The Brexit heresy

In the modern world we are all supposed to be empiricists. We determine truth by means of the scientific method and reject as superstition something that is believed despite the evidence.  But we apply this rule selectively. The claims of Christianity may have been rejected because they depended on belief in miracles, but the assumptions of the Left are accepted even when they are contrary to the evidence.

The Left starts from the assumption that people are equal or at least ought to be equal. If they are not equal the task is to make them equal. We find this to be more or less assumed and hardly ever questioned. It is this above all that gives the Left an inherent political advantage. Consciously or unconsciously many people think that inequality is wrong and that any instance of it ought to be addressed. But equality of outcome is fundamentally a Left-wing ideal as it can only occur by means of Government intervention rather than the free interaction of individuals.

If we allow people to act freely and for the free market to determine each person’s material value, we will not end up with equality. Quite the contrary. The Right accepts this, recognises that people are different and does not attempt to manage the end point of human interactions. Small government laissez faire capitalism will give us freedom and prosperity, but will naturally lead to inequality, because the place where someone ends up financially will depend on his own efforts, luck and the help or hindrance of those he knows.

Throughout human history some people have done rather better than others. Some have had more talent, more beauty or strength. Insofar as there is any evidence it would suggest that all men are created unequal. Yet despite this we are supposed to believe the contrary. Why? On what evidence should we believe that everyone is equal or that they ought to be?

One of the methods by which we test the validity of a scientific theory is to see if it fails. Well the theory that people ought to be made equal has been tested rather often in the past century or so. On each occasion that a serious attempt has been made to eradicate inequality, we have seen a loss of prosperity and freedom. Whenever and wherever socialist ideas have been put into practice they have performed worse than free markets. They have frequently led to tyranny and horror on a scale unimaginable before the attempt. Even in those Western countries where socialism has been tried on a more limited scale the price of removing inequality has always been a decrease in prosperity, not merely for the richest members of society, but the poorest too. Socialism has been falsified, but it is still believed, because it is unfalsifiable to those who believe in it. Its assumptions therefore are not scientific but rather quasi-religious.

I have wondered sometimes why some Remain supporters are quite so devoutly opposed to the UK leaving the EU. I don’t at all believe that it is because they think it will make the UK less prosperous, nor that they particularly care about trade relations. I think it is because Brexit is contrary to their ideal of bringing down borders and thereby achieving the equality of all humanity. If the European Union could be made to work, then this would be one more step along the road to eventual World Government, by the UN or some such body. This I think is the ideal that some Remainers can’t bear to lose.

What we find once more is Left-Wing Utopianism coming into contact with actual reality. They are willing to ignore whatever faults the EU has because it points the way to the abolishment of the sovereign nation state. Once more the Left wants to mould and change and equalise human nature rather than accept it. The Right on the contrary realises that it is not accidental that nation states arose in the world.

Thousands of years ago there was a common Indo-European language, which was the ancestor of most European languages and many Asian ones too. All those who spoke it could understand each other. But we did not remain one great mass of equal Indo-Europeans, the Tower of Babel fell and we diverged. It must above all have been because we did not wish to understand each other. We accentuated difference and over the centuries our tribes became so different that it would be hard to guess that a Russian and a Brit speak a language that once was the same and that there was no misunderstanding between us.

Later there was a common Slavic language and a common Germanic language, but we preferred to be different from our neighbours and developed in such a way that we created linguistic borders and then the borders of tribes, then kingdoms and finally nation states. There must be something in human nature that wishes to do this. Naturally there is a tension and a balance between the unifying and the separating tendencies. When they reach equilibrium we have nation states.

The foundation of the sovereign nation state is about difference rather than equality. If equality was inherent in human nature we would still be building the Tower of Babel and we might have reached heaven by now. But this is to be Utopian. The reality is that people prefer to live with those who speak a similar language. Hungarians, for example, prefer to live with Hungarians and make a clear distinction between someone who is a fellow citizen and someone who is not. If that had not been the case then the modern nation state would never have arisen. The Right (apart from those who would trade the profits of globalisation for their country) accepts this fact and therefore sees the nation state as the foundation of international law and diplomacy. The Left would prefer that first there is no distinction between a Hungarian and a Frenchman (the EU) and then that there is no distinction between a Hungarian and anyone else in the world (The UN/World Government).

Hungarians don’t speak an Indo-European language. The reason for this is that their ancestors migrated from somewhere in Central Asia and settled in the Carpathian Basin. Since then they have maintained their identity and their language and for this reason we have a modern sovereign nation state called Hungary.

The Left’s ultimate goal is to eventually abolish places like Hungary. It seeks to achieve this in a number of ways. The first task is for Hungary to lose its sovereignty. Having subsumed its sovereignty in the EU, it will find that there is no real distinction between a Hungarian and any other citizen of the EU. This will provide Hungarians with some advantages. Unlike the UK, they receive a subsidy from the EU.  It will be easier for them to live and work in other European countries. But it will also mean other Europeans will have the right to go to Hungary.

Hungary has a population of around 10 million people. What if over the next century or so 10 million arrived in Hungary from elsewhere. Would these people speak Hungarian? It's a hard language, but they might learn. Still at some point as boundaries collapse and nation states are abolished we will find the distinction between a Hungarian and a German abolished too. This isn’t an accident. It’s the reason for tearing down the borders.

But the Left is not merely intent on removing European borders. "Today [Europe], tomorrow the world." Equality demands that citizens of one nation state should be equal with the citizens of any other nation state. But by definition citizenship means that we have a responsibility towards our fellow countrymen that we don’t have to anyone else. It is this that makes a person a citizen.  It is this above all that prevents equality between citizens of one country and citizens of another. This is what the Left is attacking, for its ultimate aim is to say that there is no distinction between citizens of different states, because there are no longer separate states. But how can this be achieved?

At present in the world Hungarians feel an affinity for each other. They care more for their fellow Hungarians than anyone else besides family.  This is usually called patriotism. This and this alone makes people willing to pay taxes for the welfare of their fellow countrymen.  It is for this reason too that when West and East Germany reunited they immediately felt that they had a special duty towards each other that they didn’t have towards other Europeans or people in general. But so long as people feel this way we will never achieve equality in the world, because the distinction between a German and a person in general is based on difference.

The task of achieving equality and abolishing the nation state can only be achieved by making Germans realise that a German citizen can come from anywhere. At this point the distinction between for instance a German citizen who speaks only French and a French citizen who speaks only French will dissolve. If in time Hungarians merge with other Europeans, the distinction between them will merge as well. Soon even the idea of being Hungarian will cease. If it does we will be one step closer to the Left’s Utopia.

But the goal of creating equality between all people in the world can only be achieved when the Hungarian sees no difference between himself and someone from say Japan or Yemen. But how can that happen if there are only Hungarians in Hungary? It is crucial to the task of abolishing Hungary’s boundaries with the rest of the world that Hungarians should be from everywhere. This is the whole point of abolishing borders. It allows everyone to move where they please. At this point there will be no countries. Imagine. 

All the evidence from history suggests that people prefer to speak their own language and prefer to live with those who are similar and with whom they have a common identity. Nation states arose for this reason. They conform to human nature as it is. We are unequal and the greatest inequality is that we care more for our families and our fellow citizens than anyone else. We are willing to fight for them and die for them. This is human nature as it is. But the Left not content with its failed experiments with socialism is attempting gradually to abolish the nation state. The way to do this is through abolishing sovereignty, which eventually leads to the abandonment of the concept of international borders and a world where there is free movement everywhere from anywhere. There is no reason to suppose that this experiment will end well. History suggests that when people with very different identities and languages mix the result frequently is conflict.  Perhaps this time will be different.

The Left’s goal of achieving equality even when it is contrary to human nature has caused immense historical suffering. The problem is that because this is a semi-religious ideal, no amount of evidence to the contrary will persuade them to give it up. They are angry about Brexit, not because of trade or prosperity. They are angry because we dare to stand up against their attempt to abolish the sovereign nation state and to say that we believe there ought to be borders we can control and a real distinction between our fellow countrymen and the rest of the world.   Brexiteers are heretics rebelling against all that the Left has tried to achieve since 1945.  We have committed the unforgivable sin, by questioning what must not be questioned. Burning at the stake would be too kind a punishment for they can see that their Tower is crumbling. This is why they are so furious and why they are fighting such a continual rearguard action. It is also why we must succeed. 

It’s not bad enough yet

 I was going to write about something else this week. I had something almost ready about Jacob Rees-Mogg’s views on theology. But then I saw that he had ruled himself out from being leader, no doubt because of his views on theology. Maybe at a later date I will discuss those views. I think there is an interesting rational argument to be had about the subject. But why stick your neck out. It’s not bad enough yet.

 Every other day now North Korea either has a new test for a new sort of nuclear weapon or else it sends a rocket over Japan. Kim Jong-un is the Little Engine that Could. He’s little and a little round and he can. Everybody gets very angry about this and makes all sorts of threats. But nothing is going to happen until and unless he does. If any sort of nuclear weapon actually lands on American territory or the territory of an ally then there will be a nuclear response. But until and unless that happens Mr Kim knows that he can pretty much do as he pleases. The Chinese don’t want to see a unified Korea, so they will do nothing. The Russian’s chief foreign policy goal is to do the opposite of what the Americans want and so they will do nothing. Mr Kim wants attention and perhaps needs it and so he will throw his rockets out of his pram, but the game requires that he doesn’t go too far. The only problem is if he miscalculates. What if one of his rockets accidentally lands in Japan? Is there a response then? But fundamentally until the situation gets bad enough the Americans will do nothing. It’s not bad enough yet. I think it has to get very bad indeed before any sort of military action is taken against North Korea. So Mr Trump’s threats are probably empty, just as Mr Kim’s rockets are empty. The game is very dangerous indeed, but for the moment that’s all it is.

The same logic applies to our domestic security situation and the situation of every other Western European Country and indeed the United States. Here we face a situation that is much more dangerous than North Korea, but here too it isn’t bad enough yet.

Every now and again for the last while we turn on the news to find there has been another terrorist incident somewhere in Europe or the United States. We’ve had big ones (9/11) and small ones (Parson’s Green) and medium ones (e.g. Nice).  But none of these are bad enough. What we always get afterwards is the same meaningless words from politicians and the same meaningless gestures. The Eiffel Tower is lit up with the colours of another country’s flag. Scared people tell other scared people that they are not scared. We promise that we won’t give in to terrorism while trying to modify what we say and do in order not to provoke it. None of these things do any good whatsoever. We’ve even ceased to listen to what the politicians say as we already know what they said last time and what they will say next time.

The problem is this. Just as Jacob Rees-Mogg has to rule himself out of being Tory leader for telling the truth about his views, so all of us have to rule ourselves out of membership of polite society if we tell the truth about the nature of the problem and provide solutions that might actually solve it. It’s not bad enough for us to do this and so we say nothing.

There is an unforgivable sin in the modern western world. Because of this unforgivable sin most people go to great lengths to prove that they are not sinners. The unforgivable sin is so awful that I dare not even name it. I can blaspheme against the Holy Spirit with impunity, but we all know that certain words and certain truths may not be said in modern Britain. The reason they may not be said is that it isn’t bad enough yet.

Since Scottish politics became a dead issue not worth writing about I have spent the whole summer trying to explore the fundamentals of politics. Our problem is that we have turned equality into a God that must be worshipped at all costs. It means that whenever we face a situation that requires discrimination we fail to discriminate. We may start off with the best of intentions, after all we all want to be treated fairly, but we end up ignoring real difference. There is a real difference, for instance, between men and women. We are all of us who are not blind and unable to touch fully aware of it. But the logic of the equality lobby leads to children of six being told that this difference is not real and that girls and boys are interchangeable at will. The truth remains the truth and reality remains reality. The foundation of human society is the real difference between men and women. Throw away that foundation at your peril. Men and women want different things and to an extent we think differently and are often good at different things. Treat us fairly by all means but don’t ignore the reality of our difference.

There is likewise a difference between the duty I owe to my family, my fellow citizens and the duty I owe to people in general. These are real differences. I do not have a duty to ruin my own country in order to save the people of another. We are not equal.

When we turn equality into the thing to be worshipped at all costs, the cost in the end is Parsons’s Green. Discriminate has become a bad word. Not the worst of words of course, but bad enough. But really it means to recognise a distinction. People are different. Of course there are fundamental characteristics that we share with people the world over. But anyone who has travelled realises that there is a distinction between my society and your society, my culture and your culture. This is a real distinction. The attempt to erase this distinction because of equality is leading the West to disaster. Many people on the Left because of their belief in equality are trying in effect to create a world without borders. The result will be very bad indeed. It already is pretty bad as you may have noticed in the last five years or so. It may get much worse.

Can anything be done? Possibly. The most important step is to leave the EU. This makes Parliament sovereign and gives us the power to elect politicians who will do what it takes to make our country safe. It also gives us the power, if we choose to exercise it, to act in the interests of our own citizens rather than the citizens of the whole world. We must have no foreign court telling us what to do. The problem is that whenever a country attempts to do what is necessary to make itself safe (e.g. Poland, Hungary etc.) other countries condemn them for failing to share in our common danger. Each of our European countries ought, after all, to be equally dangerous otherwise we sin against the God of Equality.

Will anything be done? Probably not, at least not yet. I think it probably needs a plane to fly into the Houses of Parliament and for that plane to be packed with radioactive material or else some form of chemical or biological weaponry. Such a plane could easily have been flown on September 11th 2001 in which case it might have killed 100,000 people rather than 2996. That would probably have been bad enough. In that case our politicians would not have gone on about what this had nothing to do with. Rather they would have solved the problem. We wouldn’t have had any choice. But this won’t happen, not yet anyway, because it’s not bad enough.  

   

Equality or freedom

What is it that distinguishes people on the Left and people on the Right? We now have two party politics again. But what is the choice between these two parties fundamentally about? The answer can be summarised in the following way. Conservatism is about what is. Liberalism/Socialism is about what ought to be. For this reason Conservatives seek to protect what is, while the Left seeks to overturn it. Conservatives think that the fundamental structures of society that have developed over centuries should be respected and that progress should be gradual. The Left is dissatisfied with how society is at present and wishes always to change it radically, decisively and immediately. The basis for Conservatism is respect for human nature as it is. We have the society that we have because of human nature and the faults in society are due to the faults of human nature. The Left on the other hand is dissatisfied with human nature and seeks to reform it. Only in this way can it radically change a society that is grounded in human nature.

It is fundamental to human nature that we are unequal. In any primitive society you will find hierarchy. Likewise if  you took one thousand modern human beings and put them on an isolated island, left them and came back after a hundred years you would find inequality. Some people are more intelligent, stronger, more ruthless or have more charismatic personalities than others. Some people are fit and healthy, beautiful and popular, others are not. Some people have skills that are uncommon and which are necessary for society others have much less to offer. Society is fundamentally unequal because people are unequal. The Right accepts this as a fact and tries to work with human nature. The Left is dissatisfied with the inequality of human nature and seeks to create a better society by means of creating a better human being.

The motto of the French Revolution, liberté égalité fraternité [liberty, equality, fraternity] involves in fact only two things not three. Equality and fraternity are obviously the same thing. It’s the same idea as found in Schiller’s “Alle Menschen werden Brüder” [All people become brothers]. At present my brother or my sister is someone in my family. I prefer this person to someone who is not in my family. But heaven on Earth or Schiller’s Elysium happens when everyone in society is equally my brother and I cease to make the distinction between family and anyone else in society.

The problem for the French and for every other revolutionary movement is that people do not want to become brothers. We wish to retain our hierarchical structure whereby I have talents, gifts or qualities that make me more successful than you. A handsome man who has his pick of pretty women, does not wish to become equal with those who don’t. If my skill at fishing means that I can catch one hundred fish why should I give most of them to the person who has no skill at fishing or who is lazy and who catches none? It is for this reason that the motto of the French Revolution involves a contradiction. It is only possible to achieve equality/fraternity through compulsion. But what is compulsion other than loss of liberty?

It is not accidental that the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution or the Chinese Revolution led to terror. It is a feature. The attempt to eradicate inequality and create a utopian brotherhood of man will always involve those who are more talented, stronger and intelligent being forced to share with those who are less talented, weaker and unintelligent. Some may choose to share, but the majority will not. It is human nature to seek advantage for yourself and your family. Human nature as it is will never lead to utopia. The Left therefore has to force us to be free and force us to be equal.

This means that we are faced with an either/or situation. Either freedom or equality you cannot have both. If we believe in allowing people to live as they please with as little interference as possible from government we will have maximum inequality, but we will also have maximum freedom.  I can then earn what I am able and spend it as I please.  Other people are inevitably going to do either better than me or worse than me.

In order to create perfect equality the Government is going to have to interfere greatly in the lives of ordinary people. Those who are successful are going to have a large proportion of their income taken away and given to those who are less successful. But both those who are willing and those who are unwilling will have to give up the fruits of their success otherwise equality cannot be achieved.

Perfect equality can only be achieved by a perfect loss of liberty. But even those who don’t want to go the whole way and achieve a socialist brotherhood of man must accept that what they are doing involves people losing their freedom. If people are completely free and left alone they will naturally form a hierarchy based on talent. But the Left, dissatisfied with human nature, will try to mitigate this. Even if the Left doesn’t want to create perfect equality it still wants to create imperfect equality, i.e. more equality than would otherwise arise. But this can only be achieved by loss of freedom. My freedom to earn what I please and spend as I please, must be curtailed because I am forced to share what I would otherwise keep. Even an imperfect level of equality can only arise by forcing me to act differently to the way I would naturally choose. The attempt to create a society that is contrary to human nature, i.e. a more equal society, can only be done by creating a society that is less free. Every step on the way to equality is a step away from freedom.

In a democracy the poor may vote to take money from the rich in order to make their situation more equal with that of the rich. The rich may be outvoted and laws created that force the rich to give a large proportion of their money to the poor. This may be described as fair. But it obviously involves compulsion. What if the rich decide to take their wealth and their talents elsewhere? If enough of the rich do this then clearly the Left’s utopian project to change human nature will fail because it requires the contribution of the talented.  The Left’s response to people trying to take their money elsewhere is usually to prevent either the people or the money leaving. The Iron curtain was not an accident, rather it was the condition for the possibility of eradicating inequality.  You can only make people equal by forcing them to stay.  

There is a sliding scale between freedom and equality. Peak equality requires complete loss of freedom. Here we have revolutionary forms of communism. But those ideas of the Left such as social democracy or democratic socialism also require loss of freedom. They don’t require as much loss as communism, but this is only because they don’t achieve as much equality as communism does.

The Left argues that what is important is equality. There is in the West a fetish about equality. Whenever something is found to be unequal it is condemned. How dare some newsreaders earn more than other newsreaders? How dare some people have the right to do something that others do not? Equality is such now that “men” must be allowed to have children and choice must neither be limited by reality nor by nature. Everyone can be what he or she wants himself or herself to be and words must mean what I choose that they mean. The lame walk, the blind see, a man can marry a man and then give birth. All of these miracles are because all must bow down to the god/goddess equality.

The folly is that the Conservative Party far from defending the essence of Conservatism has been striving to do the Left’s job for it. The Conservative view ought to be simply that inequality is a function of human existence. A man cannot marry a man for the simple reason that he is a man. A man cannot give birth because he is not a woman. This is what these words means. This is the human nature that is the bedrock on which we build the foundation of our society. Alternatively we overthrow our society by overthrowing the meaning of ordinary words. “Man”, “Woman”, “marry” are words with clear meanings that reflect a clear reality. A man cannot become a woman any more than he can become a Martian or a dog. We may pretend that this man is a woman, but in reality the word we are looking for is “Eunuch”. The demand for equality, the demand to be able to do what our nature forbids, does not change the reality, but it may distort it. It may mean that we lose sight of what is real, because we end up lacking the words to describe it.

This is how the Left seeks to reform human nature. A Conservative who goes along with this or seeks to lend a hand is quite simply not a Conservative. He is in the wrong party and should leave.

Some people are paid more because they are more popular, more talented, or more beautiful. The only way to change this is if people become less free. Conservatives should become the champions of freedom and point out that the fundamental idea of Labour and any other left-wing party is to take away our freedom to be as we please. Instead absurdly the Conservative Party seeks to imitate the ideas of the Left rather than champion the ideas of the Right. Given a choice most people prefer to be free. Most people prefer freedom to equality. It is for this reason that the Left requires walls to maintain its equality.  

Freedom is an attractive idea. All human beings naturally want to be free to live as they please and to be as successful as their talents allow. This is the essence of being an individual rather than part of a socialist collective. Equality can only be achieved at the expense of my individuality being dissolved into the brotherhood. This is called levelling whereby what distinguishes me is erased because it creates difference. But difference is what makes me the individual that I am. Equality in striving to minimise difference ends up minimising me. It is for this reason that Left in the end always ceases to care about the individual and the freedom of each individual. This is not accidental. It is rather a feature of all Left-wing thinking. It is the mentality of the hive rather than the mentality of the freedom loving individual. There is nothing attractive for individuals in being forced to become worker drones.

For this reason it is high time that Conservatives argued for Conservative ideas and pointed out that equality can only come about through compulsion. You might think it is a fine idea to compel the rich to give up what he has earned through his talent, his skill and his good luck, but if you go down that route you will eventually find someone has taken away your freedom too. 

Socialism is theft

In order to understand a thing you have to strip it back to its essence. The fault of too much political thinking has been that it is too abstract. It tries to impose a theoretical system on human nature rather than accept human nature as the basic building block. This is especially the case with the political ideas of the Left and it is the reason the same pattern follows whenever they are implemented. Finding that socialism/social democracy comes up against the ordinary human nature of the workers, the Left requires that human nature changes. The theory is correct therefore it is the humans who are in error. But finding that people prefer to be in error the Left attempts to enforce change. It does this first through law, but if it meets opposition, being convinced that the goal of socialism is worth it, the Left resorts to force. Everything follows from the failure to understand and accept the essence of human nature.

Why do you go to work? People have different reasons and it sometimes depends on the job that they do. Some people claim to love their job so much that they would do it even if they were not paid. But there are few indeed of us who would like to live without any sort of income. If I won the lottery, I might decide to quit my job. But I would only do so because I would think that I could maintain my lifestyle without that job. For the vast majority of people, the reason why we get up every morning is so that we have an income and so that we can spend that money on things that we want and need.

Who do you spend your money on? The answer to this is simple. I spend my money on myself and on my family. What proportion of your money do you choose to spend on anything or anyone else? Well, if you think of this proportion in terms of household expenditure, you will find that most people spend a very small proportion on anyone other than their family. Out of each person’s disposable income what proportion is donated outside the family? Some people are indeed very generous, their generosity sometimes increases with their affluence, but even so it is still the case that for the vast majority of people an overwhelming proportion of our disposable income is spent on ourselves and our family.

Why do we encourage children to get a good education and why do people who work seek first a good job and then a better job? Why do people seek promotion in their work rather than just remain at the level at which they begin? Again there can be a variety of motives. We might hope that our children have a more interesting job because of their education. We might think that education makes life more worthwhile and interesting. We might want to do more good by being promoted. All of these things may be true, but if we are honest, most of us will reflect that we want a good education in order to get a job that pays well, we want promotion because we want our pay to increase and we want all of these things because we want to provide our families with a better lifestyle.

I know someone who was working as a cleaner. She was earning the minimum wage. She decided she could do better by working for herself. To begin with she was actually doing rather worse than when she was paid by an employer. Now that she had her own small business, she found that for every hour she wasn’t working she was paid nothing. But when she was working she could charge more and the amount that she was paid went to her business rather than the business of her employer. There was an element of risk in setting up her own business. There was the cost of equipment and the risk that she would not be able to find customers. She had to manage the accounts by herself and deal with some complex government rules and regulations. But gradually her business grew and she ended up earning more than previously. Why did she do this? Why not just earn the minimum wage? The answer is obvious. She wanted to earn more in order to provide a better lifestyle for her family.

At root the basic motives of nearly all of us are capitalist. We work for the sake of ourselves and our families. We hope to earn more by obtaining better qualifications and gaining promotions or by setting up our own businesses.

Out of your earnings what proportion do you keep and what proportion is taken away? This will depend on what you earn. But add together all of the tax that you are charged, income tax, property tax, national insurance, VAT etc. and you will find that it amounts to a significant proportion of your income. I don’t know the exact figure, but my guess is that it amounts to greater than 40% of everything most of us earn.

Which of us goes to work every day in order to pay this 40%? We may be happy to pay tax. We may think it reasonable to do so. We may support political parties that favour higher rather than lower taxation. But do we work so as to pay this tax? Is the reason you get up every day so as to contribute to the general wellbeing of society? Do you work in order that the Government can fund unemployment benefit and so that it can build schools and hospitals? We all think that these things are a good idea, but is that your motivation? If it were, we would have no need for tax.

If everyone were motivated primarily by the desire to provide society with what it needed, then we could at the end of each month decide to simply donate 40% of our earnings to what society needed. There is absolutely nothing preventing us all from doing just this. Why have taxation at all? Everyone knows that we need the Government to spend public money. Why not simply donate it?

Rich socialists like J. K. Rowling could bring about their goal quite easily simply by retaining whatever proportion of their wealth they needed and giving the rest away to the Government. This unilateral form of wealth disarmament would make society just that little bit more equal. Why doesn’t everyone on the Left simply give all they have to the poor? Think of the example that it would set. It would be just like unilateral nuclear disarmament. Soon everyone else would follow this example.

But no. The reason Rowling doesn’t give away all she earns to the poor, is that she fears no-one else would. The reason we have taxation is because we reflect that if we made giving money to the Government optional few indeed would be the people who would give it.

You don’t work in order to pay tax. At least the vast majority of people don’t. The reason for this is that if you had the chance, you wouldn’t pay tax. This is the case even when you recognise that it is a good thing for governments to spend money on public services. You still would rather spend that proportion of your money as you choose.

It is not property that is theft, rather it is taxation. If I go to your house and take away 40% of the things in it, I will quite rightly be called a thief. But if I vote for a political party that wants to take away 50 or 60 % of what you earn and eventually make everything a matter of public ownership I will not be called a thief, rather I will be called a socialist.

No-one is preventing people on the Left from giving away their income. No-one is preventing them from sharing what they earn with others. Each socialist could do each of these things immediately. What they want is for everyone else including themselves to “give away” what they earn and to share what they have. The Left recognises that human nature is capitalist and for this reason always wishes to achieve its goal by means of compulsion.

Given that human nature is capitalist, that is, we work in order to better our own lives and those of our families, why is it that so many of us vote for political parties that are not capitalist? This question is of especial importance at the moment for more than 40% of the population has just voted for a party whose leader in effect is a revolutionary socialist. Make no mistake Mr Corbyn may seem like a cuddly, beardy grandfather, but his goal is exactly the same as all the other socialists who tried to implement their theory in the past century. The means by which Mr Corbyn wishes to achieve socialism may or may not differ, but the aim is the same. In the end the means won’t differ much either. Socialism always comes up against the capitalist nature of humanity and compels humanity to change. Nice Mr Corbyn too would force you to be equal, for the simple reason that the goal of equality can only be achieved by compulsion. It is for this reason that socialism is essentially a totalitarian philosophy.

Why would people who work in order to earn money for themselves and their family vote for a political philosophy that is the antithesis of their own motivations? Some of them do so out of self-interest. If you earn very low wages and are either unable or unwilling to seek a better job, then it may at least in the short term be rational to vote for socialism. The same calculation may apply if you can’t or you won’t work. People who don’t work or who earn very little pay only a little tax. If I pay only 20% of my small income in tax, it might look like a bargain if I make someone else pay 60%. That person's paying more might mean that my unemployment benefit rises or my minimum wage increases. Likewise if I have debts due to tuition fees, I might be very glad if someone else had to pay the debt rather than me.  Voting for something that makes me better off would not usually be described as altruistic, but because I am a socialist I can feel virtuous even though I am in fact taking rather than giving.

People who vote for socialism because it will make them materially better off are of course not acting morally. They are acting selfishly. The only people who are not acting selfishly when they vote for socialism are those like J. K. Rowling who are rich and who are willing to pay more tax knowing that it will make them worse off. But if I have a fortune of hundreds of millions, even losing 50% of it will still leave me hundreds of millions. This is a rather easy form of selflessness. Best of all it gives that warm glow of virtue that will outweigh any material loss. The desire to feel virtuous and appear virtuous to others is, of course, another form of selfishness. 

  

But the rich socialist’s “selfless” choice of voting for higher taxation is at the expense of all those who really don’t want to pay more to the Government. It is “forcing them to be free”. It is this that makes socialism immoral. Morality depends on my having the free choice to give away what I earn and to share with others. Socialism makes this a matter of compulsion. “Give all you have to the poor” says Jesus “and follow me”. But I’m sorry Jesus I can’t give anything to the poor, because they Government took it.

It may be virtuous to share with those who are poorer, but Labour voters would take away the choice. They want to compel both themselves and others to give away a proportion of their earnings. But this is to destroy virtue, because morality requires that I have a choice. Socialism changes morality into law and seeks to achieve its aims by taking away my choice. In this way it destroys morality and is the antithesis of it.

The poor may calculate that socialism is in their material interest and that by taking from the rich they increase their own wealth. However because socialism contradicts human motivation, the poor rapidly find out that their short-term self-interest is contrary to their long term self-interest. Our ability to pay high levels of unemployment benefit, our ability to maintain good public services depends on the motivation of ordinary workers working for themselves. Socialism damages and in the end destroys this motivation. When I work less for myself and more for the Government, I end up working less hard than I otherwise would. In time this leads to a lessening in productivity and the economy stagnates. This means we have less to spend on schools, hospitals and the unemployed.

By attempting to reform human nature and by undermining the motivations that we all have in our daily lives, socialism undermines the foundation of economic activity. It is only because I work for myself and my family that I reach the levels of productivity that I do. Without the impulse to improve my own material situation I will simply slack. For this reason, above all, socialism damages economic growth. Why work hard, why study, why strive if the result of my effort is the same as if I did none of these things? When I wish to do better for myself and my family I seek inequality. That’s what success is. Equality means I can do no better than anyone else, no matter how hard I try. So why try? Why set up a small business? Why invent something? Why get up early rather than stay in bed? By taking away the motivation for success, socialism ends up with economic failure.  Growth declines and the amount of money the Government has to spend falls. This means that quite quickly we find that socialism makes the poor poorer.

For this reason socialism is not merely amoral because it compels and therefore prevents me from being able to choose that which is moral, it is also immoral because whatever its intention it makes people less free and lowers the average standard of living. The rich become much poorer, but so do the poor. Worse still the poor no longer have the opportunity to become rich. Socialism may well achieve equality, but the price that is paid for this is equal levels of poverty.

Only when we recognise that our nature as people is to be capitalists, only when we accept that the building blocks of society are individuals and families, only then will we make progress politically. There is no use fighting against what we are. Anyway the only way to radically change human nature is through force and compulsory re-education. It is this that you are voting for when you support Labour. 

We need to pay taxes, but it is necessary to recognise that the level should be as low as possible because people are not motivated to pay taxes, rather we are motivated by our desire to improve our own standard of living and that of our families. Lower taxes mean that each of us works harder, this in turn means the economy grows as much as possible and in the end means that the overall amount that the Government receives increases rather than decreases. In this way the economy by being in tune with human nature rather than opposing it reaches its peak level of efficiency. This benefits not merely the wealthy, but the poorest also.

Socialism is a theory that has been tested to destruction. It contradicts human nature and therefore can never work. Wherever it is tried it makes people poorer and less free. It is not accidental that socialism leads to totalitarian Government it is fundamental. People are naturally unequal and can be made equal only by force. Socialism is voting to give the keys to your house to Government so that it can control how you think and steal what you have. It is for this reason that socialism is theft.