The Western World at the Crossroads to Fascism

The difference between the international socialism of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in Stalin’s Russia, and the national socialism of the National Socialist German Workers Party in Hitler’s Germany, was in their ideas on how government should go about controlling all production activities. Both variants were agreed that private ownership of the means of production - capitalism - is terribly bad for society; and that government should dictate the conditions of production, and therefore any aspect of human freedom in general.

The Russian model involved the state taking over ownership of all productive property and running it directly. The German model left the legal ownership in the hands of the property owner, who was able to run it and to profit subject to any overriding directive on any matter by the state according to its plans for society. This model increasingly describes contemporary conditions in the western world, especially owing to the rise of environmentalism.

Many people think it is necessary for government to manage the environment which unchecked human resource use is liable to degrade.

However, there is no such thing as values over and above human values. If we took away all the people, there would be no value in the environment. No one has a right to speak for environmental values over and above human values in the environment. Those who presume to speak for “environmental values” supposedly over and above human values, are merely speaking for their own values in using the same resource in a different way.

Take native vegetation for example. The problem is not that native vegetation has “environmental value” over and above the value of using the land for growing food like wheat or beef. The problem is that the farmer values the use of a particular piece of land to satisfy one kind of human want - for food; and the environmentalist values the same piece of land to satisfy a different kind of human want - for growing plant species that were here before 1788. The issue is, which values should prevail and how should we decide?

The fact that there are “environmental values” in native vegetation does not mean that those asserting them should necessarily prevail over everyone else with an inconsistent value in the use of the same resource. Nor does it mean that the decision of which value should prevail should be made by government.

Thus, just because there are “environmental values”, doesn’t mean the government should have responsibility to manage the environment.

There are only two possibilities. Either decision on how to use a given resource can be made on the basis of individual liberty, private property, and voluntary consent to transactions. Or they can be made on the basis of one-person-one-vote, and government using force - the law - to dictate what property-owners must do - on pain of prison if you don’t obey. It’s not about the environment, it’s about power. There is no third way.

It is not true that government “represents” society and the greater good more than the farmer or firm motivated by profit. All environmental interventions by government are intended to override the price levels affecting the supply and demand for a particular natural resource, and to replace it with a different price.

But the process by which original prices arise is far more representative of society and the greater good, than the processes by which the politicians are elected and impose alternative prices. Prices arise from the actions of everyone in the world in buying or selling, or abstaining from buying or selling, the resource in question, voluntarily,  and in which every dollar is a vote, made multiple times daily, every day of the year. Governments arise from the actions of only a sub-set of a small sub-set of the people of this planet, voting once every three years, with no ability for the elector to distinguish a party’s policies that he wants, from those he doesn’t.

It is more absurd to blame the farmer or firm for being motivated by profit, than it is to blame the politician for being motivated by a majority.

Besides, politicians are just as motivated by money as other human beings, perhaps more so - or have we discovered in politicians a race of angels, as the big-government brigade seem to assume? What reason is there to think that a desire for confiscated money is nobler than a desire for money voluntarily handed over?

All human action is an attempt to cause the environment to be changed so as to be more satisfactory to human wants from the point of view of the person taking the action. There are not many universally true statements about human action, but this must be one of them.

Ironically, while environmentalists never tire of saying that human beings are part of the environment, for some reason they think humans are the only species for whom it is immoral to use natural resources so as to live and reproduce.

Human use of the environment is by definition an improvement to the environment, otherwise it wouldn’t happen. Before my house was built, the site was natural: stones, grass, insects. I could lie there naked, on the stones, exposed to the weather, getting bitten by insects. But now I lie in pyjamas, under bedclothes, within four walls, and that satisfies my human wants more. This change to the environment has improved environmental values from my point of view.

But you might say, what about the reduction of forests since timber was used to build my house; and the pollution from fossil fuels used to heat it? Well they affect other people, and therefore other people may have a legitimate countervailing interest in my use of natural resources. But this just confirms what we have already seen, that environmental values are only about the countervailing human interests in the use of the same resource. That doesn’t mean that there are environmental values over and above human values, nor that the decisions about environmental values should be made by way of government and power, rather than by way of freedom and property.

A governmental power to manage the environment, or control the use of carbon, cannot be anything but a totalitarian power. Since all human activity affects the environment and uses carbon, a power to control these things is a power to control all human activity - that’s what totalitarian government means. Hitler was democratically elected, and his views on lebensraum and the Jews were already known. If that is not a disproof of the assumption that democracy will save us from the logical consequences of letting governments assume totalitarian powers, nothing is.

The Australian Constitution provides that the powers of the federal government are limited to a list of powers given in the Constitution. “Managing the environment” is not one of them. If it is accepted to be a valid function of government, it would subsume all the other powers and totally subvert the constitution and the possibility of limited government and of a free society.

The western world is on the brink of sliding into fascism with the rise of a creed that government ought to have the unlimited power to control every aspect of human life that affects the environment or that uses carbon - in other words, everything. Don’t kid yourself that totalitarian power is going to be any more humane this time around than it was last time, nor confine itself to what is convenient and safe for you, especially when so many environmentalists openly pretend that they speak for values above humanity, that human population is the problem, and that unlimited political power is the solution.