Goethe once said, “I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.” The political teachings of right and left, for the past thirty years, constitute a sort of sleepy and repetitive humbug. We hear the words, we repeat the words, and we shuffle along like sleepwalkers. If the left is disappointed by Obama’s centrist appointees, or the right is disappointed at the emptiness of Republican politicians, then perhaps today’s ideologies are more sedative than stimulant. “Here is the truth,” they promise. “Now you can rest because everything is settled.” For an exhausted modernity, ideological instruction is like a pillow. It is a place to rest one’s head.
Goethe would argue that an idea (as opposed to an ideology) is not a resting place, but a point of departure. The case of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher offers a good example of someone whose activity was directly invigorated by instruction. Instead of using ideology as a comfortable corner to defend, she challenged the world. We see this in Claire Berlinski’s biography of Thatcher, There Is No Alternative. According to Berlinski, “It is critical to appreciate that Thatcher’s enthusiasm for free markets can’t be reduced to an enthusiasm for economic efficiency – this is a charge often made, but it simply isn’t so. A moral society, not an efficient one, was her ultimate goal.”
It is my theory that today’s gross materialism is a corollary of our collective sleepwalking. Our political and economic ideas are merely convenient, and adapted to meet the needs of a hedonistic shopping mall regime. Our society has lost its way, forgetting the values that made us strong and prosperous. In 1977 Thatcher noted: “The main issues are moral. In warfare, said Napoleon – the moral is to the material as three to one. You may think that in civil society the ratio is even greater. The economic success of the Western world is a product of its moral philosophy and practice.”
As America turns to socialism (i.e., the government allocation of economic resources) it is interesting to consider the immorality of what is done. The rich want to keep their wealth. And they seem perfectly willing to exhaust public funds to do so. But the wealth that many want to preserve was never real. The boom that made this wealth was false – and corrupting. At bottom, the market is now trying to correct the immorality of self-deceptive practices. Many participants don’t accept this correction, and so they reject the market just as the ancient Israelites rejected the prophets.
“Choice is the essence of ethics.” said Thatcher, “If there were no choice, there would be no ethics.” If human beings are free to choose, then man must reap what he sows. This is what is being denied today. Therefore, many financiers and industrialists turn to the government. “Bail us out,” they cry. “If we go down, everything goes down.” In answer to this, precious resources are diverted by the state in support of the worst malpractices of the previous era. Here is the essence of socialism, the core of a rotten policy. “The socialists,” said Thatcher, “would take away most or all of [our] choices. A man would do what he was told by the state and his union, work where work was ‘found’ for him, at the rate fixed and degree of effort permitted. He would send his children to school where the education authority decided what the children are taught and the way they are taught, irrespective of his views, he would live in the housing provided, take what he could get, give what he was obliged to give.”
Even if the U.S. government could save Detroit, the banks and Wall Street, consider Thatcher’s warning: “This doesn’t produce a responsible or a moral society. This doesn’t produce a classless society; on the contrary it produces the most stratified of all societies, divided into two classes: the powerful and the powerless; the party-bureaucratic elite and the manipulated masses.” The result is disastrous: economic inefficiency, national demoralization and schlubocracy. (Speaking of which, we see the future promise of this type of government in Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s attempt to solicit bribes in exchange for the president-elect’s senate seat.)
Politicians believe that government spending can save us from catastrophe. Berlinski calls this “the wickedness of profligacy.” Such spending marks a return to inflation. As Margaret Thatcher explained, “For many years we have been told that a little bit of inflation is good for you. Many economists assured us … that inflation is necessary to maintain full employment, to facilitate growth and keep the economy moving. The message was: spend your way to prosperity, and when the economy faltered, spend and spend again.” History shows that the policy doesn’t work. By debasing the currency, the government breaks the trust between government and the governed. According to Thatcher, “Once the people lose their trust in money, the freedom of … society will be diminished or even, eventually, destroyed.”
Thatcher was confident in her conclusions because she had historical sense. She saw that the West was the most advanced civilization. She looked at the values and ideas that held sway as the West advanced from feudal squalor to modern prosperity. When these values were discarded, she saw that progress turned to stagnation. Quite logically, the solution was to rediscover the old values. Invigorated by this instructive insight, Thatcher turned her country around by defending the free market as a moral principle.
