Monday 28 July 2008

Why I'm a leftie - Trotter

Fresh from his "people I hate" diatribe in last week's Sunday Star, in which "creators of wealth" and "makers of jobs" come in for particular opprobrium, local leftie Christopher Trotter now offers up as an antidote to that 'hate speech' a "things I believe in" column.

It's not because he's a Marxist/Leninist/Stalinist/Trotskyite that he's a leftie -- 'I rejected that credo' long ago, he insists -- it's all about need, you see. Here's the heart of it:

I believe [says Christopher] that human societies arise out of need. The need for food and shelter, the need for intimacy, the need for nurturing, and the need for protection – both from natural dangers, and the aggression of our own species. To secure these needs, human beings must work, individually or collectively, but always with the ultimate goal of keeping strong those innumerable threads that bind our communities in a functioning wholeness.

Did you see the sleight of hand? From whence emerged this "ultimate goal" of "keeping strong those innumerable threads that bind our communities in a functioning wholeness"? How does he jump from individual needs for things like food and shelter to the "ultimate goal" of the "binding" of communities? Of answer, there is none, and never can be.

And from whence, in the world of our Christopher, emerges the food, shelter and "protection from natural dangers" that all individuals seek? How do these things get here? Who produces them, and why? This is the economic rock upon which all the ships of Trotter's statist longings founder -- indeed, it is the economic rock upon which all of Marxism/Leninism founders: explaining how the goods got here. Sheer need alone will not produce them, and no amount of verbal sleight of hand or "I believe" longings can conjure them out of thin air.

The Marxist's answer to how they're produced? Somehow! They observe only that the goods exist, and put their minds only to the job of taking them from those who somehow produced them -- or to dreaming up sophisms to justify the theft.

This, to a Marxist (or a pseudo-non-Marxist like Trotter), is considered 'economic thinking' : It concerns itself not with how wealth is actually produced, a process which to them remains a mystery, but only with how it is to be 'redistributed.' From Christopher, as from every lapdog Marxist, there is no sign he even understands or wants to understand how production happens. To him the question is insignificant. "Individuals and groups by superior strength or simple good fortune are endowed with wealth and influence" ... they were just standing in line at the right time ... "the possession by a fortunate few of social, political and economic privileges serves the community [are] ... privileges granted to them by the majority" ... they are granted by the majority, you see ... "As a social-democrat I look to the state ... to secure for all citizens a healthy and abundant life" ... all hail the state, the great expropriator ... "As a social-democrat I cannot countenance the arbitrary dispersal of the people’s resources..."

The people's resources, you say, Chris? 'What the hell did indolent fat cretins like him have to do with producing any bloody resources?' This is the question you might want to ask yourself as you read on.

According to the Trotter mantra, the likes of food, shelter, wealth, influence and resources are not produced by individual effort, or entrepreneurial ability, or the application of reason to existence -- they arrive by "good fortune," they are granted as "privileges" by the majority -- they fall, in other words, like manna from heaven, to be redistributed as one pleases. These are the sort of sophisms of which I spoke above.

To people like Labour candidate Jordan Carter, trade is immoral. To people like Labour cheerleader Christopher Trotter, production is irrelevant. To both of them, and to all their great social-democratic 'luminaries,' the State is simply a great engine of expropriation, a beneficent behemoth from which all good things apparently flow. "Those charged with governing our country," the Trotter confides, "hold in trust the resources – both natural and social – that are the common property of all our people."

What makes this property "common"? How do these resources come into the possession of the apparatchiks of the state? What right did they have to take them from those who produced them? Of answer to these questions there is none, but neither is there in all the pages of Marx, or Lenin, or Stalin -- or of any of Trotter's present 'social democratic' heroes. The expectation is that need will inexorably arise, and just as inexorably expropriations will rise up to meet them.

Communities simply have rights to goods, according to the Marxist/social democrat, which the state must meet by expropriating them from those who (somehow) have been able to produce them.

What could be more ingenious? A whole social edifice based upon theft!

Thus we see how one man's need becomes the justification for theft by the state, how economic illiteracy becomes a justification for a morality of sacrifice and expropriation, and how the moral cannibalism of altruism underlies the engine of destruction that is the all-enveloping welfare state. To repeat, according to Trotter: "Those charged with governing our country, hold in trust the resources – both natural and social – that are the common property of all our people." When you understand that, in Trotter's view, those who (somehow) possess this magical ability to produce must be considered a resource, you can understand both why they must be enslaved - "they are the common property of all our people" -- and why he hates, as he demonstrated in his revealing diatribe last week, these productive few who have been mysteriously endowed with an ability beyond his own.

And thus we come to the inevitable Marxist conclusion of Trotter's 'I believe,' the linking of ability to need through the enforced sacrifice of the welfare state -- in the words of Karl Marx: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

Trotter may resile from calling himself a Marxist these days, but it doesn't take too much poking around under the new veneer to see what's hidden beneath the easy sophisms, and that the same blood red flag is still flying.

UPDATE: Ironically, blogger David Farrar, who on Facebook calls himself a "libertarian" , has this to say on the most crucial part of Trotter's sophistry:

Those charged with governing our country, hold in trust the resources – both natural and social – that are the common property of all our people.

Can’t disagree with that.

Dear Galt! He then bewails when Trotter "seems to say the minority have no rights, unless the majority grant them," yet the connection between the two escapes him!

Another example of how to disarm oneself by a lack of sufficient philosophical acumen.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

One is left with the opinion that Trotter basis his leftism on nothing more than feelings or whim. Not exactly scientific materialism!

Anonymous said...

Dear god, reading that was painfull! If you see Trotter today, please spit at him for the good of the "collective humanity".

KG said...

I love the labels for this post: 'Ethics. Socialism.'

Who would ever have thought of putting the two side by side!

Anonymous said...

On David Farrar's blunder: Resources are most certainly not common property. The are the rightfull property of those that created/innovated/homesteaded thereby turning those matariels in the state of nature into resources. That is, turning parts of the world into materials that can actually be used for the sustenience of life.

Anonymous said...

IF NZ ever gets a democratic government - truly democratic - then clearly we would have to get rid of all these people. Helen; Cullen; Trotter; Williams; yes Jourdan Carter too; in fact the whole lot of Labourites, Greenies, union members

Perhaps just denying them and their familes the vote would be enough: but people like this, I think, are too dangerous to be kept in NZ.

Luckily there really aren't that many of them - perhaps only 2-300,000. And the police, the army, and honest hard-working Kiwis who have kept their guns do have the capacity to do what needs to be done when the time is right.

Anonymous said...

Anon....as tempting as that sounds .....Im afraid it ain't who we are....so they get to live....and belive crap ...dammit! ;-)

Berend de Boer said...

This is spot on, a very good dissecting, you discerned precisely what the actual issues at stake are. Great!!

Anonymous said...

Anon 08:18

In your "truly democratic" government you would "get rid" of 200000 or so lefties "when the time is right?" Now we know where at least one descendant of Goebbels or Goering lives.

Nice to see that local Nazis are comfortable using Not PC as a forum.

Anonymous said...

Excellent dissection PC.

- Sam P

Libertyscott said...

Yes good post PC, but anonymous is clearly taking the "Final Solution" pill, sheesh

Jeffrey Perren said...

Bloody brilliant post! This should be published in every major editorial page in America.

"[A]ccording to Trotter: 'Those charged with governing our country, hold in trust the resources – both natural and social – that are the common property of all our people.'"

Without a doubt, one of the most vicious statements I have ever read (though hardly original). That something like that could be said casually in what passes for a civilized country beggars belief.

And, on a lesser note:

"UPDATE: Ironically, David Farrar, who calls himself a 'libertarian' on Facebook"

Whoever agrees with Trotter's statement is no libertarian by any stretch; yet one more reason that (at least in the US) the term has become completely meaningless. It simply doesn't describe a group of people with a remotely common set of beliefs anymore.

The Tomahawk Kid said...

What an absolutely BRILLIANT post PC.

You have explained and revealed this scumbags non-thinking clearly and emphatically.

A bloody masterpiece

Thank you

Anonymous said...

"Nice to see that local Nazis are comfortable using Not PC as a forum."

Is it? Says whom?

Slow death to facists (sic), eh. Presumably you include those on the left as well as the right?

Anonymous said...

To "slow death to facists"

You slam Not PC as a forum for Nazis yet the article itself directly attacks socialists (you know like those "national" kind).

On top of that you condemn anon for wanting to get rid of people yet your name is "slow death to facists" (I assume a spelling error) it's wrong to "get rid" of lefties but right to kill fascists slowly? (I assume in a non-military context).

Other than that mess, excellent post Not PC, I enjoyed reading.