WHAT ANTI-EGALITARIANS SAY & DO
February 13, 2021
[Note: The author of this article is indebted to the anonymous leaker who provided us with Owners Manual for a Billionaire.]
If and when egalitarians make a successful egalitarian revolution and thus take power in society away from the anti-egalitarians who currently hold power and enforce class inequality, there will still be a substantial number of anti-egalitarians hostile to the revolution's aims and very likely intent of making an anti-egalitarian counter-revolution to restore class inequality.
Let us consider what these anti-egalitarian counter-revolutionaries would be likely to say and do, based on what they have already said and done in the past.
The anti-egalitarian counter-revolutionaries' key strategy would have to be to undermine the key pillars of an egalitarian society, which are these:
1. Clarity in most of the general population about the moral rightness of egalitarian values of no-rich-and-no-poor equality and mutual aid;
2. Clarity in most of the general population about why no-rich-and-no-poor equality requires implementing the economic principle of "From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need"--a principle that entails NOT buying and selling things for money.
3. Clarity in most of the general population about why mutual aid requires that political power be based on the principle of voluntary federation of egalitarians (which is all about mutual aid agreements among egalitarians) and not on the anti-democratic invalid authoritarian principle of centralized governmental law-making power (which enables an oppressive minority to dominate the majority of people).
4. Confidence by most of the general population that most OTHER people share their egalitarian values and want to implement the economic and political principles required to shape society by those values. This confidence is required to enable most of the general population to act decisively to shape society by their egalitarian values despite possibly ferocious and well-organized opposition from an anti-egalitarian minority.
Since this clarity and confidence in most of the general population is what keeps a society egalitarian, therefore anti-egalitarian counter-revolutionaries would focus on undermining that clarity and confidence, using verbal arguments and, when possible, manipulation of events.
Anti-egalitarian Arguments
Here are some of the verbal arguments anti-egalitarians use:
1. It's morally wrong to prevent some people from being richer than others because (take your pick):
a. Some people work harder than others and deserve to be wealthier;
b. Some people work smarter than others and deserve to be wealthier, i.e., "doctors should be paid more than janitors;"
c. Some people are just better than others because they are (take your pick)
i. white (or some other "better" race),
ii. of noble birth,
iii. better athletes (or dancers or singers or actors or chess players, etc., etc.),
iv. descended from somebody who conquered other people and seized their land and property (a.k.a. "might makes right.")
and thus deserve to be wealthier.
2. Mutual aid cannot be the basis of a good society because people--especially [take your pick] black, Hispanic, white, Native, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Sufi, Arab, Palestinian, Asian people--are primarily motivated by self-interest and hostility to others, not concern for others.
3. Only by accepting this fact that people are motivated by self interest, and by allowing the motive of self-interest to operate in a capitalist profit-driven society, can human nature as it really is be channeled into producing wealth for all of society. As Adam Smith famously put it, an Invisible Hand makes the self-interested motivation of people (to maximize their profits) result in a better world for all:
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest...Every individual ...[Adam Smith's many words here refer specifically to people preferring to invest in domestic, rather than foreign, enterprises and to do so as profitably as possible; this reflects Smith's focus on challenging mercantilism, a big concern of the day]... neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it...He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it has no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectively than when he really intends to promote it." [In The Invisible Hand by Adam Smith]
4. Economic inequality is necessary to motivate people to work, by enabling hard workers to earn higher wages/salaries and by punishing lazy workers with lower wages/salaries. (Read about this here.)
5. Economic inequality is a requirement for have improvements in our standard of living for everybody, even the poor. New inventions that start out being expensive only get produced initially if there are rich people who can afford to buy them, and then later, when the price inevitably falls, poorer people also can enjoy them. Ludwig von Mises cites the example of using a fork to eat--initially, he says, only the rich aristocrats used a fork and regular people used their fingers; he also cites indoor toilets enjoyed, initially, only by the rich but now considered a necessity by even the poorest in developed nations. If such luxuries could not be initially enjoyed by the rich, anti-egalitarians argue, then they would never be enjoyed by anybody.
6. Rich people who live in great luxury and enjoy great leisure are the people who make it possible for the greatest cultural achievements of a civilization to exist. Without the very rich we would not have our great operas, our great art, our great literature--things produced for the upper class to enjoy and which would not be produced if there were no upper class to pay for them. Without his very rich patron, Michelangelo would never have painted the Sistine Chapel fresco. Without his very rich patrons such as Emperor Joseph II, Mozart would never have been able to produce his masterpieces.
7. Equality is a stupid idea because people obviously are not all the same. (Read here how this specious anti-egalitarian idea is expressed by both Kurt Vonnegut and Ayn Rand.)
8. A money-less society makes everybody financially insecure. People work but do not receive in exchange money with which to confidently to buy things; they must just hope that a store will give them stuff for free.
9. There's nothing wrong in letting some people be a little bit richer than others, as long as the gap in wealth is not extreme; a.k.a. "Let's go back to having a Mom and Pop capitalism."
Anti-egalitarian Manipulation
Anti-egalitarian counter-revolutionaries will try to make their verbal arguments more persuasive by manipulating things somehow to provide "proof" of their assertions. They might try doing the following things:
1. Undermine people's confidence that most other people share their egalitarian values. Do this by manipulating things in a way to make credible to some egalitarian people a Big Lie about other egalitarian people, to persuade one group of egalitarians to view the other group as their enemy, perhaps an enemy that aims to attack them violently or even just an enemy in the sense of wanting to unfairly take advantage of them. This is basic divide-and-conquer, something that oppressive ruling elites have been doing for many centuries and are skilled at doing.
Orchestrate false flag violent attacks supposedly by one group of people against another to create extreme hostility between the two groups.
Do things that discriminate against and deny dignity to one category of people (as the U.S. ruling class has done for centuries against black people) to make it easy to persuade others that this category of people is inferior or evil or criminal or in some manner not deserving of no-rich-and-no-poor equality and not suitable for any mutual aid agreement; this in turn results in great hostility, fear and resentment between the two groups.
The most modern sophisticated methods of divide-and-rule that today's upper class is using are discussed here and also here.
Anti-egalitarians in an egalitarian society could very well try to do these kinds of things as private individuals organized for this purpose.
2. Sabotage the egalitarian economy in some way and then declare that the problem is egalitarianism itself--"It just can't work because it's based on a false view of human nature."
When the U.S. ruling class wanted to prevent socialism from surviving in Chile after the socialist, Allende, was elected president, it used this method. "On 15 September 1970; before Allende took office, Richard Nixon gave the order to overthrow Allende. According to a declassified document from the NSA, the handwritten notes from Richard Helms (CIA director at the time) state: "1 in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile!; worth spending; not concerned; no involvement of embassy; $10,000,000 available, more if necessary; full-time job--best men we have; game plan; make the economy scream; 48 hours for plan of action." (my emphasis, source here.) "The directive authorized U.S. officials to collaborate with other governments in the region, notably Brazil and Argentina, to coordinate efforts against Allende; to quietly block multilateral bank loans to Chile and terminate U.S. export credits and loans; enlist U.S. corporations to leave Chile; and manipulate the international market value of Chile’s main export, copper, to further hurt the Chilean economy. The CIA was authorized to prepare related action plans for future implementation." (source here.)
3. Create money surreptitiously so that some people can become richer than others with money, and thereby become a new oppressive upper class, as discussed here. One way to create such surreptitious money is by creating barter IOUs that say "Payable to the bearer" instead of "Payable to Mary Smith" (or some specific person only.) This is discussed in more detail here.
4. Enlist the support of anti-egalitarians elsewhere (such as another nation's anti-egalitarian government) to attack--possibly violently, or perhaps just economically as the U.S. attacked socialist Chile--the egalitarian society to make the egalitarians lose confidence that egalitarianism is a practical social system.