Why You Are Not A Socialist by Frank Chodorov 1956

In this country, more than a third of all the people produce is now confiscated by the State. To that extent, then, this is a socialistic country. This accumulation of property in the hands of the State makes it the biggest single buyer of goods, the biggest employer, the biggest dispenser of alms, the biggest factor in the economic life of the community. Either through direct employment by the State, or indirect employment by its contractors, or by virtue of its dispensation of subsidies or doles, we are all dependent on the State for all or part of our sustenance. Even what it permits us to keep out of our earnings is a matter of benevolence, not a right. Inurement to this condition of existence induces its enlargement into an ideal. We learn to worship the State. It becomes our Baal, and Baalism is our religion. And that is what gives the prediction of the Soviet speaker such force. There is no question about the growing ardor of Americans for State regulation, control and management of the economy, and an equal apathy toward the consequent State intervention in our personal affairs. Within 45 years, by a mere increase in the amount of taxation, the concepts of freedom upon which this republic was founded, even though the words remain in our language, can be obliterated from our consciousness. And then Americanism will consist of the rites and practices of socialism, perhaps not exactly like those obtaining in the USSR, but not different in kind. It will be native grown, not imported.

That is the prospect for the year 2000 A.D. … The phenomenon is strange indeed, when one puts the twentieth century against the background of human history. In all the centuries that preceded it, the power of the State was looked upon as a curse and a scourge, as something to get rid of. Always when men sought freedom, and they always did, they thought of limiting and shackling political power; freedom never meant anything else. The miracle of the twentieth century is the complete reversal of this historic pattern, and the identifying of freedom with subservience to the State.