Politically Incorrect Editorial, Mon Sept 23
by Lindsay Perigo
Liberty-lovers can take little comfort from the results of the weekend's elections in Germany.
East & West Germany used to be object lessons, side by side, in collectivism vs individualism. East Germany: a Police State with sealed borders which people got shot trying to cross--stolid, stagnant, grey, repressed, poor. West Germany: a liberal & open society with the freest markets in the world (Adenauer & Erhard, its architects, were deeply influenced by Ludwig von Mises)--colourful, dynamic, prosperous. As with Hong Kong vs Communist China, one didn't need to repair to textbooks to prove a priori that capitalism was superior to communism--East & West Germany provided eloquent & unmistakable proof that this was so in practice.
Communism fell, & with it, the Berlin Wall. The two Germanies were reunified, ostensibly on West Germany's terms. In fact, West Germany had to pick up the slack from the East--its moribund economy & the lethargic jailhouse mentality of its citizens. The East's ideology, identical in its essence to that of Hitler's Third Reich, had been regaining ground in the West for two decades--now,it took decisive hold at precisely the time its physical ramparts were being shattered. Contemporary Germany is staggering under the weight of a rapacious welfare system underpinned by a long-resurgent socialism. In Sunday's election, the only party promising to trim the new Leviathan & cut the taxes that sustain it--The Free Democrats (FDP)--inched forward from 6.2% to 7.4% of the vote, while the neo-communist Greens moved up to 9% & retained a place in government under Germany's proportional system. (Interestingly and unsurprisingly, the Greens appear to have taken their extra votes directly from the communists--the Communist Party of Democratic Socialism--who fell below 5% & thus lost their place in Parliament.) Any impetus that was thought to exist towards streamlined welfare & lower taxes--let alone towards complete economic freedom--was stalled.
Germany's dilemma is not dissimilar to New Zealand's (or indeed, to that of the entire industrialised world). In my most recent Free Radical editorial I noted that "privatisation," "deregulation" & "free markets" are now dirty words; that New Zealanders have just "re-elected a government that raised taxes, restored compulsory unionism, renationalised ACC, recreated a state bank, bought back an airline, cancelled further tariff reductions, etc..." The so-called free market reforms of the '80s and '90s, I noted, "were never given a decent moral base, were imposed by trickery for the benefit of crony-phony 'capitalists,' were flawed in their execution--& are now discredited. The genuine battle for freedom is that much harder as a result."
The object lesson that Germany and New Zealand both currently provide is this: as long as capitalism--& a mongrelised mixed-economy version of it at that--is promoted on collectivist grounds, it is doomed to win battles but lose the war. To advocate capitalism because it achieves socialist ends more efficiently than socialism is a betrayal...a self-defeating obscenity. It's time for capitalism's self-proclaimed defenders to lift their game by shifting the argument (& understanding it first). Ayn Rand's admonition to conservatives is as apposite for Germany's FDP as it is for New Zealand's ACT party:
"If you want to fight for capitalism, there is only one type of argument you must adopt, the only one that can win in a moral issue: the argument from self-esteem. This means--from man's right to exist--from man's inalienable individual right to his own life."
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