Introduction
Having now examined both collectivism and competitive markets as well as objections to both, we are left to decide which has our support. Which you decide in favor of depends largely on what you believe, what kind of world you want to see around you, and what place you believe the system achieving that world will give you. None of us support something we believe will harm us or create a world where we will be at the bottom unable to ever climb our way up.
My Own Bias on Collectivism and Competitive Markets
As always, I make no attempt to disguise my biases or preferences about competitive markets and collectivism. The world I want to live in is one of liberty to succeed or fail on my own merits and not to be held back simply because someone else cannot succeed to the same degree that I can. I want to live in a world where the mere existence of an inequality is not immediately presumed to be inequity. Because of this and other reasons, I much prefer a system that allows me to succeed or fail on my own merits and is also historically proven to benefit every strata of society in any case where it has been implemented and allowed to run with as little interference as possible.
I personally abhor the idea that anyone else might intrude on that success or failure to set either a ceiling or a floor I may not go beyond in the name of some ever shifting ideal of equality of outcome. Though I am not the first to make objections to collectivism on the ground previously given, I wholeheartedly agree with the objections.
Nonetheless, I hardly expect everyone to agree with me. The point of this closing article is, then, to provide with a place to start in your own critical examinations of the system beyond a surface level examination. To that end, there are five questions I find helpful in considering any proposed system.
The Questions about Collectivism and Competitive Markets
- Are the accusations and the claims for or against the system true or valid?
- Is the position proposed by those supporting the system intellectually honest?
- What are the implications of each position in the long run?
- Can we bear the consequences of the potential flaws of the system by an overwhelming number of real, tangible benefits to all of society or do the costs outweigh any benefits that may be perceived to exist?
- Which view has the fewest logical inconsistencies and the fewest points of failure to acknowledge the nature of man shown throughout all of time immemorial?
Considering the Questions
Question #1: Are the accusations true or valid?
On our first question, I have spent two whole articles going over the major accusations and their truth and validity. It is up to you what you do with those discussions.
Question #2: Is the position intellectually honest?
On the second question, we do have to exercise discernment. Even those with bad arguments may still be intellectually honest if they are clear about where they stand. It would be intellectually honest for a collectivist to state that they want equality of outcome, for example, because no one can confuse the meaning. We may not like what that desire leads to, but we cannot declare it intellectually dishonest.
A claim becomes intellectually dishonest when an individual uses terminology they know has a specific meaning that doesn’t match up with the meaning they are using. For example, if I say I want equality for people, that’s sort of vague. I could mean equality of outcome, equality under the law, or equality of opportunity. In America, most people understand equality to mean equal rights in the eyes of law or equality in opportunity, and most would understand a term like “fair system” to mean the same treatment by law in the system. So if I used those terms to mean something else, knowing full well that my meaning would be misunderstood and misconstrued, then that would be intellectual dishonesty.
Both sides may do this, of course. However, looking at history, collectivism has the most routine evidence of employing language that has a good meaning or connotation to describe something wholly different from its connotation when it relates to their position. Collectivists also have a history of applying words to their opponents that didn’t have a moral connotation but adding one to it in order to make the opposition look horrible and villainous.
This was done by Marx, Hitler, Stalin, and many of the socialists in Britain during the time when F.A. Hayek was writing his book The Road to Serfdom. It has happened in America as well with scholars and academic elite twisting terms from one meaning to another so that no discussion can be had on the merits of the system without objecting to “equality” and seeming like the villain.
Even when the goal was to do something about a perceived injustice (which for a collectivist may be any inequality at all)–even an injustice that genuinely needed addressing–the language used to describe the proposed solution often was (and still is) dishonest and misleading.
This does not, of course, mean that being intellectually dishonest is equivalent to being a villain in every case. People with the good intention to fix a problem can have a bad solution and be intellectually dishonest about it in their attempts to persuade people it is the right one. There are many reasons why intellectual dishonesty may occur, among which is a fear that your position will not be accepted or even considered if laid out plainly, a desire for power you know will not be granted if anyone understands where you stand, or uncertainty about whether you will be given a fair hearing. However, the point I am making here is that intellectual dishonesty has been a hallmark of the rhetoric of collectivism from its first popularization with Marx. A system that cannot be discussed in plain terms because it would be ill-received should be subject to the harshest scrutiny.
If you want people to live your way, it is necessary to be honest about exactly what you are proposing. If you have to trick or indoctrinate people into believing your way because they would not otherwise agree, your system is already questionable. At the very least, the dishonesty must be peeled away to reveal the reality of the system to ensure that it is still something we can agree with.
My own conclusion on this question, then, is that anyone on either side can be intellectually dishonest depending on how they approach their rhetoric on their position. However, based on my readings through Marx, Lenin, and others who support or supported collectivism, I find much more intellectual dishonesty in the advocates of collectivism than in most advocates of competitive markets.
Question #3: What are the long-term implications?
On our third question, each has many implications long-term. To understand these, you may find the following resources helpful to show the results of the systems discussed here:
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Ancient Rome: How It Affects you Today by Richard Maybury
The Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers
1984 and Animal Farm by Orwell
A Brave New World by Huxley
How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps by Ben Shapiro
The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek
A History of Hitler’s Empire by Great Courses
The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin
The Rise of Communism by Great Courses
The Communist Manifesto
Question #4: Can we bear the consequences of the system’s flaws?
This fourth question requires a thorough examination of history–ancient and modern. Furthermore, an understanding of history must be combined with at least a basic understanding of economic theory, rights, and government. With all combined, a verdict can be reached.
Again, I must stress that what you want will alter your consideration of the systems. If you are interested in security above all else and never having any risk (or none that could result in total financial ruin) will happily embrace collectivism. Someone who wants their freedom to succeed or fail on their own unhindered will want a competitive market.
Those who believe it is unfair that someone makes millions while another barely scrapes by–regardless of the causes or reasons for it–will want a collectivist system or a welfare state. But if you want to look at the many factors that go into deciding why one makes millions while another scrapes by and do not believe that the inequality must be inequity in any case, you will likely want competition.
If we are to make the most of a study of history, we must be frank with ourselves about our biases and set them aside where possible. The same goes for our feelings. Facts do not care about feelings. What happened in history happened, and if we deny its implications or lessons because it makes us feel bad or we feel it does not match our ideals, we will never learn anything. We will build a utopia in true Thomas Moore fashion–a no land that exists nowhere in reality.
In other words, you can dream of a world where your ideologies have zero basis in reality and everything works out perfectly, but that world won’t exist in reality if history and human nature have always prove the ideal to be unattainable.
If you follow that ideal anyway, you will have the same failure because you are human too and are not going to do it any better than the rest if your system is irreparably flawed. So no matter which side you are on, it is essential to set aside emotion and bias to examine history and fact objectively.
Question #5: Which view has the fewest logical inconsistencies and the fewest points of failure to acknowledge the nature of man?
Finally, question five requires us to look at history and human nature to determine which follows it best. Since there are some variations in the form of competitive markets and lots of variations in the form of collectivism, we need to view each proposed form honestly through this lens to determine the best one to use.
Conclusion
In the end, we must each make our own decision on which vision of the world we want to promote, which way of life we want to live. We can use these questions to check our options to determine whether collectivism or a competitive market is objectively better. Do not stand against or for something on the slogans that side’s supporters push. Stand for or against it based on facts, reality, truth, history, and its ability to check the worst parts of human nature.
