RFD America

It is impossible to research your conclusions based on facts and time frame of the era at issue. (IE) Communist was not an applicable term. Read this blog entry and wise up.

THE FIRST LEFTIST….

January 1, 2010 · 4 Comments

The First Leftist

Mises Daily: Thursday, May 28, 2009 by Dean Russell

[This essay appears in Essays on Liberty, (volume 1, 1952).]

“Liberty
Leading the People” (1830)
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863)The first leftist would not be popular in America
today. That is true because the original leftists wanted to abolish government
controls over industry, trade, and the professions. They wanted wages, prices,
and profits to be determined by competition in a free market, and not by
government decree. They were pledged to free their economy from government
planning, and to remove the government-guaranteed special privileges of guilds,
unions, and associations whose members were banded together to use the law to
set the price of their labor or capital or product above what it would be in a
free market.

The first leftists were a group of newly elected representatives
to the National Constituent Assembly at the beginning of the French Revolution
in 1789. They were labeled “leftists” merely because they happened to sit on
the left side in the French Assembly.

The legislators who sat on the right side were referred to as
the party of the Right, or rightists. The rightists or “reactionaries” stood
for a highly centralized national government, special laws and privileges for
unions and various other groups and classes, government economic monopolies in
various necessities of life, and a continuation of government controls over
prices, production, and distribution.

Early American
Ideals
The ideals of the party of the Left were based largely on the spirit and
principles of our own American Constitution. Those first French leftists stood
for individual freedom of choice and personal responsibility for one’s own
welfare. Their goal was a peaceful and legal limitation of the powers of the
central government, a restoration of local self-government, an independent
judiciary, and the abolition of special privileges.

Those leftists, holding a slim majority in the two years’
existence of the National Constituent Assembly, did a remarkable job. They
limited the extreme powers of the central government. They removed special
privileges that the government had granted to various groups and persons. Their
idea of personal liberty with absolute equality before the law for all persons
was rapidly becoming a reality. But before the program of those first leftists
was completed, a violent minority from their own ranks — the revolutionary
Jacobins — grasped the power of government and began their reign of terror and
tyranny.

That development seems to have risen from this little-understood
and dangerously deceptive arrangement: two groups of persons with entirely different
motives may sometimes find themselves allied in what appears to be a common
cause. As proof that this danger is not understood even today, we need only
examine the results of our own “common cause” alliances with various dictators
against various other dictators. So it was among the leftists in France in 1789.
The larger faction wanted to limit the powers of government; the leaders of the
other group wanted to overthrow the existing rulers and grasp the power
themselves.

Separation Of Powers

“The Death of Marat”
(1793)
Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825)The majority of the original party of the Left
had been opposed to concentrated power regardless of who exercised it. But the
violent revolutionists in their midst, led by Robespierre, Danton, and Marat, were
opposed to concentrated power only so long as someone else exercised it.
Robespierre, who represented himself as spokesman for the people, first said
that the division of the powers of government was a good thing when it
diminished the authority of the king. But when Robespierre himself became the
leader, he claimed that the division of the powers of government would be a bad
thing now that the power belonged “to the people.”

Thus, in the name of the people, the ideas of the original
leftists were rejected. For all practical purposes, local self-government
disappeared completely, the independence of the judiciary was destroyed, and
the new leaders became supreme. The program of the first party of the Left was
dead.

Most of the original leftists protested. So they too were soon
repudiated in the general terror that was called liberty. But since the name
leftist had become identified with the struggle of the individual against the
tyranny of government, the new tyrants continued to use that good name for their
own purposes. This was a complete perversion of its former meaning. Thus was
born what should properly be called the new and second Left.

The leaders of this new Left were greatly aided in their program
of deceiving the people by using this effective device of changing the meaning
of words. The term “tyranny” had been used to describe the powers of the old
government. And the term “liberty” had been used to describe the ideas of the
original leftists. Well and good. But when the second leftists in turn became
tyrannical, they continued to call it liberty! In the name of liberty, mob
violence was encouraged, habeas corpus was abolished, and the guillotine was
set up!

Look Behind The Label

$15 $12

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727–1781)Now who is opposed to
liberty or progress or any of the various other desirable ideals that
government officials claim will result from their “unselfish programs for the
people”? Probably no one. Thus do the people tend to accept almost any idea —
communism, socialism, imperialism, or whatever — if those ideas are advanced
under attractive labels such as freedom from want, defense against aggression,
welfare, equality, liberty, fellowship, and security. Since most of the world
today still suffers from this disease of “word confusion,” it is hardly
surprising that the French people in the 1790s were also misled by the same
device.

The rallying cry of this new Left was, All power to the people!
And, as always, it sounded good to the people. But the point that the French
people missed is the same point that haunts the world today. It is this: the
people cannot themselves individually exercise the power of government; the
power must be held by one or a few persons. Those who hold the power always
claim that they use it for the people, whether the form of government is a
kingdom, a dictatorship, a democracy, or whatever. If the people truly desire
to retain or to regain their freedom, their attention should first be directed
to the principle of limiting the power of government itself instead of merely
demanding the right to vote on what party or person is to hold the power. For
is the victim of government power any the less deprived of his life, liberty,
or property merely because the depriving is done in the name of — or even with
the consent of — the majority of the people?

It was on this point that Hitler, for instance, misled the
Germans, and Stalin deceived the Russians. Both of them hastened to identify
themselves as champions of the people. And there appears to be little or no doubt
but that the majority of the people approved or acquiesced in the overall
programs that were initiated in their names.

As the “leaders” murdered millions of individual persons, their
excuse for their deeds was that they were doing them “for the people.”

As they enslaved countless millions of human beings, they
brushed all criticism aside by exclaiming: “But the people voted for me in the
last election.”

As they confiscated property and income, they claimed to be
doing it “for the general welfare” and by “a mandate from the people.”

Hitler and Stalin merely adapted to their time and circumstances
the philosophy of the French Jacobins, the new leftists, who declared that
power is always too great in tyrannical hands, but that it can never be too
great in the hands of the people — meaning Hitler, Stalin, a Jacobin leader, or
any other person who wishes to possess and increase the power of government
over the individual citizen.

What Is Government?
Here is another illogical reason why the people of France traded the
freedom-with-responsibility offered by the policy of the first leftists for the
bloody tyranny offered by the policy of the second leftists: They believed that
an organized police force — government — could be used to force people to be
good and virtuous.

“Since the name leftist had become identified with the struggle
of the individual against the tyranny of government, the new tyrants continued
to use that good name for their own purposes.”It is true that this organized
force of government can be used, and should be used, to restrain and punish
persons who commit evil acts — murder, theft, defamation, and such — against
their fellow men; but this force that is government cannot be used to force
persons to be good or brave or compassionate or charitable or virtuous in any
respect. All virtues must come from within a person; they cannot be imposed by
force or threats of force. Since that is so, it follows that almost all human
relations and institutions should be left completely outside the authority of
government, with no government regulation whatever. But this seems to be a
difficult idea for most persons to grasp.

The idea of concentrated government power — force against
persons — is easy to grasp. And it is easy to imagine that this power can be
used to force equality upon unequal persons. Possibly this explains why so many
persons believe that the world could be near perfect if only they had the power
of government to force other people to do what they think best for them. That
concept of government is, however, the direct road to despotism. Any person who
holds it is, by definition, a would-be dictator: one who desires to make
mankind over in his own image — to force other persons to follow his concepts
of morality, economics, social relationships, and government. The fact that
such would-be dictators may seem to have fine intentions, and wish only to do
good for the people, does not justify their arrogant desire to have authority
over others.

Thus it was that the terror of the second leftists reversed the
advance of freedom that had begun in France in 1789. And the French
Revolution finally became nothing more than a fight among would-be rulers to
gain possession of the power of government.

The new leftists — as is the case with all persons who desire
authority over other persons — did not fear the power of government. They
adored it. Like Hitler, Stalin, and other despots, their primary reason for
inciting the people to reject the old order was to get this power for
themselves. And the people did not object at first because they did not
understand that the power of government is dangerous in any hands. They just
thought that it was dangerous in the hands of a king. So they took the power
from the king and transferred it to a “leader.” They failed to see that it was
a brutal restoration of the very thing they had rebelled against! In fact,
those second leftists held far more power than Louis XVI ever had.

“The French Revolution finally became nothing more than a fight
among would-be rulers to gain possession of the power of government.”Is there a
lesson for present-day America
to be learned from this French experiment with a highly centralized “people’s
government”?

The majority of the American people voted approval of this
“Robespierre philosophy of government” as expressed by the holder of a high
political office in 1936:

[I]n 34 months we have built up new instruments of public power.
In the hands of a people’s government this power is wholesome and proper. But
in the hands of political puppets of an economic autocracy, such power would
provide shackles for the liberties of the people.

When translated into simple English, that statement reads, power
is a good thing, so long as I am the one who has it.

That concept of increasing the power of the national government
seems to have even more support today, by the leaders of both major political
parties, than it had in 1936. All of them claim, of course, that they will use
the power “for the good of the people.”

Something For Nothing

$15 $12

Claude Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850)Have we fully considered
where this road may lead? Have we forgotten the teachings of our forefathers
and their warning that the only hope for permanent liberty lies in restricting
the power of government itself, regardless of who the government officials are
or how they may be selected? Have we forgotten their warning to be especially
wary of the demagogues who promise us something for nothing?

Our founding fathers, along with the first leftists who were of
the same political faith, were well aware that individual freedom and personal
responsibility for one’s own welfare are equal and inseparable parts of the
same truth. They knew that history amply supports this truism: when personal
responsibility is lost — whether it be taken by force or given up voluntarily —
individual freedom does not long endure.

Dean Russel was a member of the staff of The Foundation for
Economic Education, where he wrote for The Freeman, promoted the work of Ludwig
von Mises, and translated the writings of Frédéric Bastiat. Comment on the
blog.

This essay appears in Essays on Liberty, vol. 1 (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.:
Foundation for Economic Education, 1952), pp. 38–46. It was first published in
1951.

This complete archive of The Freeman (1950–1999) is made possible
by a generous grant from Guillermo M. Yeatts, in cooperation with Walter Block,
and additional assistance from Gary North.