Left or Right, the Boot
It doesn’t matter if you design, label and rationalize your society as Communist, Capitalist or something else. Any society will have some version of labor camps, prison slavery along with some form of legal labor relationship-organization, with a defacto penalty for not working, not doing anything, not contributing without deceit. Of course, different societies, do reward deceit, differently, and we should investigate this problem, and indeed, “change the plumbing” to attempt to engineer a society in which people are not rewarded with a great capital access or social access as a result.
The problem with hearing political economic rhetoric from the left-liberal matrix is they all try to sell their views as scientific, while “the right” typically fails at systemization. What I want to do with Weberist-Burnhamism, is build a systemization for “changing the plumping” and building good institutions, after the coming crisis leads to revolutions, leftist or otherwise, juntas, rightist or otherwise. I am arguing that all societies have systems of obligation and dependency. The question is the degree of coercion, the institutional safeguards, and whether individuals possess enough independent resources to meaningfully refuse.
Core Points
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All organized societies have coercive institutions.
Every large-scale society has to deal with crime, punishment, compulsory work, military service, debt, economic dependency, or other forms of unequal labor.
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Double standard in left-wing-Liberal-centric rhetoric.
Socialist or communist arguments emphasize exploitation, prisons, forced labor, or hierarchy under capitalism while portraying socialist systems as fundamentally different or morally purified. This overlooks the fact that even when you have a socialist system, you still need coercion, in fact, you rely on it, in some cases and events even moreso. Which is why any revolutionary system, should consider other methods of guaranteeing freedom, apart from socialist or free-for-all capitalist worship.
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“Utopian” political language.
All Societies are made of institutions, incentives, conflicts, and power relationships, not just ideals. To constantly dismiss past societies for their problems, be it the British Empire or the American Founders, should be regarded as just as low-brow and untruthful, as pretending that the Soviets never tried to fix anything or that Hitler just came out of nowhere motivated only be war trauma and malice alone. If societies have definite problems, and solutions do not work consistently even after many revolutions, constantly blaming tradition or past reigns adds nothing to the conversation.
Why spreading Capital and Stakeholding is a viable “Third Solution” to Total Government Power or Communism
Every society has coercion, but the type, scale, legality, and accountability mechanisms differ. Those differences do not erase the underlying reality that all societies require systems of compulsion and labor organization. The mistake is not advocating socialism; the mistake is assuming any ideology can abolish power, coercion, or hierarchy. Every society must organize labor and enforce rules. The real question is how those systems are structured, constrained, and justified.
A ruler like Henry VIII is commonly remembered as a tyrant because his authority was personal, dynastic, and backed by forms of force that modern liberal societies no longer consider legitimate. A modern prime minister like Keir Starmer operates within a constitutional system with elections, courts, civil service procedures, and legal constraints, so similar exercises of state power are interpreted differently. And yet many of us “on the Right” might find Keir Starmer far more objectionable because he doesn’t even fulfil the most basic functions of a King; protecting the basic liberties of his people.
He has coercion of course, and capital rules, but the people have very little influence even with long-standing democratic liberal institutions. These institutions favor aggressive political minority communities, not the native British majority in any way. In fact, those very ancient institutions, are easily turned by unrestrained capital against the interests of the native British majority. The real difference between tyranny and legitimate government is not simply the presence or absence of coercion; it is the historical development of institutions that make coercion appear lawful, normal, and acceptable. Give a 21st Century Henry some time to capture the institutions in favor of the British people, and then we shall see who is thought “more acceptable.”
Capital should be De-concentrated, monitored, not “abolished”
For the people to have more liberty and a safety net, there must be private capital; it just should not be concentrated, and endlessly concentrated. Its rights cannot be absolute. The nation should be primary over government; just as labor should be primary over capital. This would require, yes, a rupture, but it would also require very quickly some pre-set laws for how far capital can accumulate in one place, and how much someone can be owed or control politically for their accumulation. It would require a method of distinguishing between industries in which, you do want large capital accumulation, and those in which that is simply unnecessary. Without doing that, government control alone logically necessitates “dictatorship” and the end of liberty at all. I have no necessary objection to the concept of dictatorship. After all, I am a Post-Liberal; I can tolerate most forms other than free-for-all violations of sovereignty. I merely think it important to make the point, that for liberty to flourish, ordinary people must all have a stake in their own country.
All societies have an iron heel; the question is whether institutions restrain it
The irony of saying anything to dogmatic leftist about a tiered legalized stakeholder system, is that, they themselves already in practice always already favor their own forms of hierarchy just without permitting the average worker the aspiration of having his own home and his own tiny piece of private legal capital, that no government can take. IF we really want to reach the Marxist point of “voluntary labor only” which was the original Communist principal, then that requires, not merely state direction, but that the liberties of individuals and private capital is spread, so that accumulation can work alongside labor and not against it. This is why the “distributist” ideal of a Belloc is not totally incomprehensible to me. IT is, if anything, how you get to what Marx claimed to want. Freedom is not created by abolishing power. Freedom is created by designing institutions where power is dispersed, accountable, and unable to permanently dominate. The existence of power relationships is universal. Therefore, a revolution cannot simply promise the disappearance of power. It must design better power structures.