The Advocate of Plunderby Don Mathews He is a deep thinker, an intellectual, and he devotes his thoughts to the worldly condition of society. He congratulates himself on his concern for society (and hopes that others take note of his concern!), and is careful to be outraged by injustice. His intellectual passion is the distribution of income and wealth in society. He has poured over data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and numerous studies based on panel data compiled from University of Michigan longitudinal surveys that lay bare to any who would deny it the reality that income and wealth are distributed quite unequally in the U.S. He constructs the ramification: such gross inequality is social injustice. And his passion – and, indeed, his outrage – move him to write at length about this social injustice. He uses the strongest words he can find. He calls the current distribution of income and wealth "obscene"1 and "unconscionable"2. He describes the trend toward greater income inequality as a "polarizing spiral"3 that is "our greatest internal threat"4 and a problem that "disgraces American society"5. He believes the state has the power to correct such injustice, and he implores the state to use its power to do so. He is an advocate of plunder. Oh, our intellectual never uses the term ‘plunder.’ He believes the state should use its power to tax to achieve "distributive justice," but he never describes that power as plunder, and rarely even describes it as taxation. The term he uses is ‘redistribution.’ But taxation is plunder. Plunder is the taking of property by force. Taxation, also, is the taking of property by force. Taxation is simply a specific kind of plunder: it is plunder perpetrated by government. Plunder perpetrated by government is still plunder. What difference does it make who’s holding the gun? And what difference does it make if the perpetrator is a democratically-elected government that enjoys the hearty support of a majority of citizens? Plunder is still plunder, and taxation is still plunder, no matter how many people are in favor of it. Government may use the loot it plunders in many ways. It may "redistribute" the loot. It may use the loot to build roads and bridges or to provide "essential services." Or government officials may line their pockets with the loot. But what government does with the loot does not change the fact that government obtains its loot by force, by plunder. Once taxation is recognized for what it is – plunder perpetrated by government – our intellectual is revealed in his true light. He is not the brilliant, humane man of compassion that he thinks he is. He is an errand boy, a propagandist for the state. The message he delivers does not promote a peaceful, decent society, but state power and its aggressive use against peaceful citizens. There is nothing original about him; tyrants have put his kind to good use for hundreds of years. No state can exert its power unless the people are obedient. In fact, state power and civil obedience are the same phenomenon: to say the state has power is to say the people are obedient to the state. And if the people are obedient to the state, they are so, to a substantial degree, by their own consent, for the people far outnumber those who wield state power. Should the people withdraw their consent, the state will collapse. Our intellectual serves state power by softening up the masses. He chooses his words – "obscene, unconscionable, polarizing spiral, greatest internal threat" – to appeal to the emotions, fears, and envy of the people. He also chooses words to stir the tyrant within them. Those who oppose redistribution, he says, engage in "top-down class warfare,"6 and are the real enemies in the struggle to create a decent and just society. He prevails upon the people for their obedience, for their consent to their own servitude. These days, our intellectual, our errand boy for the state, delivers his message in op-ed columns for The New York Times and other major newspapers, in interviews on political television shows, in speeches before gatherings of professional social activists, and in televised testimony before Congressional committees. He steadfastly opposes any let-up in government perpetrated plunder, including the paltry one now being proposed by President George W. Bush. He has been railing against this particular proposal for months now, as always with the robotic "tax cut for the rich" rhetoric, and will continue to do so even if he wins this battle. For his vision of social justice will require far more plunder if it is ever to be realized. His vision always calls for renewed efforts. But his efforts make the state, not society, richer. References
April 25, 2001 Don Mathews is a columnist for the Brunswick (Ga.) News. Copyright 2001 LewRockwell.com |