The God of the Machine
Isabel Paterson, Stephen Cox (Introduction)
Find this book at buch7.de | eurobuch.com | buchhandel.de | books.google.com ASIN=1560006668, Category: Political Philosophy, Language: E, cover: PB, pages: 308, year: 1993(1943).
Online in (PDF).
First published in 1940, with a new introduction by Stephen Cox Paterson's "The God of the Machine" is as concise a book on the historical facts and conlusions can get.
She illustrates that a society organized and controlled by whatever form of government doesn't work. Did you know for example, that with all the gold at times of Columbus arrived in Spain, the spanish state was always bankrupt and the citizens were poorer than before? Paterson puts historical events into comprehensible consequences.
Some quotes selected by © (2005) by interesting-books-selector.com
Her moral statements are as concise as possible, e.g.:
"If the state wants to eliminate prostitution, it would have to kill half of the population."
-- quote from the book (from my memory; exact quote soon)
Marxist terminology reduces verbal expression to literal nonsense on the basis of fact and usage.
-- quote p96
Marx was fool with a large vocabulary of long words.
-- quote p96
"Dictatorship of the proletoriat" is like the "roundness of a triangle", a contradiction in terms. It has no meaning.
-- quote p96
"Dialectical materialism" is a misuse of terms.
-- quote p96
Marx's theory of class war is utter nonsense by its own definition;
it has no reference to either class or war, if it relates to "capital" and "labor."
It is physically impossible for "labor" and "capital" to engage in war on each other.
Capital is property; labor is men. All that can occur is sporadic
rioting and possibly destruction of property, for the very weapons of war in an industrial
society can be produced and maintained only by "capital" and "labor*" in combination.
-- quote p98
"The philanthropist, the politician, and the pimp are inevitably found in alliance because they have the same motives, they seek the same ends, to exist for, through, and by others."
-- quote p250
"But when the good people do know, as they certainly do, that three million
persons (at the least estimate) were starved to death in one
year by the methods they approve, why do they still fraternize
with the murderers and support the measures? Because they
have been told that the lingering death of the three millions
might ultimately benefit a greater number. The argument
applies equally well to cannibalism."
-- quote p250
*) but not be forced labor - as Paterson writes on p99.
It's astonnishing how often Russia appears in the book. In the early 1940s she already criticized "Our Japanized Educational System."
Those who like the writings of the other two important American liberals, Rose Wilder Lane and Ayn Rand, will love this book; see also the book review at www.cato.org (archive.org)