India today exhibits the following – only because of socialism, an ideology whose economic, political, legal, and sociological PRINCIPLES are all in ERROR:
1. Mass poverty.2. Highest degree of disorder.3. CORRUPTION right across the State – political, administrative, regulatory, judicial, police and armed forces as well.4. Judicial INJUSTICE – including inability to settle legal disputes on time.5. Unlivable cities, towns and villages – which is “civilisational collapse.”6. Arbitrariness and uncertainty in Law – the “rule of will” – only because of socialist-minded legislative interventionism.7. Burdens of onerous and expropriate taxation and ever-expanding State borrowings on a predominantly poor people.8. Sheer perversity of inflationist-welfarism – which actually “redistributes wealth” from poor savers to rich corporate borrowers.9. Proliferation of useless “political rights” beneficial only to bureaucrats who “administer” their “provision.”10. Threat to future generations from “Free and Compulsory Education” based on the premise that this socialist State is “infallible.”11. Future of vast territory with huge population at stake – and the public verdict at the conclusion of this debate will influence all Third World nations, especially those in our troubled region, witnessing US-NATO “military interventionism” right now.
12. NOTHING WORKS as far as "infrastructure" is concerned: roads, highways, city streets, footpaths, even. Modern urban transportation does not exist pan-India - and the initiatives recently undertaken in landlocked Delhi and Bangalore are both State-owned! BIG BUDGETS. BUREAUCRACY! Then take railways - another OUTDATED AND UNSAFE State monopoly. Water supply. Electricity. And now their "regulators" have messed up mobile telephony and civil aviation (apart from insurance). Add airports, as well.
13. No protection of life - on the streets! - no protection of property - and ZERO LIBERTY!
When Manmohan Singh was “selected” as prime minister by
the CONgress chief over ten years ago, public opinion lauded him as the
“architect of liberalisation” – for he was Narasimha Rao’s finance minister in
the 1990s, when the first wave of economic freedom happened. But as I have
recounted in this recent post, there was ZERO “politics” accompanying those
liberal-minded reforms, and these occurred in an “ideological vacuum.”
Nothing
has changed since – and during these two terms as prime minister, Manmohan
Singh has remained completely “silent.” There has occurred this “death of politics” – both within Parliament and out of it. Not only are there no "debates on principles" within Parliament, but Manmohan the PM never talks to either the people or the press. Never. This is true also with regard to the sudden administrative decision his government has taken to "liberalise" some areas where foreigners wanting to invest have been held up right through his extremely long tenure. This, while the combined opposition has taken to the streets to "protest."
Further, Manmohan Singh has
never won any “popular election” – and his “loyalty” to the CONgress
“bloodline” have revealed him, over the years, as an actual “anti-liberaliser,”
EXPANDING the socialist State’s activities in numberless new areas, from nuclear
power to “compulsory education” – the most dangerous of them all.
Whereas “politics” in the classical definition of this
Greek word means “the public actions of free people,” socialist India displays
nothing of this in “party politics.” The only real politics we see occurs
within the “para-parliament” of the Free Press – but here again, Manmohan,
Montek and all the rest never ever RESPOND to anything published that disproves
and discredits their ideology and their policies. The “intellectual battle” between
socialist and anti-socialists is never resolved - in PUBLIC.
Neither can this intellectual battle occur within
Parliament – because there is in place a legislative ban on anti-socialists
forming political parties and contesting elections.
Ludwig “King” Mises was born in Vienna, capital of
Imperial Hapsburg Austria, in 1881 – and he died in 1973, in New York, at the
age of 92, disproving and opposing each and every socialist doctrine throughout
this long and productive life, during which he established a True Science of
Economics based on the “logical categories” within every “trading human mind.”
From this very “individualistic” epistemological root, he built a True Sociology – which is the
“exchange society” of the Free Market, where all trading individuals interact
peacefully and gainfully, thereby building civilization by accumulating capital
privately.
In 1973, the year Mises passed away at 92, I finished high
school. The following year, I began pursuing a 3-year BA (Hons.) Economics
course in Delhi University. Nothing of Mises was taught.
Instead, we had TWO papers titled "Indian Economics" - one, on how horrible the Brits were; and second, on all the pious intentions of our central planners, a paper that required mugging up the numbers of all the plans, from the first to the sixth (then). Thus, both "history" as well as "theory" were in ERROR!
Manmohan
Singh and Amartya Sen were both “bureaucrat-professors” of Economics in State employ
those days.
Peter Bauer, during the previous decade, had warned that these Delhi U bureaucrat-professors of Economics were leading the country to totalitarianism - and I have an old post on these "evil professors" Bauer wrote about, in which I quote some of them.
In 1977, for a brief while, I attended the Master’s programme at the
Delhi School of Economics – and dropped out because there was simply too much
mathematics. There is not a single mathematical equation in Mises’ Human
Action: A Treatise on Economics, which is over 1000 pages in length.
Economics
is a “logical science,” wrote Mises. And economic activity is “calculative action”
based on the “logical category” of ARITHMETIC, present in the minds of all
illiterates even, who can count their herds, or their change, without
“education.” Most street vendors and hawkers are illiterates, particularly kids - but their minds are possessed of the logic of Arithmetic. As are many small shopkeepers, particularly women. Actually, even chairmen of giant corporates use nothing but Arithmetic to read their balance sheets.
Herein lies the great danger that I am most concerned
about – the “free and compulsory education” to be imparted by this socialist
State. It is based on the premise that this State is INFALLIBLE – and even the
Pope in the Vatican no longer maintains such a position, which is why Stephen
Hawking, in his wheelchair, could present his “Big Bang Theory” within this Holy City recently, disproving the cherished views of the Catholic Church on how the Universe was "created" right before the Pope himself, without facing anything that poor Galileo had to.
To disprove and discredit the socialist doctrines one need not be any "politician" heading any "political party"; nor someone playing a "democratic numbers game" by accumulating "mass support" and engaging in the "politics of agitations" like, say Anna Hazare, who has received so much "media attention" for no other reason than "group size" and "rhetoric."
ON THE CONTRARY!
Individuals think - individually. Individual reasoning is what has created every philosophy. No committee ever wrote a great treatise on anything. To challenge, disprove and discredit socialism in India - ever-expanding socialism, that too - requires just one such INDIVIDUAL; that is, ONE who has studied, thought, and written as well - for a very long time.
Mises has written somewhere that when a thinker dies, the only way to "recreate" him is to carefully STUDY all his works. This is what I have done - and this blog bears evidence of the same, which I have always written ALONE.
NO TEAM!
NO ADVISORS!
ALONE!
Friedrich Hayek was a student of Mises' privatseminar in Vienna during the 1930s - and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Science in 1974, exactly the year after Mises' death.
Hayek wrote this last book in the hope and expectation that some prominent socialists would "debate" with him in public considering his demolition of their very "conceited" ideas: that their "wise committee of planners" could take economic decisions correctly on behalf of all the "dumb masses."
But this debate never happened.
However, armed with Mises' epistemology, I have established that each and ever ILLITERATE is capable of thinking and acting - that is, "trading" - simply because each and every human mind is equipped with all these "logical categories."
Mises placed GREAT EMPHASIS on epistemology, and his LAST BOOK - The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science (1962) - is entirely on this subject, which his student Hayek neglected.
Mises placed GREAT EMPHASIS on epistemology, and his LAST BOOK - The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science (1962) - is entirely on this subject, which his student Hayek neglected.
Thus, there is this "fatal conceit" on one side - and a "fanfare for the common man" on the other: the illiterate common man, that too.
It is FATAL CONCEIT that is powering "compulsory education" from the socialist State.
It must be stopped RIGHT NOW - and this is the only way I have thought it can be done, simply because, in the Free Indian Press (with a worldwide blog, though) I am the only one who has studied Mises so deeply.
It may be said of me that I am an "anarchist"
and hence "dangerous" - but it is worth noting that a Predatory State
can and MUST be opposed by one who can articulate the PRINCIPLES by which a
NATURAL ORDER exists, which is why posses of armed policemen are NOT REQUIRED
to "maintain order" in any Central Shopping and Business District
anywhere in the world, nor indeed in any of India's bustling bazaars. The
"Bobby" of London has always been UNARMED - and this very "civil
police" was established only in 1829. The Honourable East India Company
governed WITHOUT any police for some two hundred years till 1857 - and it was the British State that
enacted the Indian Police Act in 1861, and order VANISHED in 1905!
Theory
- and History. These are all we have to understand "human action."
And as for the IAS Academy - where our "elite bureaucrats" are trained - I have this post on how, after my lecture, their then Director told me, "WE are knowledge-proof."
From "Locke is our prophet" of the HEICS, to "Rousseau is our prophet" of the ICS, these chaps have moved to "Piero Sraffa is our prophet"!
And as for the IAS Academy - where our "elite bureaucrats" are trained - I have this post on how, after my lecture, their then Director told me, "WE are knowledge-proof."
From "Locke is our prophet" of the HEICS, to "Rousseau is our prophet" of the ICS, these chaps have moved to "Piero Sraffa is our prophet"!
Ludwig "King" Mises, while living and working in New York after fleeing Europe to escape the clutches of the Nazis, made the observation that, while in Europe the opinions of philosophers mattered, things were very different in the USA, where only politicians, businessmen and the like found their views circulating.
This matters to socialist India for another very important reason - because of the false "legal philosophy" of the socialists. Injustice, endless litigation, and all this can be easily replaced by ex ante JUSTICE - which means NO LEGAL DISPUTES by definition, and ORDER can quickly replace this HIGHEST DEGREE OF DISORDER without any coercion, but by philosophical argumentation alone.
I have already stated what is my position in this great battle of ideas, one in which I have been actively participating for about 25 productive years: I wish to remain a PRIVATE PERSON, studying further and writing more. I do not want to occupy any public office.
As Thomas Jefferson observed:
Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.
We have SO MANY such rotters around, anyway.
I conclude with some lines from the Old Testament, from I Samuel
8: often quoted by Thomas Paine, Lord Acton and other classical
liberals to illustrate the fact that The State is not divinely inspired:
10. And Samuel told the words of the LORD unto the people that asked of him a king.
11. And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.12. And he will appoint his captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.14. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.15. And he will take a tenth of your seed...17. And he will take a tenth of your sheep, and ye shall be his servants.
NOTE: Samuel was a JUDGE.
Judges are the "oldest bureaucracy" - but the IDEA of ex ante justice is something else.
NATURAL ORDER!
