Fabian Society

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History of Socialized Medicine in America

May 23, 2009 in Health Care by Greg | 7 comments

Part 11 of 11 in the series Notes on Socialism

The history of socialized medicine in America is an interesting read1 given President Barack Obama’s recent interview with C-Span on health care reform (see video below).

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Writing in the Medical Sentinel in 2002, Dr. Edward R. Annis, former president of the American Medical Association, traced the history of socialized medicine in the United States:

We are at war — an unconventional war. I am not referring to our nation’s war against the terrorists — no. I am referring to war as described by Webster as being in a state of forceful opposition. It has been carried on for a number of years, slowly, craftily and by surreptitious incrementalism with such success that most doctors fail to realize its true origins or the sources of its present strength.

In the 1920s, England had a group of primarily wealthy heirs, writers and self-styled intellectuals who founded the Fabian Society, its aim to transform Britain into a socialist society.

They were the authors of permeation which purpose was to infiltrate major political parties so that socialistic programs could be implemented no matter which party was in power.

Shortly thereafter the Fabians assisted the formation of a sister society in the United States called the Intercollegiate Socialistic Society. Because it failed to take hold, it wasn’t long before they changed the name to The League for Industrial Democracy.

The League continued its efforts through the twenties and thirties without obtaining any substantial support for widespread socialism. Around 1932 they tried to get President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to incorporate medical care along with social security for the elderly, but FDR then said no because “it would lead to socialized medicine,” which he opposed. I remember: I was in my pre-med at the University of Detroit and on the debate team.

It was in the late thirties that they revised their efforts toward incrementalism whereby they would first seek to socialize medicine for the elderly and then pursue their overall objective, one by one.

History of Socialized Medicine in America »»

  1. Annis, Edward R., M.D. “Towards Socialized Medicine: A Historic Chronology”. 23 May 2009.↩

Bacevich on Reinhold Niebuhr

November 23, 2008 in Communism by Greg | 1 comment

In The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, Andrew J. Bacevich speaks very highly of Reinhold Niebuhr:

Andrew J. Bacevich The United States today finds itself threatened by three interlocking crises. The first of these crises is economic and cultural, the second political, and the third military. All three share this characteristic: They are of our own making. In assessing the predicament that results from these crises, The Limits of Power employs what might be called a Niebuhrean perspective. Writing decades ago, Reinhold Niebuhr anticipated that predicament with uncanny accuracy and astonishing prescience. As such, perhaps more than any other figure in our recent history, he may help us discern a way out.

As pastor, teacher, activist, theologian, and prolific author, Niebuhr was a towering presence in American intellectual life from the 1930s through the 1960s. Even today, he deserves recognition as the most clear-eyed of American prophets. Niebuhr speaks to us from the past, offering truths of enormous relevance to the present. As prophet, he warned that what he called “our dreams of managing history” – born of a peculiar combination of arrogance and narcissism – posed a potentially mortal threat to the United States. Today, we ignore that warning at our peril.1

A couple months ago, I noticed that Dr. Bacevich had written the introduction to the recently reissued The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr. He called the book, “The most important book ever written on US foreign policy.” So I immediately wondered who is this man – Reinhold Niebuhr – whom Dr. Bacevich called “the most clear-eyed of American prophets”?

Read the rest of this entry »

  1. Bacevich, Andrew J. The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008. 6-7.↩

Keynesian Economics and Savings

November 21, 2008 in Economics by Greg | 2 comments

One of the goals of Keynesian economics was to eliminate savings and to encourage consumption in an apparent effort to gain control of government. The idea goes that if there are no savings in an economy1, then there is no private money for investment. Without private money for investment, the government must intervene and provide investment capital. And once the State provides that investment, it now has the power to dictate the conduct and processes of those who need investment capital. In essence, we end up with more socialism.

At present, this is precisely what is currently being played out in Congressional hearings concerning the proposed bailout of U.S. automakers.2

The Failure of the New Economics - An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies by Henry HazlittIn 1959, Henry Hazlitt reviewed Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936). The following is what Hazlitt wrote concerning Keynes’ depiction of savings:

Here is the General Theory in a nutshell, with its transvaluation of all values. The great virtue is Consumption, extravagance, improvidence. The great vice is Saving, thrift, “financial prudence.”3

There was ample precedence in socialist camps to do away with savings. In 1916, the Fabian Society declared “large savings by a wealthy class have an inherent evil: they increase and perpetuate a functionless, tribute-levying class of rentiers4 , which is already a dangerous element in the State.”5 Then, at the Labour Party Conference in 1923 the Fabians “rejected the concept that private savings increase community national assets.”6

In 1936, Keynes merely echoed the Fabian party line. Here is Hazlitt’s appraisal of Keynesian economics’ impact on savings:

How, then, would Keynes force down interest rates and even the return to the entrepreneur and still get his saving, investment, and production? What he really has in mind, apparently, is seizing the money through taxation and creating forced “investment” through the government. Does my assumption go too far? Then listen to this:

Though this state of affairs [just about enough return to cover cost of capital replacement] would be quite compatible with some measure of individualism, yet it would mean the euthanasia of the rentier, and, consequently, the euthanasia of the cumulative oppressive power of the capitalist to exploit the scarcity-value of capital.

For the light it throws on the heart of Keynes’s message and on the popularity of his ideas among leftists, this sentence is one of the most revealing in the book. Notice how patronizingly individualism (i.e., individual liberty) is treated. Keynes would graciously allow “some measure of” it. But he insists on “the euthanasia of the rentier.” Euthanasia means painless death. That is, the death of the rentier would be painless to Keynes. There is an old proverb that if you want to hang a dog you must first call him mad. If you want to knock a man down you should first give him a bad name. So Keynes uses the French rentier as a smear word. The rentier is the terrible fellow who saves a little money and puts it in a savings bank. Or he buys a bond of United States Steel, and uses his cumulative oppressive power as a capitalist to exploit the U. S. Steel Corporation.

All this is demagogy and claptrap. It differs from the Marxist brand only in technical detail.7

Keynesian Economics and Savings »»

  1. In 2005, the U.S. savings rate hit negative levels for the first time since the Great Depression and then slightly rebounded earlier this year. See “Facts on U.S. Policy – U.S. Savings Rate“. 10 October 2006. Hoover Institution. 21 November 2008; and, Hennigan, Michael. “Global Economy – U.S. Savings Rate Rises from Close to Zero in 2007 as Housing Wealth Falls“. 11 November 2008. Finfacts Ireland. 21 November 2008.↩
  2. “Dems Want Automakers to Show Bailout Spending Plan“. 20 November 2008. CNN. 21 November 2008.↩
  3. Hazlitt, Henry. “Failure of the ‘New Economics’: An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies“. Princeton, New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1959. 127. For a PDF of this book, see Failure of the ‘New Economics’: An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies. Ludwig von Mises Institute. 21 November 2008.↩
  4. A rentier is a person whose income consists primarily of fixed “unearned” amounts from rent or bond interest. It is a term first made popular by David Ricardo to describe the money earned by landowners. From a socialist point of view, this money is best used by the state for its own purposes since rentiers are deemed unwise in using this money for productive purposes.↩
  5. Webb, Sidney. ed. “How to Pay for the War“. London: Fabian Society – Fabian Research Department, 1916. 270. For a PDF of this book, see How to Pay for the War. American Libraries. 21 November 2008.↩
  6. McCarran, M. Margaret Patricia. Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain: 1919-1931.” Chicago: The Heritage Foundation, 1954. 54.↩
  7. Hazlitt, Henry. “Failure of the ‘New Economics’: An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies“. Princeton, New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1959. 379-380.↩

Strachey on Keynesian Economics

November 18, 2008 in Economics by Greg | 3 comments

John Strachey wrote about Keynesian economics in a book entitled Contemporary Capitalism which was published in 1956.1 Strachey was a British Labour party politician, Fabian Society member, and author of The Theory and Practice of Socialism.2

John Maynard Keynes on Time Magazine In the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes became one of the world’s most influential economists and “one of the fathers” of modern macroeconomic theory.3 In 1936, in the midst of the Great Depression, Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Keynesian economic theory is rooted in the belief that government should intervene in the affairs of the market in an apparent attempt to mitigate the effects of economic recessions, depressions, and booms.

Although some form of Keynesian economics has flourished in governments worldwide – especially during the 20th century in the U.K. and the United States – many are not aware that Keynes’ theories have been used as pretense to gain control over the means of production of a society. John Strachey wrote in Contemporary Capitalism:

Was not a horrid possibility visible behind and beyond [Keynes'] proposals, each of which looked so innocuous when taken separately? If once it were admitted that capitalism could be regulated and controlled in this way, might not the wage-earning majority of the population come sooner or later to the conclusion that the thing to do was neither to put up with things as they were nor to go through the fiery furnace of social revolution, in order to establish a wholly new system, but to harness – to bit and to bridle – capitalism in its own interest? Was it not apparent that Keynesism had only to be pushed a little further and a state of things might emerge in which the nominal owners of the means of production, although left in full possession of the legal title to their property, would in reality be working not for themselves, but for whatever hands had grasped the central levers of social control?

For Keynes had rashly shown that those levers had only to be pulled and pushed this way and that, in order to manipulate the system at will. And, in a democracy, would not those hands in the end almost certainly be those of the representatives of the wage-earning majority of the population? Might not the end of the story be that the once proud possessors of the means of the production would find themselves in effect but agents and managers on behalf of the community? If this was saving capitalism, its true defenders felt, it was saving it in a most Pickwickian sense.4

Sources:

  1. Book review of Contemporary Capitalism on Google Book Search: “By a prominent member of Great Britain’s Labour Party, this is a careful, lengthy presentation of principal economic theories and developments from the time of Ricardo through Marx to John Maynard Keynes and present day capitalism, in which the author’s opinions and thought-provoking conclusions are clearly set forth. It develops the steps through which the 18th century ‘Labor Theory of Value’ — the foundation of Marx’ system but also ‘the coping-stone of the system of the enthusiastic prophets of capitalism’ — leads to the very heart of our contemporary economic and social problems. He goes at length into Ricardo’s ‘Law of Price’, hailed among early 19th century intellectuals as the discovery of value itself, and his subsistence theory of wages which was picked up, against the background of Malthus’ theory of population, by Karl Marx and developed into dogma which, while showing foresight into the natural tendencies of capitalism, placed blind reliance upon theories inadequate to the facts. This, while not a treatise on Communism per se, does treat the development of its theories with the importance they deserve, and places them in perspective with the various stages of growth of capitalism as increasingly modified by political systems enacting equalitarian measures, in response to the democratic form of government. This ends with an evaluation of John Maynard Keynes and the ideal of democratic socialism; a later study is to follow on political forces and institutions. For students of world economics and government primarily but it should also be of interest to bankers, industrialists and political representatives concerned with the basic economic forces which are determining our future.” “Contemporary Capitalism”. Kirkus Reviews.↩
  2. See for example, Socialism is a Transition Stage for Communism; Proposition 8, Mormons, and the New Statesman; for a Marxist perspective, see Mattick, Paul. “Strachey Confesses“. 1937. Marxists Internet Archive. 18 November 2008; and New Fabian Essays. London: Turnstile Press, 1952. According to the U.K.’s National Archives: “While never officially a member of the Communist Party, Strachey was throughout the 1930s one of the most effective popularisers of Marxist doctrine and of the CP’s immediate policies. Through books like The Coming Struggle for Power and The Theory and Practice of Socialism Strachey had an enormous influence on the left both in Britain and in the USA, while from 1936 he made a major contribution to the Left Book Club as one of its three selectors and as a pungent political commentator. Towards the end of the decade he came increasingly to be influenced by Keynesianism and Roosevelt’s New Deal. It was this profounder divergence over the possible scope for reforming capitalism that underlay his split with the Communist Party over the character of the war in 1940.” See “John Strachey (1901-1963), Labour Politician and Socialist Thinker“. The National Archives. 18 November 2008.↩
  3. “John Maynard Keynes”. Wikipedia. 18 November 2008.↩
  4. Strachey, John. Contemporary Capitalism. New York: Random House, 1956. 287-288.↩

Proposition 8, Mormons, and the New Statesman

October 31, 2008 in Socialism by Greg | 5 comments

What interest does Proposition 8 and the “Mormons” hold for the New Statesman, “Britain’s award-winning current affairs magazine”? Why would a current affairs magazine based in London track what’s happening half way around the world in the state of California?

New Statesman The other night I visited a web site that had links to Google News stories about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The title of one of the news stories caught my eye – it was entitled “California’s Mormons Split Over Gay Vote”.1 I hadn’t read too many articles about Proposition 8 recently, other than the one that appeared in Meridian Magazine a few days ago2, so I decided to check it out.

Vote Yes on Proposition 8The New Statesman’s Characterization of Mormons

Here is how the New Statesman characterizes members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

  • The tag line to the article – “A bid to ban gay marriage in California has divided the Mormon Church in two – one side favouring a conservative vision the other backing equal rights” – implies that the Church is divided due to Proposition 8. However, as President Ezra Taft Benson once pointed out, “the Church is not divided. It simply means that there are some who, for the time being at least, are members of the Church but not in harmony with it.”3 The tag line also confuses “equal rights” with “equality.”
  • The article gives the impression that the Church is meddling in political affairs without recognizing the fact that members of the Church have political rights, namely free speech, and that the Church can and should speak out on moral issues.
  • The New Statesman put in a favorable light those like Bishop Bennion who take a “Switzerland” approach to Proposition 8 and stand up to “higher ups”. This appears to be an effort to create division within the Church. In contrast to this statement, President Henry B. Eyring recently spoke about a “great day of unity [which] is coming”4 and the blessings of being unified.
  • The New Statesman considers “moderate” those Church members who reach out to the gay community “after receiving the metaphorical cold shoulder from their brethren”. This erroneously implies that faithful or believing members of the Church have not and will not continue to reach out to gay family members and friends in a spirit of love and support Proposition 8.
  • Bishop Bennion is shown as a man with an “open mind” because he ignores the counsel of Church leaders and is “little more than a spectator” in the debate. Apparently, at least according to the New Statesman, only “close minded” people support Proposition 8 and support Church leadership.
  • According to the article, Bishop Bennion is undecided about the issue – “It raises a lot of questions to which there aren’t a lot of crystal clear answers”. Perhaps Bishop Bennion was not aware that the Church published The Divine Institution of Marriage on August 13th and followed that up with additional information about Same-Sex Marriage and Proposition 8 on October 16th. He may also be unaware of additional sources of information at the Preserving the Divine Institution of Marriage web site.
  • In stating that “Mormon leaders” are “gung-ho” in efforts to preserve traditional marriage, the New Statesman tries to position the Church – and members of the Church – in a “fight against gay marriage” (emphasis added). In stark contrast, the Church’s statement The Divine Institution of Marriage is completely devoid of inflammatory language (e.g. “fight”) and seeks to “reduce misunderstanding and ill will.”

What is the New Statesman?

When I first saw the title of the site, I seemed to remember reading something about the New Statesman that at first I couldn’t quite place. But when I clicked on the About New Statesman link and read the first sentence, I knew immediately what the site was about:

The New Statesman was created in 1913 with the aim of permeating the educated and influential classes with socialist ideas. Its founders were Sidney and Beatrice Webb (later Lord and Lady Passfield), along with Bernard Shaw, and a small but influential group of Fabians.

“Of course, that was it” I thought. The New Statesman was merged with an earlier publication of the Fabian Society which was founded by the Webbs and others. I had read about the publication in an excellent book about the Fabian Society entitled The Great Deceit: Social Pseudo-Sciences which contains an introduction and epilogue by Archibald B. Roosevelt, President Theodore Roosevelt’s son.5

Proposition 8, Mormons, and the New Statesman »»

  1. Quinn, Tom. “California’s Mormons Split Over Gay Vote“. New Statesman. 30 October 2008.↩
  2. Brown, Lowell C. “California’s Proposition 8: Open Season on Mormons“. Meridian Magazine. 27 October 2008.↩
  3. Benson, Ezra Taft. The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1988. 88-89.↩
  4. Eyring, Henry. B. “Our Hearts Knit as One“. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 31 October 2008.↩
  5. Dobbs, Zygmund, ed. The Great Deceit: Social Pseudo-Sciences. West Sayville, New York: Veritas Foundation, 1964.↩

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