The Road to Serfdom Today - Hayek's Fears Realized... In Reverse

It's a great title - The Road to Serfdom. For anyone who feels like his or her endless toil has not succeeded in achieving any advance towards freedom, it resonates loudly. Am I not a serf? I must work every day just to provide necessities for my family. Am I really free, or am I a wage slave after all?

Hayek's treatise doesn't address the individual, though. It's an intellectual analysis of political movements that highjack our economic torment to wrest power from the wealthy owners of the means of production. Eliminate poverty and take control of the government. Can you imagine a more powerful populist message? This is the promise of communism, but it conceals a darker intent. In "The Road to Serfdom" Hayek argues that totalitarianism disguises itself as socialism. It is the wolf in sheeps' clothing. Written in the era of Hitler and Stalin, he had rightful concerns. 

History shows how this totalitarianism ends badly. By professing to alleviate poverty for the common man, the totalitarian overtakes government for his own ends. Hence the flaw in communist regimes. After all, the end result of the communist government is the end of private ownership of the means of production. This means there are no checks and balances in government power; no private influence on the state's priorities. Further, the government cannot succeed without the volition of private capital; this is why quotas fail. 

Reading Piketty's "Capital" however, shows that capitalism, and governments who rely on free markets solely, create a reverse system of indentured servants/citizens. These systems fail because capital tends to concentrate and become moribund. If we agree that, like matter, there is a limited amount of capital, then when stores of capital become concentrated, there is less and less movement and, even when the movement which remains becomes more and more dynamic, there is less of it for everyone. This is 1% conundrum. Accumulated wealth doesn't help the state or the populace. In fact, it creates unrest because of the perception of an unfair advantage. The democratic republic needs a balance. Calling it socialism and badging it as anti-state is a totalitarian strategy. However, there are roles that citizens should take for themselves which government has co-opted in its opaque goal for dominance.

Collectivization has gotten a bad rap in this regard. Collective action and control of resources have a deep foundation in America as a means of achieving a common good. Commonwealth and State, for instance, have the same definition. Philosophically, though, there is a big difference. It means "for the common wealth" or the common good. THAT is the role of the state; not providing the resources, but providing the environment where common good can be achieved. WE have to do the work - not the state. 

That's what this series is about. How do we wrest control of our own capital to end our proletariat servitude, our wage indenture? We don't do it by ourselves. We do it by banding together and doing for ourselves what the government cannot or will not.  

Collectivization for US! Hacking the current system for the common good.