I cribbed this from -
Piers Ackerman's - web site this morning. It's from a Margaret Thatcher speech made in Australia; I thought it germane.
“Common to all collectivist theories is the presumption that ‘social justice’ is more equitable than justice to the individual; that the ‘social wage’ is more desirable than the income a man or woman earns, and spends or saves; that ‘classes’ matter more than people; above all, that ‘collective rights’ are more important than the rights of the individual citizen,” she said.
Thatcher demolished the concept of “collective rights” and used as her example the Soviet Union, where, she said, more than anywhere else, the collectivist dogma had - in the name of the “people” - made the state the owner and manager of all the means of production, distribution and exchange.
And the result?
“Far from abolishing poverty, socialism has kept the vast majority of the Soviet people miles behind the western world in standards of living and quality of life,” Thatcher said.
“Instead of ‘superior productivity’ based on workers’ control, its state-owned industries and collectivised farms are steadily falling further and further behind those of the west. Socialist ‘realism’ has meant neither artists nor writers have been free to express their own ideas. Anything that conflicts with the collectivist mystique is feared, and is condemned and banned.
“Note, too, this further perversity. The ‘condemning’, and the ‘banning’ are all done in the name of ‘the people’. Thus, the People’s Courts, the Public Prosecutors, the state-controlled industries are presented to us as organs of ‘collective’ democracy.”
“Freedom,” said Thatcher, “is our most precious possession. To defend it and maintain it is no passive task, but requires continuous vigilance and resolve. Let it never be said the dedication of those who love freedom is less than the determination of those who would destroy it.”
Ah well, back to my knitting.