3. ELIMINATION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY

3.  ELIMINATION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY

The second main idea of all socialists, viz., elimination of private property is undoubtedly a derivative of the above-indicated prejudice about human equality. It would have been justified, if people had really been equally mentally gifted or would have had merely statically understood and working only in the productive direction alone abilities. But it suffices to recall the Aesop's fables about an ant and a bug as well as about an ant and a cicada and also the I. Krylov's fable A Dragonfly and an Ant in order to realize inadequacy of these ideas and also to understand that there are beneficiaries of the socialist ideas, viz., precisely those people whose behaviour resembles that of the dragonfly and other characters in the Krylov's fables.

Once the socialist prejudice about human equality has been rejected, the attitude to private property must radically change, viz., it is an instrument to protect toilers-ants against idlers-dragonflies, lambs against wolves. Otherwise, idlers, lazybones, loafers, and other parasites will live at the expense of toilers and other decent people.

Moreover, socialists should have paid attention to the fact that private property has pulled the mankind out of the wildness. It has been precisely the factor that has made it possible for really clever and diligent individuals to guide the peoples of the world along the road of civilization. None of the wild peoples without private property has attained anything worthy of admiration. On the contrary, there have been a wild despotism, murders without any restrictions,¹ human sacrifices, cannibalism, and promiscuity among them.

Of course, there can be mistakes and injustice in distribution of private property. It happens when certain individuals become property owners by swindle and other machinations, rather than thanks to honest work. It is, first of all, the State that ought to fight against this evil by means of a system of adequate education, through access to all spiritual wealth of mankind as well as with the help of systems of justice and punishment. One cannot therefore speak of any withering away of the State at all. It is one of the most stupid ideas of socialists, possible only based on their irrational, blind, fantastic, and fanatical faith in human equality. As soon as a return to reality takes place, and a sober attitude to man prevails, it becomes clear that the State is a powerful instrument to improve man as man, and one can never do without it in our mortal life.

By the way, despite the fact that the State in the Soviet Union was constructed based on the socialist ideas, including that of withering away of the State, it not only has not withered away, but has not been going to do so during all the time when firmly keeping to its socialist course, i.e. until the so-called. M. Gorbachev's perestroika policy. On the contrary, it controlled all economic and spiritual life of the society as never before in the previous history of Russia. But this deviation from the idea was inevitable. The thing is that the idea itself was stupid and inadequate. Meanwhile, the new exploiters, i.e. Bolsheviks / communists, could not do without machinery for zombification, violence, and coercion of the exploited people in any way.

1At the very beginning of the Old Testament there is a story of how Abraham and Sara went to Egypt. Abraham asked Sara to tell there that he was her brother, but not her husband, otherwise they would kill him (Genesis, 11-12). Such was the so-called natural man who had been quite groundlessly eulogized by Rousseau and other so-called enlighteners. Meanwhile, Egypt was is not a complete savagery at all, but a society with State, but without private property.