Dear Friends,
It seems to me, any system of government that needs the “right people” at the helm, is one that can only end in despair. Since “right” people are so few and far between, the likelihood at any given time, is that the “wrong” people will be in charge most of the time. Moreover, no one that espouses that their system needs the “right people” in charge, specify the qualities of a “right person.” So even under perfect circumstances, say… the “right’ people are in charge at the outset, sooner or later they will pass on, and the wrong people will take over… then all Hell will break loose. This is on of the primary faults of socialism. Since socialism is at it’s core autocratic, those running the despotic state must be saints, else they will bend the state to their own wants and needs, abandoning the interests of society at large. Once we understand this, socialism, and indeed any system of government that requires saints be the leaders… is doomed to fail, and fail spectacularly.
Logically however, one cannot claim the problem is the people or leaders, since people and leaders are all human beings, and any mechanism must take into account the material it is made with, you cannot build a sky scraper from clay, but clay is excellent material for building pots and bowls. When building anything, it is of the utmost importance to take into consideration what one has at hand to build with, and bend the system to it’s constituents, not the constituents to the system. Any framer of a system of government must consider that people will always be in charge, and take measures to minimize the negative effects of having bad people at the helm, while trying to create incentives for good people to take those positions.
The argument we hear over and over, why socialism has resulted in so many millions of deaths, by induced famine, internment, executions and terror… is that the wrong people were in charge. The assumption being that if other people, saints, had been the leaders, those nations would not have gone off the rails. We constantly hear from Marxist apologists that the Soviet system was flawed because of Stalin, but in fact history teaches us the system was built on sand anyway. Lenin sent the Bolsheviks town to town, slaughtering in the most horrible ways, anyone who stood against him. Such a system, one built on terror, has it’s foundation in sand. Apologists will even claim real socialism has never been tried! Yet they never explain how the state can control the economy without having autocratic powers.
In truth, this is one of the fundamental debates during the Enlightenment, ie… how to limit the people in charge so government works for everyone, rather than only for those in power. Because lets face it, people who seek power over others… are looking to use that power. Constitutionalism was the means to limit the elite the Enlightenment stumbled upon. Constitutions were to be the framework of government so the people could know what to expect, and what the leaders could legitimately do. Sadly, that expedient has become so corrupted by the elite, that all a constitution does today is give the usurpers an aura of legitimacy. Because Constitutions only limit those willing to be limited, and follow them, and not at all those unwilling to.
The secret to building a truly human hearted system of government, is to create it in such a way that the quality of those in charge will naturally be high, and that strictly limits the power of them, realizing that human beings are what constitutes both the people and the elite. We must also consider that those who care nothing for power but want to be left alone, (Thrasymachus’ common man), will not seek office in the first place, yet they are exactly who should have power, while those who want power, (Thrasymachus’ great men), will suffer any cost, indignation or burden for that power. Therefore, if a system requires that only saints be the leaders then, cannot long last, and will inevitable usher in human suffering on a grand scale.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
