You say I am free?

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“You say I am free? And yet I cannot even live save by your leave! You say I am free? All your laws proclaim it, it is my proudest boast; yet I may not possess the thing which I make with my own labor! You say I am free? Yet the hours in which I am to work, and the conditions under which I have to work are imposed upon me by others. You say I am free? Yet the product of my labor does not belong to me, it belongs to another, for whose advantage I am constrained to drudgery. You say I am free? Yet I cannot choose what I will consume save within very narrow limits. I must take what is presented to me by a system of production which I did not create and which is indifferent to my desires. You say I am free and equal with my fellows? But in practice I am in thrall to those who hold that whereby men live; machines and the soil and the raw material and the necessary reserves of food and clothing and the rest which men, called my equals, have in their control and which I have not.”

You say I am free? How dare you lie to me face! Bury me under your mountain of debt, bureaucracy, and regulation by an overbearing and oppressive state. Enslave me under your unflinching corporate tyranny of low wages, destruction of my environment, and forced servitude. But how dare you stand there and foist upon me your propaganda of freedom. There is no freedom in being an employee, the terms are mutually exclusive.

The flood of lies has come rushing upon us unsuspecting individuals like a flash flood in the night. You have the lies of the Socialists with their promise of a utopia where all of man can unite and abolish class and social division along with private property; but I want my property. You have the lies of the Liberals and Libertarians with their promise of a paradise where all of man can be free to live in a world of exploitation, materialism, and bourgeois rule; but I want my freedom.

Lie upon lie upon lie, they keep being told to us with the expectation that our narrow and easily sculpted minds will follow them blindly. With the false prophets of Capitalism feeding upon the family, community, and individual like a vampire in the night we have fallen weak under its spell. No different are the preaching of the false prophets of Socialism which feeds upon the poor, workers, and minorities like a leach sucking the blood of its host.

Both make false promises hidden behind a slick package. One of class division and the other of class enslavement, with both removing from the worker his right to class unity, independence, and communal collaboration.

Introduce respectable alternatives and it will be silenced by the twin evils which have sprouted from the Age of Enlightenment. Socialism and Capitalism are two coins to the same sadistic and materialistic coin. Until the day when all people can unite, culture is respected and honored, and man controls his own labor privately with voluntary collaboration, then man shall never be free.

The goal of reform should be to give the individuals control over their own private means of production through more private small businesses and independent self-employment.

“The problem with capitalism is not too many capitalists, it’s too few capitalists” – G. K. Chesterton
“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." – G. K. Chesterton

Almost in living memory the mass of modern men lived in houses which were their own, produced food and clothing and the rest from land which was their own, possessed the fruits of their toil, decided what they would produce and what they would consume. Within living memory there still remained so large a proportion of men whose political freedom corresponded to an economic freedom that the old tradition survived. A society in which free men owned their farms, their stores, their blacksmith’s forges, their fishing craft, their carpenter shops and the rest, still continued though it was threatened and diminishing. Today the disproportion between the men economically free and the men economically unfree, has grown so hugely as to throw the whole State out of balance. To restore the balance is the chief task before us.

Distributism is the only answer to a future for the freedom of every working man and woman. Where you are not in shackles to the government or obedient to an employer. Where you are the master of your own destiny and where communal cooperation, family preservation, organic hierarchy, class collaboration, and natural rights are held as the cornerstones of a free and prosperous society.

“Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.”

Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII

Here are some external sources if you are interested in learning more about Distributism.

The Distributism Review
Distributism (Wikipedia)

Excellent post, touches on a lot of subjects. Clearly we are not truly free, and never have been..

"None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free" (wish I could remember who said that, and I hope I didn't totally butcher the quote).

reply to post by VariableConstant


Thank you my friend. While Distributism is either never been heard of or is deeply misunderstood it can be summed up with a basic sentence.

The ownership of the means of production should be spread as widely as possible among the general populace, rather than being centralized under the control of the state (state socialism) or a few large businesses or wealthy private individuals (plutarchic capitalism).

Our problem is that we are enslaved. We have some people who believe freedom comes through Socialism where no one truly owns the fruits of their labors but rather they own what has been given to them by their superior i.e. the bureaucrats. Then we have the other people who believe freedom comes through Capitalism where people should either work for others, rent from others, or by some miracle build their own self up.

Neither of which is practical or truly free. Only when people own their own means of production, gain the fruits from their own private labors, and make their own rules for themselves and their investments, are they truly free. Distributism is not perfect, G. K. Chesterton, the founder, understood that Distributism is not perfect because humans are not perfect.

Until the means of production are as close to the front door as possible, man will not be free.

en.wikipedia.org...

I have not heard of Distributism before, but it sound like it will produce a better system of supply and demand than what we have now. The large centralized systems seam to have developed there own gravity and just suck everything in while not having the capacity to manage resources and responsibilities effectively. Distributism does sound like there are some connections to how the internet works, I have come across Bitcoin www.bitcoin.org... before, is this is what you leaning towards? Are there any other better systems in development?

As for freedom The system of Liberalism sounds a bit better than what we have, freedom with responsibilities is how I basically define it.