Chodorov on Joseph

Chodorov on Joseph

Thomas Allen

In One Is Crowd: Reflections of an Individualist (New York: The Devin-Adair Company,  1952, pages 104-108), Frank Chodorov explains how Joseph became a statist. The following paraphrases Chodorov’s explanation.

Chodorov begins his story about how Joseph ended up in Egypt. Soon after he arrived, Potiphar, an Egyptian bigwig, acquired Joseph. Because of his cleverness, Joseph soon became the chief foreman of Potiphar’s estate. However, Potiphar’s sex-starved wife, whom Chodorov speculates was a homely woman whose husband misunderstood her, attempted to seduce Joseph. He rebuffed her advances. Like a scorned female, she framed her jilter, and her husband sent Joseph to jail.

While in jail, Joseph acquired a reputation as an interpreter of dreams — thus, beating Freud by many centuries. (He began his dream interpreting years earlier at home. His interpretations got him in trouble with his brothers, and they sold him to a caravan going to Egypt.)

Pharaoh began having disturbing dreams. None of his advisors had the psychiatric skills to help him. Then, one of his servants remembered that Joseph had correctly interpreted his dream when he and Joseph were fellow prisoners, and recommended Joseph to Pharaoh.

Joseph cleaned himself up and offered his services to Pharaoh. Pharaoh described his dream, and Joseph replied that the answer was simple. He explained that Egypt was about to experience the well-known business cycle, commonly called the “boom and bust” cycle. “‘The knowledge came to him by divine revelation,’ he said, which was far more reliable than the wisdom of the Harvard school of economics” (p. 105).

Joseph’s positiveness of his prediction astonished Pharaoh. Showing his true statist mantles, Joseph presented Pharaoh with a plan to solve the problem, that is, a plan to cheat Jehovah out of his bust. Joseph’s plan called for laying up a reserve during the years of plenty. To execute the plan, Pharaoh appointed Joseph as Secretary of Agriculture. Since the Senate did not exist in those days, Pharaoh did not have to wait for Senatorial approval, so his appointment was immediate. Having no Bible or Constitution to swear by, “Pharaoh made the appointment stick by putting his own signet ring on Joseph’s hand and a solid gold chain around his neck. For lack of an automobile, an official chariot was assigned to the new dignitary” (p. 106).

No longer did Joseph need to interpret dreams. He was now an administrator who had a plan to execute. Because Egypt’s economy was completely agricultural, Joseph’s position made him the top commissar, the real boss of the economy.

“The first thing he did was to pass laws; without them no plan can work. And the first law on his agenda was, quite naturally, a tax-law. One-fifth of all that these profligate farmers should produce, during the years of plenty, must be taken from them and put under lock and key. It is reported that this 20 percent income tax yielded quite an amount; the grain piled up ‘as sand of the sea,’ and undoubtedly there was a shortage of bins, barns and elevators, for ‘it was without number’” (p. 106).

After seven years of boom, the depression hit. However, whether the depression resulted from overproduction or underconsumption is unknown. (“[A]t that time the learned professors had not yet discovered the sun-spot theory or even the velocity theory of money. The magicians of that day were without benefit of postgraduate courses in economics” [pp. 106-107].)

This depression was called a “famine.” However, what is not told is the cause of the famine. Did a “drought, pestilence or other unforeseeable accident, or,  perhaps . . . the constant sapping of the economy by seven years of heavy taxation” (p.107) cause it?

However, the chronicler does suggest that Joseph may “have anticipated the consequence of his taxing scheme: the abject subservience of the Egyptian proletariat” (p. 107). Soon hunger filled Pharaoh’s kingdom. People came to Joseph, the Secretary of Agriculture, and begged him to return the grain that he had taken from them. Instead of giving them the grain, he sold them the grain. (Thus, he was not a proponent of the welfare state.)

When the people ran out of money, they traded their horses, cattle, and other livestock for grain. “Still the hunger was upon the people, which was natural, for their capital was all gone, and without capital there is little production” (p. 107). Joseph had brought state capitalism to Egypt. The only jobs available for the hungry masses were with the state. As the state was the sole employer, the people had to work for what the state condescended to offer. “They offered themselves as ‘servants unto Pharaoh’ in exchange for bread. Then Joseph said unto the people: ‘Behold I have brought you this day and your land for Pharaoh: lo, here is seed for you, and you shall sow the land.’ In common parlance that means that he had nationalized the land and the labor of Egypt” (p. 107).

Joseph’s plan was great for Pharaoh and Joseph. However, most likely, “some of the proletariat were perturbed over a moral principle: the right of a man to his property” (p. 107).

Joseph ordered farmers to be moved from one part of Egypt to another. Was the migration the result of a slave revolt?  Was it Joseph executing the well-known migratory purge? The chronicler does not explain the cause.

A delegation of Egyptians came to Joseph and told him that they were willing to be Pharaoh’s servants. Thus, “the proletariat had come to terms with collectivism (since that was the only way to get by in this world) and were content with whatever security the Secretary [Joseph] would provide” (p. 108). Nevertheless, Joseph “had to make some concession to private property, perhaps to encourage more taxable production; he restored to some of the Egyptians the land he had taken from them in their adversity, on a rental basis” (p. 108). His rent was one-fifth of the annual production.

Chodorov concludes his story of Joseph:

Though the succeeding monarchs and the succeeding commissars did well under the plan introduced by Joseph, it seems (according to later historians) that it put upon the proletarians a moral blight, so that when conquerors from other lands came to Egypt they met with little resistance; those who had nothing to lose had nothing to fight for. So that even the monarchs had to beg the invaders for administrative jobs. And lots of dust fell on the civilization of Pharaoh (p. 108).

(Since statism is a form of idolatry, was Joseph an idolater?)

Copyright © 2023 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Indirect Taxes and Direct Taxes

Indirect Taxes and Direct Taxes

Thomas Allen

In Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist (New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1962), Frank Chodorov gives a good comparison of indirect taxation with direct taxation, pages 219–227. A summary of that comparison follows.

Taxes fall into two categories: indirect taxes and direct taxes. Indirect taxes are levied on goods and services before they reach the consumer. Examples of indirect taxes are sales taxes, excise taxes, value-added taxes, and tariffs. Direct taxes are mostly levied on the accumulation of wealth. Examples of direct taxes are property taxes, income taxes, social security taxes, inheritance taxes, and poll taxes.

Chodorov describes indirect taxation as “a permission-to-live price.” Numerous indirect taxes are hidden in the price of every good and service that is for sale. People can only avoid these taxes by refusing to buy and, thus, depriving themselves of the meaning of life and even life itself. Consequently, they pay the tax to survive and to give their life meaning. “The inevitability of this charge on existence is expressed in the popular association of death and taxes.” For most products, taxation is the largest single item in the cost.

Indirect taxes impact the poor much more than the rich. Because there are more low-income people than high-income people, low-income people consume more overall and, therefore, pay a greater share of the indirect taxes.

The state prefers indirect taxes to direct taxes because they are usually hidden. “It is taking, so to speak, while the victim is not looking.” About people who justify taxation as moral, Chodorov writes, “Those who strain themselves to give taxation a moral character are under obligation to explain the State’s preoccupation with hiding taxes in the price of goods. Is there a confession of guilt in that?”

Unlike indirect taxes, the taxpayer cannot pass direct taxes onto others. Direct taxation taxes people on what they have instead of something that they buy. It taxes people “on the proceeds of enterprise or the returns from services already rendered, not on anticipated revenue.” Consequently, the taxpayer has no way of shifting the burden of a direct tax.

The envious have always supported direct taxes because they believe the “soak-the-rich propaganda.” Also, among the adherents of direct taxation are the promoters of democracy; they see it, along with universal suffrage, as necessary to the achievement of democracy.

As history has shown, the greed of the state does not stop with taxing the rich. Its direct taxation spreads to cover the lowest-paid workers. Because in the aggregate, the poor generally have more to be taken than the rich; consequently, the state soon goes after the poor. As with indirect taxes, low-income people bear a much higher burden under direct taxation than do the rich. A small tax on the income of a low-income earner causes more hardship than a larger tax on a high-income earner.

Because direct taxes directly deny “the sanctity of private property,” they are more vicious than indirect taxes. “By its very surreptition the indirect tax is a back-handed recognition of the right of the individual to his earnings.” Thus, the state covertly takes what it needs, “but it does not have the temerity to question the right of the owner to his goods.” However, with direct taxation, the state claims, without embarrassment or shame, the right to all property. Thus, with direct taxation, “private ownership becomes a temporary and revocable stewardship.” Direct taxation leads to the Marxist concept of state supremacy replacing the Jeffersonian ideal of inalienable rights.

About taxation, Chodorov writes:

Taxes of all kinds discourage production. Man works to satisfy his desires, not to support the State. When the results of his labors are taken from him, whether by brigands or organized society, his inclination is to limit his production to the amount he can keep and enjoy.

Replacing the Federal Income Tax with a National Sales Tax
Some tax reformers are proposing to replace the federal income tax with a national sales tax. Typically, they propose a rate of 20-some percent to make the revenue from the sales tax to be approximately equal to that from the income tax. Further, they provide an out for war, national emergencies, etc. Congress can use these outs to raise the tax rate, apparently without limit. Most of these proposals do not prevent Congress from reimposing the income tax other than the integrity of Congress.

These proposals are highly flawed and do not improve the tax situation. Worst, most fail to prevent the return of the income tax. Consequently, Americans end up paying the new sales tax along with an income tax.

If a sales tax is to replace the income tax, it needs to be done by a constitutional amendment, which includes repealing the income tax amendment. Moreover, the repeal amendment or the sales tax amendment should specifically prohibit an income tax and any other similar taxes. Also, the tax amendment should cap the sales tax at a low rate, say 2 percent. It should have no outs; Congress could not exceed the cap even because of war or a national emergency. Another provision should prohibit the federal government from borrowing so that it cannot avoid the tax restrictions with the inflation tax. (This provision must also prevent the issuance of government notes, such as US notes, which is borrowing with noninterest paying loans.)

How could the federal government survive under such revenue restraint? It would have to eliminate all unconstitutional programs that it is currently administrating. This would include the elimination of nearly all the programs that the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, and Transportation administer. It would also require ending the undeclared wars that the United States are involved in and ending the American Empire.

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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States’ Right and Society

States’ Right and Society

Thomas Allen

Discussed below are States’ right and society. In this article, “state” is used in two different senses. In the first two sections on States’ rights, “state” refers to a territory and its body politic. In the section on society, “state” refers to an abstract, suprapersonal entity that is above all and is in all and exercises the supreme power.

States’ Rights
States’ rights mean that each State retains all political sovereignty individually and independently of all other States. Consequently, under the United States Constitution, each State retains for itself all political powers except the few powers delegated to their agent, the general government (also called the federal government and the US government) by the Constitution and the powers that they denied themselves by the Constitution. Moreover, the Constitution is merely a compact or treaty among equal sovereigns.

In Lane County vs. Oregon, the US Supreme Court declared in 1868:

The people of each State compose a State, having its own government, and endowed with all the functions essential to separate and independent existence. The States disunited might continue to exist. Without the States in union, there could be no such political body as the United States.

Unfortunately, Lincoln and his war and the resulting fourteenth amendment destroyed the original constitution and subverted States into mere administrative provinces.

The Tenth Amendment
The tenth amendment is the States’ rights amendment. It affirms that each State and the people thereof have all sovereign powers not explicitly and particularly delegated to the US government by the Constitution or that it does not specifically deny the States. It reads:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

In “Conservatism and the South,” The Lasting South (1957, page 200), James Kilpatrick explains the tenth amendment as follows:

This amendment consists of a single sentence, only twenty-eight words long; it is in no way obscure. The powers (not rights, as in the Ninth Amendment, but powers) not delegated to the United States (the verb is delegated, not "surrendered," or "granted," or "vested in," but merely delegated) by the Constitution (not by inference, or by any notions of inherent powers, but by the Constitution alone), nor prohibited by it to the States (prohibited by the Constitution, that is, by its specific limitations, and not by mandate of any court or Congress or executive, but only by the Constitution itself), are reserved to the States respectively (not to the States jointly, but to the States individually and respectively), or to the people (because there may be some powers the people will not wish to entrust even to their States).

Chodorov on States’ Rights
In One Is Crowd: Reflections of an Individualist (New York: The Devin-Adair Company,  1952, page 158), Frank Chodorov gives a good description of States’ rights. About States’ rights he writes:

[States' rights] proceed from a philosophical axiom, that the individual is the only reality. He alone exists. Without him there cannot be a society, and without society there is no need of government. Society, in fact, is nothing but a convenient abstraction, a word describing an agglomeration of individuals cooperating for their mutual advantage. The character of society is but a composite of the characters of its components; it has no other. In short, society is nothing of itself.

A “society” is a convenient abstraction that describes “an aggregate of individual cooperating for their mutual advantage” (p. 158).

Society
In Rise and Fall of Society (New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1959, page 29), Frank Chodorov gives this definition of society: “Society is a collective concept and nothing else; it is a convenience for designating a number of people. . . . Society is different from these other collective nouns [family, crowd, gang, etc.] in that it conveys the idea of a purpose or point of contact in which each individual, while retaining his identity and pursuing his private concerns, has an interest. . . . Society . . .  embraces a host of people following all sorts of vocations and avocations, pursuing a variety of goals, each in his own way, and yet held together by a purpose which is in each of them.”

Thus, individuals come together to form a society to advance their mutual interest and to further their purposes and aspirations. To protect the lives, property, and liberties of the people forming a society, the people instituted a government. Unfortunately, governments degenerate into states, which proceeds to deprive the people of their property and liberty and at times their lives. (See “The Difference Between Government and State” by Thomas Allen.)

In other words, a state cannot exist without a government. A government cannot exist without a society, and a society cannot exist without individuals. None of these abstractions — society, government, and state — have a life independent of the individuals comprising them. None are greater than the sum of its parts. They are merely metaphysical persons with no life of their own. They are not suprapersonal.

God created man, and man established societies, governments, and states. None of these institutions can exist independently of man — just as man cannot exist independently of God. Philosophers, political scientists, economists, and others who treat society, government, and state as entities that are independent of or superior to the individuals comprising them deceive themselves. Moreover, they err when they give society, government, and state characteristics of an individual. Giving them such attributes led to the horrors of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Mao’s China.

In closing, an additional explanation of state and society is needed. The concept of the relationship between society and state has changed over time. In times past, the state was an entity that was completely outside society and existed independent of it. People had to reckon with this entity called a state and either feared it or admired it. They saw the state as advancing their agenda or taking their property and liberty. However, they never thought of the state as an integral part of society: It was apart from and above society.

Now, people conceive the State and society such that they are indistinguishable, either conceptually or institutionally. That is, the state is society and the social order has become an appendage of the state. Thus, society, i.e., the people, is dependent on the state as represented by the government for its health, education, communications, transportation, charity, and just about everything else. The people look to the state, the government, to solve their problems; consequently, the people are no longer self-reliant and have enslaved themselves to those who control the state. As a result, the state has become the society. Additionally, since people look to the state to save and deliver them instead of God and themselves, they have made an idol out of the state — therefore, they are idolaters.

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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