http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory67.html
The Conservative Welfare State
by Anthony Gregory
The Social Security Administration has a Web page dedicated to the creator
of modern government retirement programs, Otto von Bismarck, the late 19th
century militarist chancellor of Prussia. The page explains:
Bismarck was motivated to introduce social insurance in Germany both in
order to promote the well-being of workers in order to keep the German
economy operating at maximum efficiency, and to stave-off calls for more
radical socialist alternatives. Despite his impeccable right-wing
credentials, Bismarck would be called a socialist for introducing these
programs, as would President Roosevelt 70 years later. In his own speech to
the Reichstag during the 1881 debates, Bismarck would reply: "Call it
socialism or whatever you like. It is the same to me."
Now, one might paraphrase about the current situation and say, "Despite his
impeccable right-wing credentials, President Bush could be called a
socialist for introducing his welfare programs, as was President Roosevelt
70 years earlier."
But considering the rich history of right-wing nationalist rulers from
Bismarck to Bush, and their affinity to a certain type of socialism, perhaps
"despite" would not be the most appropriate preposition to use in discussing
Bismarck's or Bush's conservative welfare state. Like Bismarck, Bush does
seem to advocate his social programs to ensure "maximum efficiency," and the
president's belief in business-state relationships to "save Social Security"
reveals a distinctly conservative desire to make socialism work better by
injecting a bit of capitalism into the mix.
In many ways, Bismarck is the inspiration behind America's greatest
socialist experiments: Social Security, Medicare, and nationalized public
schooling. The German tyrant saw the people he ruled as a collective social
organism, to be molded, conditioned and regimented toward the furtherance of
Prussian nationalism and the consolidated state he envisioned. The central
state would control people from cradle grave, take charge of the education
and development of young people's minds, consume a sizable portion of the
private economy for its military conquests and promise to take care of the
old when they retired. The nation-state ruled supreme; the people, mere cogs
in the machine.
Bush's expansion of Medicare, his housing subsidies, his federal subsidies
for families and churches, and his desire to "save Social Security" are not
leftist diversions from conservatism, nor are they reactionary diversions
from Progressive welfare statism: Bush is simply the most passionate and
consistent spokesman for the conservative welfare state that has occupied
the White House in recent years.
Republicans have always done a lot of meddling in the American economy.
Nixon imposed wage and price controls, Reagan practiced protectionism, Bush
the First signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law. The
regulatory neo-mercantilism of the Republican Party, especially as it ties
in to the warfare state, has been a core feature of its program since the
1860s. Before that, it was the conservative Hamiltonians who desired a
national bank and government funding for national infrastructure. In recent
administrations, Republicans have been famous for agricultural welfare,
corporate subsidies, and other giveaways to certain friends of theirs.
The purer welfare-state proposals, however, have not appeared as much on the
foreground until recently. Bush's talk about giving money to Africa, to
religious charities, to single Americans on the condition that they marry -
none of this sounds particularly Republican, even to many libertarians well
versed in the historic evils of the party. It is too socialistic, too
interested in social engineering rather than simply giving cushy contracts
and pork to cronies. It is too idealistic, much like Bush's war to make the
world safe for American foreign policy, rather than more realistic but
brutal, like Reagan's funding of death squads in Latin America to contain
Communism. And unlike his father, who, for example, raised unemployment
benefits, Bush seems to believe truly in his own Great Society, as opposed
to simply advancing the welfare state out of political pragmatism.
If any of this seems confusing, it shouldn't. Like Bismarck, Bush is a true
believer in the right-wing welfare state. Like Bismarck, Bush's loyalty lies
first with the militarized nation state and second with the national health
of the subjects it comprises. Bismarck wanted to foster a perfect Prussian
culture, indoctrinated and devoted to the state, stripped of any
individuality that would interrupt the state's military ends. Bush wants the
same, except to the ends of nationalized Americanism. Like the Progressives
of 100 years ago, many of today's conservatives tie together nationalism,
nativism, and faith in the federal government's power to improve society,
keep it distinctly American, and spread American values worldwide through a
belligerent foreign policy.
The welfare state is a right-wing invention, developed first and most
characteristically by imperialist rulers as a method of shaping and
controlling the masses. The Marxist dreams of abolishing markets, hierarchy
and private property have little in common with the social engineering of
the conservative welfare state, the one that we have here in America.
Indeed, welfare statism does not at all clash with modern conservatism.
Depending on the conservative's particular agenda, it either fits in
consonantly with the whole program, or it is an essential feature in it. The
use of redistributive power to engineer society, to nurture dependence on
the state, including its police and military segments, to bribe voters and
tame down bitterness toward the ruling class while doing nothing to address
the fundamental origins of poverty, is a conservative endeavor.
To understand this helps libertarians to better recognize the nature of
government interventionism as it occurs under Republican administrations.
As Murray Rothbard so well put it forty years ago (as if he were writing
today):
Libertarians of the present day are accustomed to think of socialism as
the polar opposite of the libertarian creed. But this is a grave mistake,
responsible for a severe ideological disorientation of libertarians in the
present world. As we have seen, conservatism was the polar opposite of
liberty; and socialism, while to the "left" of conservatism, was essentially
a confused, middle-of-the-road movement. It was, and still is,
middle-of-the-road because it tries to achieve liberal ends by the use of
conservative means..
Socialism, like liberalism and against conservatism, accepted the
industrial system and the liberal goals of freedom, reason, mobility,
progress, higher living standards for the masses, and an end to theocracy
and war; but it tried to achieve these ends by the use of incompatible,
conservative means: statism, central planning, communitarianism, etc. Or
rather, to be more precise, there were from the beginning two different
strands within socialism: one was the right-wing, authoritarian strand, from
Saint-Simon down, which glorified statism, hierarchy, and collectivism and
which was thus a projection of conservatism trying to accept and dominate
the new industrial civilization. The other was the left-wing, relatively
libertarian strand, exemplified in their different ways by Marx and Bakunin,
revolutionary and far more interested in achieving the libertarian goals of
liberalism and socialism; but especially the smashing of the state apparatus
to achieve the "withering away of the State" and the "end of the
exploitation of man by man."
When a conservative like George W. Bush expands Medicare to the benefit of
connected pharmaceutical companies or increases Department of Education
spending to rid local schools of leftist tendencies, he is not using liberal
means to achieve conservative ends. He is using conservative means to
achieve conservative ends. It is the liberals who are confused when they try
to use the state to protect the poor masses against the wealthy and
powerful, for such a thing has never been accomplished. Certainly, leftist
revolutions can be among the bloodiest and most despotic, and they simply
yield a new power elite. Conservatives, on the other hand, wish to maintain
and conserve the power elite as it is.
Still, libertarians continue to make one of two errors in contemplating the
Bush regime's spendthrift policies. One is to assume that if a Republican is
so bad, a Democrat will obviously be much worse, and that, in fact, Bush is
probably doing all of this as a matter of playing politics and to keep far
more injurious Democratic programs at bay. The other mistake is to assume
that Bush is an aberration in his party or movement, a Republican In Name
Only, and that real conservatives don't believe in the welfare state but
somehow he does.
Liberals make a different kind of error, of course: they laughably assert
that Bush has cut spending or naïvely assume that he wants to destroy Social
Security. They seem to have a problem understanding that Bush, like all
power-mongering rulers, likes to spend other people's money and enjoys the
power that welfare statism provides to the presidency. One reason for the
misunderstanding is the rhetorical cloak of the Republican Party as a party
of smaller government, freer markets, and rugged individualism.
Libertarians need to refrain from perpetuating this myth. Many libertarians
have a tendency, when addressing the left, to assume that all their reasons
for disliking Republican rule emanate from a core philosophy of statism and
a greater hostility to liberty than can be found on the right. So
libertarians often find themselves perversely defending the Republican state
against leftist critiques, standing up for power against dissent and doing
so most bizarrely in the name of liberty. Instead, we should encourage
liberal skepticism of Bush's Social Security and Medicare programs, agree
with the critiques of Republican corporatism and explain how it all ties
together with the conservative welfare state. As long as the rulers feed and
clothe the people, the people will never be free to do what they want with
their bodies, their lives and their dreams. A state in charge of your health
has a vested interest in regulating your behavior. Without economic liberty,
there is no civil liberty.
Bush, like many conservative nationalists, sees the state as a foolproof
instrument for managing and improving upon society, and he has acted upon
that principle like no other president in recent history. The welfare state
he champions has a conservative flavor - religious, nationalist, patriotic,
and old-fashioned in its emphasis on family values and a back-to-basics
educational curriculum - but, like warfare statism, it is also conservative
in its means, just like Bismarck's welfare state more than 100 years ago.
For liberty to prevail, one realization we need to make is that conservatism
is not libertarianism, not even, and perhaps especially, as it concerns the
welfare state.
March 15, 2005
Anthony Gregory is a writer and musician who lives in Berkeley, California.
He is a research assistant at the Independent Institute. See his webpage for
more articles and personal information.
Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com
--
Jay P Hailey ~Meow!~
MSNIM - jayphailey ;
AIM -jayphailey03;
ICQ - 37959005
HTTP://jayphailey.8m.com
No human being has the right -- under any circumstances -- to initiate force
against another human being, nor to advocate, threaten or delegate its
initiation
_______________________________________________
Libnw mailing list
Libnw@immosys.com
List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw
Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
