10 Why the Worst Get On Top
Many have attributed the most repellent parts of totalitarian regimes to a historical accident that they happened to have been established by groups of blackguards and thugs. But the worst features of totalitarianism aren’t accidental by-products, but phenomenon that these systems produce sooner or later. Just as the democratic statesmen who sets about to establish a planned economy has to abandon democracy for dictatorial powers, the dictator will have to choose between failure or disregard of ordinary morals.
The moral basis of collectivism has been debated, but our concern here is not its moral basis, but its moral results; what moral views will be produced by a collectivist organization of society, or what views are likely to rule it? We may be tempted to think that if a collectivist vision springs from high moral motives, it must then produce the highest virtues. But the ruling moral views will depend on the qualities that lead individuals to success in a collectivist or totalitarian system and on the requirements of the totalitarian machinery.
In the stages leading to totalitarianism, it is the general demand for quick and determined government action that is the dominating element. It is the man or party that can “get things done” who exercises the greatest appeal. Often this is a party organized more along military lines.
That party will need to start with a leader collecting around him lots of people who are willing to submit to his rule, if there is to be any chance of imposing it on the whole of society.
Since totalitarianism can never be based on what a majority of people want, it will be directed by the largest minority with a unified view. If that group doesn’t exist, it will be created.
Three reasons why this group will be formed by the worst elements of society.
The first is- the more highly educated and intelligent individuals are, the more their views and tastes are differentiated. Finding a higher degree of uniformity will require moving to the bottom of society. The lowest common denominator is what will unite the most people.
Even then, a potential dictator will need to convert more people to his cause. The second principle then is finding the most gullible; those with no strong convictions of their own, but those who are looking for and willing to accept a ready-made system of values.
The third principle- particularly useful in the hands of a skilled demagogue, is that it is easier to sell a negative program than a positive- hatred of an enemy, envy of those better off.
The universal tendency of collectivist policy to become nationalistic is due, 1) to the necessity of securing broad support, and 2) since it is unrealistic to conceive of a collectivist program other than in the service of a limited group, it will be in service to some kind of particularism- nationalism, racism, or classism. If members of the group can’t all be personally known, they must at least be of the same kind as those around us. Collectivism on a world scale is unthinkable.
What socialist seriously things about existing capital resources as belonging to the entire world?
One of the inherent contradictions of the collectivist philosophy is that while basing itself on humanistic morals which individualism has developed, it is practicable only in small groups. Theoretically, collectivism is internationalist. But as soon as it is put into practice, it becomes violently nationalist. Collectivism has no room for the wide humanitarianism of liberalism, but only for the narrow particularism of the totalitarian. If the community or the state are prior to the individual, if they have ends of their own independent of and superior to those of the individuals, only those individuals who work for the same ends can be regarded as members of the community. A necessary consequence of the view is that a person is respected only as a member of the group; only in so far as he works for the recognized common ends, and that he derives his dignity only from this membership, not from being a man. The very concepts of humanity and therefore, any form of internationalism, are entirely produced by the individualist view of man, and there can be no place for them in a collectivist society.
Several tendencies cause collectivism to move towards popularism and exclusivity. The first is that often, the desire of the individual to identify himself with the group comes from an insecurity/inferiority and therefore, a sense of belonging will only be satisfied if membership confers some superiority over another group.
There is also a tendency within modern man to imagine themselves ethical, no matter what their vices, as long as they delegate those vices to larger groups. There is also a tendency to see the outside groups as obstacles to the effective planning required to achieve their moral goals.
Most socialists have inherited the liberal tradition where power is something of an evil, but in collectivism, power is a goal in itself. In order to achieve their goals, they must create an enormous amount of power. Many socialists believe that by transferring the power of individuals in a competitive system to the state, they are extinguishing power. But they are actually concentrating that power in the service of a single plan, to a single body. In a competitive system, no one person can exercise even a fraction of the kind of power that collectivists concentrated in the hands of a few.
From these two central features of collectivism: the need for a common accepted end goal, and the overriding desire to equip the group with the power needed to accomplish the goals, grows a system of morals. It does not leave the individual conscience free to apply its own rules and does not even know any general rules which the individual is required or allowed to observe in all circumstances. This makes collective morals far different from what we have previously known as morals. Indeed, it is difficult to discover any principle in them.
In individualist systems, the principle that the ends justifies the means is regarded ethically as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics, it becomes necessarily the supreme rule. There is literally nothing the collectivist must not be prepared to do if it is said to serve the collective good, because achieving the collective good is the only moral criterion of what ought to be done.
Once we establish that the individual is merely a means to serve the higher entity called the nation or state and its goals, most of the horrors associated with totalitarianism follow pretty quickly.
Intolerance and brutal suppression of dissent, and the complete disregard for life and happiness of the individual are essential and unavoidable consequences of this basic premise. The collectivist will recognize this and still feel his system superior to the selfish interests of the individual, which are always an obstacle to the full realization of the collectives ends.
A useful person in this system must be prepared to actively break every moral rule he has ever known in service of achieving the goals of the state. Since the supreme leader or party sets the ends and the rules, the person in this system must not have any moral convictions of their own. This system then will select for the most unprincipled men, who are capable of literally anything they are told to do. Indeed there is little in such a system to induce men who are good by our standards to aspire to positions of leadership in a collective system. But there will be plenty of opportunities for the ruthless and unscrupulous.