Tuesday, 31 May 2022

Is Boris a socialist?


As the Queen’s reign reaches 70 years many people will be reflecting on where we were in 1952 and where we may be going.

The most important event was the end of the Cold War in 1991. This remains the case even as 2022 has seen a renewed threat from Russia and what might be called Cold War II.

1991 was decisive because it demonstrated that if you give people a choice between socialism and free markets, they will choose the latter. It was no longer possible to seriously claim that Left wing thought would make people richer.



The usual counter arguments may be inserted here. The Soviet Union despite being called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was not really socialist. Communism has not really been tried and nor has socialism. One more try and we will show how socialism makes everyone both richer and equal.

But this is the equivalent of trying to believe that there are Gods on top of Mount Olympus. It simply is not possible to seriously believe in Zeus and for the same reason it is not possible to seriously believe in socialist economics. It was tested to destruction in the twentieth century. Socialism will bring you tyranny, poverty and mass murder because it can only succeed by changing human nature and that can only be done by force.

People are naturally capitalistic. We are motivated by profit. We care more for our own family than someone else’s and care more for our own country than someone else’s too. This is why we have countries where people are similar linguistically and culturally rather than a world without borders.

But though socialism was decisively defeated in 1991, the Left did not give up the fight, but instead decided to fight in a different way.

The foundation of the free market is that I work for myself and my family. If my country protects both, I will also protect my country. This is the bargain. Socialism can only succeed if it attacks all three, which is what it has been doing since 1991.

The Left has ceased attempting to introduce a truly planned socialist economy in the West, instead favouring socialism lite or social democracy. On the surface this retains the distinctive forms of capitalism, but gradually undermines free market thinking. At the same time the nation state is continually undermined from within and without and the rights of both the family and individual are diminished.

The reason we have countries is due to human beings naturally wishing to form groups with people who are similar. If that were not the case then the world would have developed differently. Building the Tower of Babel would have succeeded and we would all have ended up speaking the same language thousands of years ago. We would long ago have abolished all distinctions of tribe and appearance centuries ago. Everyone would live in one world with no countries and no distinctions. We’d all be a mucky shade of grey.  This is the Left’s aim. But it requires changing human nature.

The reason that we don’t live in one world without countries or distinctions is that we don’t want to. For this reason, the Left has to force us. But instead of using more tyrannical forms of force the Left instead has relied on giving us no choice.

If you allow unlimited migration then the logical endpoint is to abolish countries. If my country has people from all over the world and your country equally has people from all over the world, then the reason for distinguishing between these countries ceases to be.

If French and German people could freely migrate to each other’s country then in time they would intermarry and develop a common language. If that could be done all over Europe then you would no longer have Italians and Poles, you would have Europeans with a common identity and a common language. But if you can do this with Europe you can just as well do it with Europe and Africa.

This is why Remainers reacted with such fury to Brexit. It was the first setback for the Left since 1991 and it had to be punished.

At the same time as the Left has been abolishing the nation state it has also been re-educating the family and the individual.

We only care about our own family, because these few people are closest to us and we love them and can rely on them. But if it takes a village as Hilary Clinton said, there is no need for a family. What’s more if someone has three children with three different fathers and has divorced twice then the sense of family will be such that it might as well be a village.

The collapse of sexual morality in the West means that anyone can have sex with anyone they please with no moral consequences so long as there is consent. It is now normal to meet someone on your telephone, see them that same day and have sex with them immediately. It means that men no longer have to marry in order to have sex so frequently don’t bother. It means that women frequently have children without fathers, because the state will pay for them.

Divorce is now easy. You just have to wait a year. While marriage previously had the purpose of protecting children by making a man remain with the person he has sex and children with, now marriage has been divorced from procreation by opening it up to same sex couples who by definition will never have children naturally.

The final attack is on the individual. What am I? The first thing we learn as children is that I am a boy or I am a girl. This concept is so vital to our identity as individuals that many languages make being a boy or a girl central to their grammar. But even though this is the fundament of humanity it is attacked so that it is no longer possible to clearly distinguish between a boy and a girl. But if a boy can become a girl, then an elephant can become a mouse and 2 + 2 may equal 5. At this point we can build socialism because we have succeeded in destroying the individual, the family and the nation state.

People will naturally choose, free markets, families and individualism. Russia does not have a problem with mass migration, not merely because migrants are housed in the tundra. But socialism is winning in the West despite our theoretically having a democratic choice.

No one voted for mass immigration to Britain. No one voted for Net Zero making it too expensive to turn on the heating. No one voted for any of the other things that have been undermining our country our families and ourselves.

Free markets depend on sound money and living within our means. It depends on a distinction between those who work and earn and those who don’t. But each of these have been undermined by successive governments excessive borrowing and unlimited public spending which has merely caused inflation. If governments can simply create money and spend it without limit, then why work? Why not simply be paid to stay at home? Call it lockdown and you have your socialist utopia.

The present Conservative Government has introduced a sort of socialism by stealth. If there is a cost of living crisis, the state will solve the problem rather than individuals and families doing so by means of thrift and hard work. It has failed to protect our nation state from mass migration which gradually turns us into a world without borders and it is undermining our democracy by failing to give us a real choice between socialism and free markets. If we vote Labour we will get more of the same and there is no mainstream British party that offers us low public spending, low taxes free trade and sound money.

The Left was decisively defeated in 1991, but although almost no serious thinker believes in socialist economics this is what we have ended up with slowly so we have barely noticed. The hope lies with Conservatism. The bankruptcy of Left-wing thinking is such that it depends on believing that a contradiction is not merely true, but that it is not even a contradiction.

The folly of the right is that Tories will get no credit for being socialists. We vote tribally just as we do everything else. Same old wicked Tories will say Labour and the SNP as they watch the May Day procession pass Boris’s tomb with its body made partly of wax and wholly of what might have been.