The National Mill Owner

An interesting exchange occurred over at Liberal Conspiracy under the topic "How Yellow Everything Looks", which was a presumptive piece written by Unity incorrectly pigeonholing me as being an irrational fantasist dreaming of a "golden age" before the Welfare State and of being totally ignorant about the origins thereof. Nice - label the enemy both mad and ignorant, all the easier to remain in denial and cosy. I am surprised Unity did that. Maybe a temporary aberration.

Kevin Carson replied with this interesting comment:

Re the mutuals of the nineteenth century, it might be more accurate to say workers were generous *within their means*.

Under a genuine (i.e. non-capitalist) free market, in which the state did not intervene on behalf of capitalists and landlords to enforce artificial scarcity of land, and consequently labor received its full product as a wage, polarities of wealth would likely be far less. In such an environment, the working class would have the resources to fully fund mutual aid arrangements, cooperative insurance, and the like.

To paraphrase some Georgist-leaning libertarian on this side of the pond, the policy should not be welfare or charity, but justice. When workers receive their full product as a wage, they won’t need charity. And you won’t see society pages clogged with Rotary club yahoos wearing color-coded ribbons, breaking ground, handing over giant checks, kissing pigs for diabetes, etc., who in any just world would have their heads in a guillotine.

My attitude toward upper class philanthropy was expressed by a 19th century mill-worker, quoted by E.P. Thompson, whose attention was drawn to a chapel built by the “generous” mill-owner for his workers. The worker pointed out that the chapel was paid for by his own sweat, and added “I wish it might drop into Hell, and Mr ____ with it."

My reply was as follows:

Kevin,

Well put, but maybe not the way you might think.

What many do not realise is that, through the agent of Welfarism, the State has become one giant “mill owner” who denies the worker the fruits of their labour via heavy taxation to fund its “charity”. Worse, there is no way out - you cannot escape the mill town now. You cannot flee the State unless you emigrate. Never before has a Mill Owner been so soundly backed by law, or had the power to control the law as we have now. Never has the arm of the Mill Owner been so long or their grip so tight and all-encompassing. And now our screens and newspapers are indeed full of smug parasites handing over cheques paid for by the sweat of others…this time it is Statist politicians. This time it is all of us, not just the benighted workers trapped in some satanic fiefdom paid in tokens for use at the company shop.

Yes, let us have Justice in the form of the worker keeping the fruits of their labour. This does not prevent charity, indeed I say it can encourage it, and said it earlier, triggering a framing exercise that is the OP (which I will attend to later).

With Welfarism you have precious little Justice and precious little Charity. To the guillotine with it!

Though I saw some dancing around the edge after that, no replies have yet been able to challenge the above. Stunned into silence or singing "lalala" with their fingers in their ears? I have no idea, but I do think those at LC should really look at this, their attitudes to the past and then look at the State. Really look hard, I mean.