The Borg vs. The People

The Borg vs. The People

Government power derives from collectivization of the people's property. When government – a small group of other people after all – owns or controls vast amounts of the people's property it is thereby empowered – like the Borg – to employ others to carry out its predictably self-serving desires – where resistance is supposedly futile. Flush with the people's property, and thereby their power, collectivist government can also redistribute property to a government-dependent so-called proletariat class in return for votes – while at the same time expropriating property from the laboring middle class – the social engineering of economic class struggle. Total collectivization of property into the hands of a Marxist-type government leads to total government power; thus Karl Marx, in Orwellian fashion, advocated the abolition of private property, not for “social justice,” but as a means to concentrate property, and thereby power, into the hands of a few.

“It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called 'abolition of private property' [Communist Manifesto] meant in effect the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before… In the years following the Revolution it [The Socialist Party of Oceania] was able to step into this commanding position almost un-opposed because the whole process was represented as an act of collectivization… It had always been assumed that if the Capitalist Class were expropriated Socialism must follow; and unquestionably the Capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses, transport, everything had been taken away from them; and since these things were no longer private property it followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc [Socialist Principles of Oceania], which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist program with the result; foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent.” George Orwell – 1984

The various forms of Socialism represent somewhat lesser forms of property collectivization in comparison to Communism. There is a sliding scale of property collectivization, and thereby a sliding scale of government power over the individual. Marxist Communism is at the extreme left with Fascism (related to Crony Capitalism) just a bit to its right, both inhabiting the far left on the spectrum of government power. We should therefore refer to Marxism as the Marxist Left or Marxist Socialism, and Fascism as the Fascist Left or Fascist Socialism – their collectivist similarity explained by Leonard Peikoff.

“Contrary to the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and run the nation's economy. The issue of legal ownership, they explained, is secondary; what counts is the issue of control. Private citizens, therefore, may continue to hold titles to property – so long as the state reserves to its self the unqualified right to regulate the use of their property. If 'ownership' means the right to determine the use and disposal of material goods, then Nazism endowed the state with every real prerogative of ownership. What the individual retained was merely a formal deed… which conferred no rights on its holder. Under Communism, there is collective ownership of property de jure. Under Nazism, there is the same collective ownership de facto.” Leonard Peikoff

Anarchy is at the far right on this scale – where there is no government. The American Revolution is center-right – where government collectivization was to be limited by the un-amendable natural law of our Declaration of Independence and the amendable secular law of our Constitution.

Collectivist government dates back to ancient times, but Plato was the first philosopher to lay out social and property collectivization in detail. Plato carefully worked out the system of collectivization where ordinary individuals possess little value and therefore inferior rights, and where the leaders of the collective – the Philosopher Kings – possess great value and therefore superior rights.

“Plato's metaphysics holds that the universe consists of two opposed dimensions: true reality – a perfect, immutable, supernatural realm, nonmaterial… non-perceivable – and the material world in which we live. The material world, Plato holds, is only an imperfect appearance of true reality… Momentous conclusions about man are implicit in this metaphysics: since individual men are merely particular instances of the [true] universal 'man,' they are not ultimately real… Each man therefore must strive, as far as he can, to wipe out his individuality (his personal desires, ambitions, etc.) and merge himself into the community, becoming one with it and living only to serve its welfare. On this view, the collective is not an aggregate, but an entity. Society (the state) is regarded as a living organism (this the so-called 'organic theory of the state'), and the individual becomes merely a cell of this organism's body… The program of government domination of the individual is thoroughly worked out. In Plato's 'Republic and Laws' one can read the details, which are the first blueprint of the totalitarian ideal… The blueprint includes the view that the state should be ruled by a special elite: the philosophers. Their title to absolute power, Plato explains, is their special wisdom, a wisdom which derives from their insight into true reality… the so-called 'Form of the Good'… The Form of the Good cannot be known by the use of reason… It can only be grasped, after years of ascetic preparation, only by an ineffable mystic experience… which is reserved to the philosophical elite… The mass of men, by contrast, are entangled in the personal concerns of this life. They are enslaved to the lower world revealed to them by their senses… They are fit only to obey orders…” Leonard Peikoff
Collectivism can be reduced to the assertion that a special elite group of people – analogous to Plato's Philosopher Kings, or the Borg Queen, or the Pigs of George Orwell's Animal Farm, – are “more equal than others.” Collectivism occurs when the State – a small group of other people after all – forcefully expropriates the individual's right to the fruit of their labor – a State which is in pursuit of its own happiness – where ordinary individuals, lacking those rights, become enslaved to that small group of other people. Collectivism is a society where a special elite has in effect been made in the image of God, and where ordinary individuals in effect are not. Seen from atop their collectivist tower of government power, as observed by the Soviet dissidents, the assimilated “little people” appear to be identical molecules of gas in Brownian motion, or merely cogs in the machinery of government.

“As for Marxism, one thinks of an analogy with another physical theory. This is the kinetic theory of gases, according to which a gas is the aggregate of molecules that come into collision, with the result of each collision determined by the laws of mechanics. A very great number of molecules transform the statistical laws of their collision into the general laws of the physics of gases. 'The only form of social contact of the producers of goods in capitalist society is exchange' (just as for gas molecules the only form of interaction is collision)… It is evident that such a conception makes sense only on the assumption that separate 'molecules' (producers) are identical… It is consistent with the tendency to reduce man to the level of a cog in the state mechanism, as well as with the attempt to prove that man exists only as a manifestation of non-individual features, such as production or class interest.” Igor Shafarevich

Plato, Karl Marx and other utopian philosophers agitated for totalitarian government power over the individual – where government unjustly possesses a collectivist “right” to the fruit of the individual's labor – in violation of the Natural Law embedded in our Declaration of Independence – an evil denounced by Abraham Lincoln in a direct refutation of excessive government collectivization.

“In the early days of the world, the Almighty said to the first of our race 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread'; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having first cost labour. And, inasmuch as most good things are produced by labour, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labour has produced them. But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others [the people comprising collectivist government] have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To secure to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.” Abraham Lincoln

Modern Marxist and Socialist governments empowered with this so-called collectivist right to individual property are reminiscent of Medieval Monarchies empowered by the so-called divine right of Kings. Marxism and Socialism are simply modern forms of Medieval Feudalism where Marxist or Socialist collectivization of property (and thereby power) replaces the same collectivization by Medieval Kings, Princes and Bishops.

Collectivization of individuals produces a lifeless skeletal social framework which subsumes individuality – where individuals are “assimilated” into a Borg-like State – a goods-producing collective beehive – where the government-managed societal honeycomb is highly valued – leaving the bees expendable – where “resistance is futile.”

“Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.” Karl Marx

“The individual is only a cell… power is collective. The individual only has power in so far that he ceases to be an individual… If he can make complete utter submission; if he can escape from