Where did Socialism Come from?

We, homines sapientes, have, according to Wikipedia, been here on this Earth for perhaps as long as 200,000 years. We originated in Africa and reached "full behavioural modernity" about 50,000 years ago. How we got here is mystery. Are we the descendents of earlier hominids? – Perhaps. Who were they? Where did they come from? We don't have the remotest idea.

How did the earliest life forms come to be? Darwin speculated. Miller and Urey produced some amino acids from inorganic substances. Subsequently, scientists have cast doubt on their assumption that they had the initial conditions right. Anyway, amino acids are not proteins – only the building blocks. In real life, to make proteins out of amino acids, you need DNA, a fabulously complex molecule. Only life forms have DNA. My readers will forgive me for stating the obvious – we are talking circularity!

Dean Kenyon wrote a book, Biological Predestination. It was the standard "origin-of-life" text book. He has subsequently repudiated the ideas therein. If a well-known and respected Catholic apologist were to embrace Marxism, I, for one, would have to give him the time of day – Respect (perhaps).

In all that time (ie for at least 50,000 years) the overwhelming majority have practised some kind of religion. C S Lewis says that religions can be classified (like soups) into clear and thick. Buddhism is clear; Hinduism is thick. I shall have to read that essay again.

In the twenty-first century the overwhelming majority practise some kind of religion. Most of the major religions have a long history. Sikhism is the youngest. Islam is the next youngest. Occasionally, new religions pop up. We have seen, in the twentieth century, Scientology and the Unification Church (aka "Moonies"). The adherents of nearly all these religions give credit to nearly all the others.

In the nineteenth century we saw the origin of anti-religious religion: Materialism.

I am not the first to observe that, like traditional faiths, Materialism is a metaphysical system. Fundamentalist Materialism's Creed can be summed up as: "The physical universe is all there is and Science is the only way to know anything about it." Some materialists have (heroically) attempted to create a moral system; but the physical universe does not provide the ingredients. The project is doomed from the start. All the same, this doesn't stop them from being extremely censorious of other faiths.

We Westerners then, live in an extraordinarily unusual society, metaphysically speaking. As well as living (for the time being) in extraordinarily prosperous circumstances, we share our society with people who reject the basis of all Morality and Reason – also with a majority who have never given these ideas a second's thought. This majority is infected with pre-materialistic ideas and assumptions (Thanks be to God!) but also (regrettably) with Materialism.

Any intelligent, observant child asks himself/herself: "Wouldn't it be nice if...?" Any thinking adult answers, "Yes, but..."

Aquinas said that the Natural Law can never be erased from the human heart. I hope and believe that he is right. But that innate longing for Justice does funny things when divorced from religion. Theistic belief underpins not only Morality but Reason too. So, if you are an atheist who longs for a just society, to see Heaven on Earth, you will create a system whereby Fairness is legislated. Legislation implies coercion. Voila, Socialism! Gabriel will hate this – Sorry, Son.

Now, atheistic Materialism is not the same thing as Socialism. There are Christians (misguided, I think) who are Socialists and there is Geoff, who does not believe in God but is not a Socialist; and there is Maureen, who is a Catholic and believes that trades unions are a good thing. However, there is a very substantial overlap. Aha! I have fallen into the correlation/causality trap! I don't think so. But, it seems to me that when people cease to believe in God, while retaining a desire for Justice and Fairness, something like Socialism is pretty well inevitable.

The scientific Austrian critique of Socialism seems to me to be watertight. It cannot work. Libertarians (and most Austrians are Libertarians) declare that Socialism violates the principle that coercion (except in self-defence) is morally indefensible.

What we see in the real world is that those countries which have rejected or are are in the process of rejecting Socialism (eg Taiwan, South Korea, China and India) are getting richer, whereas where Socialism increases economies decline. I am appalled by the example of the USA. As Obama-Socialism marches on, unemployment and unsustainable debt increase. The Socialist EU is another catastrophe in the making. Frantic measures to shore up the edifice are dragging it down.

I would love to be proved wrong. But my reading of History goes like this:

Just at the moment when the Christian West had come up with the only system that has ever improved the physical well-being of the masses, so other currents of thought were undermining Christianity – and leading (if my analysis is correct) to Socialism.

Socialism (National and International) was tried and seen to fail on a scale so vast that it takes your breath away.

In a few places Socialism was flushed away – those places flourish. In the once-Christian West we seem to be somnambulistically approaching the abyss. Perhaps we will wake up in time.

You might say that we are suffering Divine Retribution for our lack of Faith. I would disagree. We are suffering from wilful blindness.

Message to Geoff – A Wonderful Human Being

Geoff and I have no grandparents in common. We are not, therefore, cousins. But, we have as many great grandparents in common as we would have if we were cousins. Explain.

What follows is a very slightly modified version of my message to him.

Geoff commented: "Broadly I agree with this although not with your views on science (as a scientist how could I?)"

What are my views on Science (I try to use a capital "S" every time)?

I think that Science is among the greatest achievements of Humanity!

Let's deal with Induction and Deduction - since childhood I have found it impossible to remember which is which. So, I am not going to use these terms, especially since the internet has added to my confusion.

Mathematics is representative of one kind of Science. True (ie irrefutable) axioms lead by logical laws to Truth. Austrians say that Praxeology (their method) is representative of the same kind of Science.

Physics is representative of another kind of Science. Observation leads to speculation. Speculation leads to theorising. Theories require testing by repeated further observation and (where possible) experiment. A theory unrefuted by observation and/or experiment deserves respect - not unconditional acceptance.

There may be competing theories to account for any set of observations. As far as I understand it, theories which explain more deserve more respect than those which explain less. Every theory in the Natural Sciences is at risk of being replaced (in respectability) with a theory which explains more.

Science and its greatest practitioners (Newton is always the best example, although he had loony ideas: numerology and alchemy among them) occupy a place in my thinking alongside St Paul, Shakespeare, Bach and St Thomas Aquinas.

I have no quarrel with Science - never have had.

I have a bitter quarrel with two other schools.

The first is "Scientism", the idea that that the Natural Sciences are sufficient to explain everything. Peter Atkins states this in so many words and gets humiliated by William Lane Craig. Science has nothing to say about Ethics or Aesthetics. Sam Harris, a very decent chap, tries to show that it does - unsuccessfully, in my view.

My other quarrel is with those who take it upon themselves to define Science in such a way to exclude a priori the speculations of others about, for example, Intelligent Design.

Intelligent Design is allowed when we are confronted by the Taj Mahal or Mount Rushmore - but not when we are confronted by Information in DNA. Even though whenever we are confronted by Information in any other context, it is always the product of intelligence.

So, I have no reason, from what you have said, to differ from you about Science. Wherein do you think we differ?

Lastly, Geoff, you took issue with my assertion that government funding has corrupted all Science and you gave an important example. I am content to stand corrected. I still think that government funding has a tendency to corrupt.

Daniel Hannan (MEP) – Politicians aren’t all bad!

What a man!

DH speaks and votes against the very institution that provides him with a living – the European Union.

Apologies for repeating myself: We had a referendum on the Common Market. The Common Market turned itself into the European Economic Community. This turned into the European Community, which morphed into the European Union. They obviously know we are stupid. Well, we didn't take to the streets – though it wasn't that subtle, was it?: CM4EEC4EC4EU! Never once did the bastards consult us! The EU makes over 80% of our laws. It's as though I joined the Co-op and discovered that, in next to no time, they were telling me what to eat and how to bring up my children.

I have respect for very few politicians – less as the years go by. The coalition makes me physically ill.

There are a few others: IDS, Michael Gove, Douglas Carswell and Frank Field. Recently I have been holding my nose as I put my "X" against the Conservative candidate's name. Never again, I think. UKIP, if there is a candidate. Otherwise I'll spoil the ballot paper.

Daniel Hannan

Abiotic Oil

There are two competing theories about the origin of petroleum and natural gas: The "fossil theory", which is the conventional wisdom in the West, and the "abiotic (ie non-biological) theory", which is scientific orthodoxy in Russia and the Ukraine.

The first says that oil is the result of pressure and other factors working upon organic matter (both zoological and botanical) – prehistoric forests and the corpses of long dead animals.

The second says that geological forces way way down continually generate oil out of inorganic material. In support of this theory they point out that there are instances of dried out wells which have been replenished. What is more, astronomers have detected hydrocarbons (chemicals similar to petroleum) in comets – no rotting dinosaurs up there, I think.

I have read that oil prospectors in the West have a 20% success rate, whereas their Russian counterparts achieve 70-80%. The latter have found oil at 30,000 feet (maybe more) – far too deep for prehistoric forests and the corpses of long dead animals.

Estimates of oil reserves are constantly revised upwards. Alarmists say we have only a few years' worth left. Their opponents say there is enough down there for 500 years, or maybe for much longer.

Thomas Gold (now deceased) is a scientific hero of mine. Three times he found himself in the academic wilderness:

• He proposed a theory of hearing which said that our ears emit a sound and that it is the interference with this sound by external sound waves which is processed by our nerves and brains. Nobody wanted to know. Now scientists have identified individuals where the noise is detectable and the theory has enjoyed a renaissance. Anyway, Gold was discouraged and went off to do Cosmology.
  
• He proposed a theory to account for pulsars, astronomical objects which produce regular pulses of energy. He said that pulsars were pairs of (binary) stars which rotate about each other. Nobody wanted to know. His theory is now mainstream.
  
• He and his collaborators proposed that oil did not come from fossils but from geological processes.
  

The Russians are totally convinced that he was right. I think there was some controversy about alleged plagiarism. Western scientists have not yet followed suit. He did not get credit in his lifetime. I hope Duesberg lives to be vindicated.

This link is to a site where the controversy is discussed in some detail, with arguments from both sides.

Peak Oil Debate

Duesberg on AIDS – Musings about the Nature of Dissidence

Peter Duesberg at a Libertarian Conference

I have not seen this before although I am familiar with most of the contents.

Now, here's a funny thing. I am genuinely puzzled by this. Your comments will be welcome, honestly.

There are no hard and fast statistics about what follows. It could be done by conducting polls at Libertarian Conferences.

My strong impression is that upholders of free markets (1) are very likely to be sceptical about Climate Catastrophism (2). If you are doubtful about Climate Catastrophism, you are unlikely to be a hard-line Darwinian (3). If you are dissatisfied with the Darwinian consensus, you may well be similarly dissatisfied with the HIV theory of AIDS (4). If you are an AIDS dissenter then you may not be persuaded of the "peak oil" disaster scenario (5). Clearly, I am not saying that 1 leads inexorably to 2, 3, 4 and 5.

I am in all these camps and suspect that if I were to meet a kindred spirit from any of them, there would be a better than even chance that the person would be in at least one of the others.

So, assuming that there is some validity in my speculation, how shall we account for the phenomenon?

The easiest answer would be say that I am simply mad, that mad people have all sorts of mad ideas. This answer has the advantage of simplicity.

Another answer would be to say that I am incorrigibly contrarian, that I oppose pretty well everything the majority accepts. The problem with this is that I do accept thousands of mainstream opinions. I don't go around looking for conventional ideas to oppose. You have to trust me on this; I have privileged access here.

Each of these camps is very different from all the others in detailed respects. But a similarity shared by all of them is that in each case the position they oppose is supported by very powerful vested interests. Of course a position is not invalidated by the fact some people benefit if others accept the position.

It would be interesting to know if you are in any of my five camps above. If so, are you in any of the others too? If someone hints that they are, for example, "tired of all this Global Warming nonsense", ask them whether they think that government interference in markets (by manipulating interest rates, by high taxes and heavy regulation) is, on balance, good or bad.

Regrettably, although there are lots and lots of people who detest socialism and an increasing number who are unconvinced by Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change, most people are totally unaware of, for example, the Russian/Ukrainian Theory of Abiotic Petroleum. How many people know that thousands of scientists admit that the fossil record does not provide the proof of Darwinian Evolution that the Biology Establishment claims it does? Cambrian Explosion, what are you talking about? Everybody knows that HIV is "the virus that causes AIDS" – radio and TV and the press have told them so thousands of times. The vested interests do not typically address their opponents' arguments. They do their damnedest to prevent them from publishing. Phil Jones at the CRU (University of East Anglia) admits as much.

Is it because I am mad or contrarian or because I have eccentrically decided to read up on these controversies?

What about "9/11 Truthers", I hear you cry. Frankly, I believe some of these people have difficult questions. Equally frankly, I have not read up on the subject – I simply cannot bear the thought that they may be on to something. What a coward!

My Muslim Brothers – We Need You!

By "we" I mean British/Western conservatives and traditionalists – Christians.

By "need" I mean urgently require (in the face of Western materialist/self-indulgent hedonism).

By "you" I mean theistic men and women, followers of Mohammed, whose thinking is essentially conditioned by moral concepts, who believe that God created the World for His purpose.

Am I ever going to become a Muslim? No. But I am closer to Islam than I am to what I regard as the void at the heart of modern Britain.

Do I have a problem with Islam's failure to embrace Democracy, with its apparent sexism, with the violence of Islamism, with Islam's failure to distinguish between Religion and Politics, with the racism of many Muslims with respect to the Jews, with extreme reactions to infringements to "honour"? Indeed I do.

All the same, we have so much more in common with each other than we have with the ghastly zeitgeist of contemporary Britain.

You have much to remind us about family values – the care that you take of your extended family members. You don't say, "Abdul, it's OK to be dependent on the State; Aisha, it's OK for you to have multiple children by multiple fathers." In Britain one-in-five children is born to parents who have never worked – not so in Egypt or Indonesia.

Political Secularism appeals to me not because my outlook is secular but because state interference in religious practice has always been horrible, in Christendom and in Islamic societies.

Whenever Christians and Muslims have attempted to create Heaven on Earth, the result has been appalling – though our common enemies, the Socialists, have, literally, created Hell. I would rather live in Iran than in North Korea.

Muslims have slaughtered other Muslims; Christians have burned other Christians at the stake – not a record to be proud of!

The contribution that Islamic scholarship has made to Western culture is enormous. Thank you!

We (Christians) have given the World Science and Democracy (the least bad system of government) – but pretty bad! Is there an alternative to Theocracy and to electorates that vote themselves ever more generous entitlements – which impoverish societies so catastrophically? For what it is worth, I regard this as an important question – to which I don't have a ready answer.

Incidentally, we Westerners (not Christians) have also given the World Scientism, the idea that Science is the only proper way of understanding the World – profound apologies!

Jews, Christians and Muslims should be in dialogue. We should fraternally oppose the bad guys – those who declare that morality is subjective. We have many problems to resolve. I would be dishonest to pretend that I don't think Catholicism is the best religion. As a Libertarian, however, I think that we can agree that non-aggression is a good basis for living in harmony – that we have more to gain by fighting our common enemies than by fighting each other.

Christians have recently had a pathetic record of even attempting to increase their numbers. Catholics don't seem even to want everyone to be a Catholic. I do! But I'd rather my countrymen were Muslims than Materialists.

Read this Book with me!

[Apologies. I thought the link was to the whole book. It to the first 49 pages. Well, we know the book exists.]

Elgar Companion to Austrian Economics

I have been feeling a bit nervous that someone might challenge me to define the Theory of Marginal Utility. I'm an amateur Austrian. So I went to Google – and found the above.

This book is not published by the Mises Institute but a quick glance at the list of contributors reveals a number of Misesian/Austrian names, including Walter Block, Joseph Salerno and Israel Kirzner – reassuring.

The editor is Peter J Boettke. I don't know this guy but I have a good feeling about him.

So, I am recommending a book I haven't even read! How impertinent.