Part I is here: http://bereansatthegate.com/churchill-on-collectivism-and-the-limits-of-politics-part-i/  

Winston Churchill was an outspoken critic of Communism as well as the milder Socialism that was a political force in Britain. He understood the difficulties presented by human nature for these political doctrines in a non-academic, wonderfully common sense way: human nature being what it is, Communism and Socialism are simply not viable or desirable political options.

Churchill also defended free economic competition: “The existing organisation of society is driven by one mainspring–competitive selection. It may be a very imperfect organisation of society, but it is all we have got between us and barbarism.” While Churchill appreciated that this system did not achieve perfect justice, he also held it to be the cornerstone of civilization as well as the best hope for the future:

….and as great and numerous as are the evils of the existing condition of society in this country, the advantages and achievements of the social system are greater still. Moreover, that system is one which offers an almost indefinite capacity for improvement. We may progressively eliminate the evils; we may progressively augment the goods which it contains….If the vision of a fair Utopia which cheers the hearts and lights the imagination of toiling multitudes, should ever break into reality, it will be by developments through, and modifications in, and by improvements out of, the existing competitive organisation of society.[1]

Socialist or Communist schemes cannot allow competitive selection to go on, however. Free competition thrives on devotion to the private and results in inequalities of property, both of which are inimical to a completely communal existence. Hence, governments devoted to the communist principle must have complete control over economic affairs.

The government of Great Britain had assumed many extra controls during the Second World War. But, Churchill warned, if Britain allowed the Socialists to gain power, the government’s grip on the individual citizen, far from being loosed again, would grow ever tighter: “Look how even today they hunger for controls of every kind, as if these were delectable foods instead of war-time inflictions and monstrosities. There is to be one State to which all are to be obedient in every act of their lives. This State is to be the arch-employer, the arch-planner, the arch-administrator and ruler, and the arch-caucus-boss.”[2]

Such controls cannot be limited to the economic sphere, however. To maintain complete direction and control of a society, expressions of dissent must be suppressed:      

No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could allow free, sharp, or violently worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance. And this would nip opinion in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of Civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil.[3]

Thus, socialist schemes which begin with beneficent purpose of creating a better society end in tyranny. Eventually, complete control over every aspect of human life must be assumed or attempted by the government if it is to direct those who live under it along predetermined paths. But human nature will rebel against such measures. Because individual choice is to be replaced by government planning, because freedom is to be curtailed, individual expression must also be controlled; it must not be allowed to give voice to nature. This necessity means that reason and persuasion must be abandoned as a method of governing: “Freemen can be ruled by reason, but slaves must be kept in subjection by fear. Until such time as generations of intensive propaganda have produced a race of robots, discontent and disillusion must be reckoned with, and may take dangerous forms.”[4] As long as human nature remains recalcitrant to the purely collective existence, only tyranny can maintain communism as a political form.

A true political partnership requires participation, it requires the exercise of reason and speech in deliberation on the way of life to be shared. When such participation is prohibited by government controls, there can be no citizens in the sense of free and equal persons, because men are ruled like beasts. Churchill expressed a similar idea: “There is not one single social or economic principle or concept in the philosophy of the Russian Bolshevik which has not been realised, carried into action, and enshrined in immutable laws a million years ago by the White Ant.”[5] By attempting to transform human nature into something purely collective, communism denies the complexity of humanity and lowers human community to the level of the hive and the hill:

The whole future of humanity, indeed, depends upon how far we can secure to men the opportunity of individual development, how far we can combine community life with richness and variety of personality. If Communism or any similar system triumphs, and men are drilled and regimented and ‘conditioned’ until all individuality has been ironed out from among them there is an end to human achievement. The onward, upward march will be checked and halted; the eternal quest abandoned, and in their place will be the aimless, sterile activities of the unchanging antheap.[6]

Churchill did not believe in any necessary progression in human affairs, but he did believe progress had been made–resulting especially from the spread of political systems based on the liberty of the individual and free participation in government. Far from being a step forward for man, collectivist programs take man backwards to a time when communal arrangements were based on force and fraud; they would seek to again place man in fetters, both in mind and body. A better future for mankind is not to be found along that path: “On with the forward march! Leave these Socialist dreamers to their Utopias or their nightmares.”[7]

[1]  Liberalism and the Social Problem (New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1973; reprint, 1909 edition), 82-83.

[2] “Party Politics Again,” in Robert Rhodes James, ed. Winston Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963. 8 vols. (London: Chelsea House Publishers, 1974), VII 7171-71712.

[3] Ibid.

[4] “Open Letter to a Communist,” in The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, ed. Michael Wolff, vol. II, Churchill and Politics (Library of Imperial History), 357.

[5]  “Mass Effects in Modern Life,” in James W. Muller, ed. Thoughts and Adventures: Churchill Reflects on Spies, Cartoons, Flying, and the Future. ISI Books, 2009, 272-273.

[6]  “Open Letter to a Communist,” 359.

[7]  “Party Politics Again,” 7174.