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Offline Isaac C Bishop

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Let’s Play Monopoly: Capitalist vs Socialist
« on: July 02, 2025, 06:15:30 AM »
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    • Let’s Play Monopoly: Capitalist vs Socialist – The Postil Magazine

    Socialism and capitalism are not at war with each other—they are in cahoots with each other. They have formed that unholy alliance, the servile state—big government propped up by big business, and big business propped up by big government
    -Dale Ahlquist et al., The Hound of Distributism: A Solution for Our Social and Economic Crisis

    The Right and Left are engaged in a game of Monopoly, where citizens, the economy, and the structure of society are the properties on the board that they compete to dominate. Both sides aim to control everything for their own advantage. One seeks conquest by a few tyrannical “free market” giants, while the other aims for a single monopoly of power centered in the government.

    Before the rise of either socialism or capitalism, before the 14th century, people lived under a libertarian form of tribal kingship. Most governance was based on consent, and many individuals achieved self-governance. The law was unchangeable and set in stone, meaning that there were no regulatory authorities, elected officials, or powerful interest groups that could manipulate the customs or laws of the people.

    Citizens adhered to their own laws, and lived in self-sufficient units as agriculturalist providers for themselves, owners of shops etc. Compared to today. government interference in people’s lives, the economy, and various aspects of society was minimal, often non-existent.

    Given that they were not artificially manipulated by powerful entities, land, political power, military influence, and economic resources were distributed much more widely among guilds, knights, lords, kings, and the populace. As a result monopolies, if any existed, were few and weak, and did not negatively influence society at large.

    Significant change began to take place during the 14th century. The revival of Roman law reintroduced representative government, parliamentary systems, and gave the tribal kings – now transformed into monarchs – the ability to create and adapt laws. Governance shifted from the people to parliaments and individuals meant to “represent” them. As this transformation occurred, powerful interest groups emerged, primarily wealthy merchants and early capitalists, who began to influence monarchs and parliaments for their own benefit.

    As capitalism replaced the old order, the powerful could purchase land to own outright and free of obligation, and an increasingly smaller percentage of the population, often the rich merchant class or influential governmental individuals, owned more and more money, power and land. Individuals became powerful and communities diminished. As time elapsed, political and economic power gravitated to the center. These individuals gobbled up large tracts of land, and entire towns and villages succuмbed to centralized power.

    Over the centuries to come, these powerful capitalists, colluding with the political powers, utilized government power to control the market and help maintain and increase their monopolies.

    Through property taxes, regulations, subsidies, bailouts and other means, the capitalists removed people from their land and as small shop owners. They squashed any up-and-coming competitors and drove people into the cities to work as hourly earners under a capitalist boss in factories. They forced them to enter the capitalistic economy they were building as wage slaves, swelling the ranks of workers and providing bountiful cheap labor for the elites, whose greed maintained a tyrannical grip on the economy, politics, workplaces and individual workers.

    Small businesses were crippled by expenses the major corporations can handle, and thus dominate the market by running competition into the ground. The capitalist buys former owners’ land or shops, incorporates them into his own holdings and uses his power and influence to hire politicians through endorsements.

    Once the free-market oligarchs hold a monopoly, they set their prices and profits; they begin to take a more significant portion of earnings for themselves, giving less to the employees and extracting more from the customers. They eradicate all competition, and the end game of “free market” capitalism is a dictatorship of the few wealthiest capitalists and their political allies. A larger and larger disparity between rich and poor results.

    In this new and increasingly unequal world, where wealth and political power are centralized and monopolized by the few, and the masses are increasingly taxed, abused, manipulated and subjected to oppressive factory conditions, they sought relief from the only agent powerful enough to perhaps counter the soulless corporations abusing them: the government.
    Not only did they empower the government to help accomplish their desires, but many even further empowered the government to resist the tyrannical capitalist. The tyranny of unbridled free market capitalism gave rise to the “left” who desired an all-powerful organization that had an absolute monopoly on all say in governance and economics: socialism.
    While capitalists desire that the economy be controlled by a few monopolies rather than being dispersed and decentralized among the people, socialists want a single, all-powerful monopoly—the government—to control everything. Therefore, it seems that socialists may be more potent capitalists than capitalists themselves, because they desire one monopoly instead of a few. Thus, socialism can be viewed as capitalism’s logical conclusion—a single, powerful monopoly.
    To a distributist, the difference between a few corporations using the government for their benefit and one government using those corporations in the same way is not significant. Both scenarios involve a monopoly: one with many corporations and one with just the government.

    As was often the case during the “early” and “high” Middle Ages, Distributism takes away the ability of others to monopolize you; the board is removed, the game no longer played. It aims to provide the conditions for all men and all families, and localities to have freedom of choice, untroubled by distant powerful monopolies on the left or right, and to return normality to humanity.

    When people have been free from distant, powerful, coercive forces, they have congregated into small, self-sufficient and like-minded tribes centered on family, faith, and leisure. That is the game we ought to be playing, rather than letting oligarchs play Monopoly.


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    Jeb Smith is the author of Missing Monarchy: Correcting Misconceptions About The Middle Ages, Medieval Kingship, Democracy, And Liberty.

    Offline IndultCat

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    Re: Let’s Play Monopoly: Capitalist vs Socialist
    « Reply #1 on: July 02, 2025, 07:07:44 PM »
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    • This is why "Fascism" (especially Mosley's "parliamentary fascism") is a third option that actually works but, unfortunately, it is not allowed to be implemented in the Western World since the end of WW2.
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    Offline Fiorenza

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    Re: Let’s Play Monopoly: Capitalist vs Socialist
    « Reply #2 on: July 03, 2025, 02:24:50 PM »
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    • Technology plays a part in the manipulation. The printing press lead away from feudalism. Then mass media fueled virtue-less democracy. Less than 5% of journalists are republicans. Journalism and the media today still has the legal but sleazy mentality.

    Does one engage or do what the saints have always done and not be conformed to the world? Is there more than one option...

    Media and propaganda has its own Weltanschauung. Propaganda once wasn't a bad word  - Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide.

    But it all seems to become attention seeking and click-bait. People play it like it's a game without seriousness and trust the opinions of journalists for no apparent reason other than the fact they work in the media.

    Modern Journalism while still pretending to be "balanced" is ultimately relativistic and liberal. The facts are made to support opinions.

    And the pioneers of modern journalism - on that basis - couldn't believe in a God (because that would be "biased"), couldn't believe strongly in anything (except their own secret opinions) becoming liberal nowheremen. There are still the opinion columns, but their  influence is based on the respectability of a "neutral" trade. Reasonable, fair-minded hacks have reached the following personal conclusion based on their knowledge and experience...

    The media supports the current languid, turgid state of affairs where the corporations, government and the media work together on a few set pieces ("press release", "leaks" or other information in advance) all of which has become predictable and unhelpful.

    There is still a place for useful media as communication used to influence opinion (and let's use the word propaganda - because it is all propaganda, even if secretly) . But let it be done well and with skill.
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