disadvantage. Today such a solution is not relevant and may be harmful.

Let us pause to remember that redistribution of wealth is not just an abstract policy of progressive taxation.

Over the last hundred years redistribution of wealth has included government expropriation of industry and killing 'plutocrats. Today it still exudes forth in a wide range of policies including government support for unions, tariffs and commercial monopolies. The underlying logic always harkens to a zero sum world where redistribution would have benefited more people than it crushed.

I have written this loquacious article with a specific intent: improving my own life. Living in San Francisco surrounds me with friends who gathered when we were social activists of the hippy era. A large chunk of these people still have socialist views and seem unable to outgrow them.

It is my hope that we can together take a moment to reflect on the present day meaning of goodness. We all care for the disadvantaged. As we look deeper and wider, we may agree that redistribution of wealth would have worked in a static society, but in a dynamic society, it may be counter productive.

There are umpteen policies on the legistlative agenda today, that propose redistribution. I suggest we all need to re-think our application of redistribution ideology. Possibly replace it.

Current issues such as single payer health plans are intended to be redistributive, so is our social security system that has no alternatives, so are school systems that satisfy teachers' union interests, farm subsidies, anti-dumping legislation and a throng of other items on the legislative agenda.

My life would be a little easier if people around me showed appreciation for the dynamic flavor of a society that embraces commerce and technology. I could draw nourishment from fresh political discussion.

Michael Phillips, Nov. 2002