John Whiting’s Inaugural Workers Party Presidential Address

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“Speech by President, Dr. John Whiting, at the Inaugural Dinner, The Opera House, Sydney, January 25, 1975,” Workers Party Newsletter, vol. 1, no. 1 (March 1975), pp. 1-4.

Tonight, history is being made. For the first time in Australia, and possibly in the world, there enters the arena a political party whose principles are based on morality and logic.

If the socialists in the labor and Australia Parties also lay claim to morality, then let them tell us why they accept philosophies that are built on dishonesty, theft, force, fraud and coercion, for without such blatantly immoral acts their socialist goals are unattainable.

If the same men and women claim that their philosophies are built on logic, then let them also tell us how a country and its people can prosper under a system that advocates total government control over the individual’s life, the financial crippling of the vigorous, the erosion of individual initiative and the manufacturing of money out of thin air. Let them also explain to us in logic how, having raised parasitism to the level of a moral ideal, they are then able to sustain these parasites by killing off the host. Let them also tell us, in logic, how their socialist state, their Utopian dream-world, their cloud-cuckoo-land is compatible with justice, with economic stability and with individual liberty. They can’t and they know it.

Look about you and what do you see? A huge bureaucracy proliferating like some deadly fungus; once prosperous businesses collapsing in ruins; inflation running wild; unemployment escalating; liberty disappearing and the hideous spectre of complete economic breakdown. In logic, the shambles that we see is the inevitable end-product of the dishonesty, the irrationality, the immorality and the lust for power of those who follow Marxist and similar doctrines.

As a philosophy, socialism was stillborn. As a way of life, it is an affront to human intelligence. As a political and economic system, it is the destroyer of our whole civilisation.

One might have imagined that the so-called Liberal Party might have been sufficiently concerned for the Australian people to offer some worthwhile opposition to this insidious evil, but the tragedy is that they have not even begun to understand the true nature of socialism. Rather than oppose it, they have actually accepted the basic tenets of the socialist philosophy themselves. No longer is liberalism synonymous with individual liberty. It has evolved as a hotch-potch of free-enterprise and statism, an inglorious compromise between individual freedom and a host of authoritarian bureaucratic controls. The mixed economy and the welfare-state ideology of the Liberal Party is nothing more nor less than a watered-down version of socialism. Let’s face reality — the essential difference between the two major political parties in this country is one of degree only. Whereas the socialists are openly dedicated to total government control over the individual’s life, the Liberals are dedicated to ever-increasing and unspecified control.

In centuries to come, when an objective history of our times is written, the present disintegration of our civilisation will be attributed not merely to the bankrupt philosophies of the socialists but also to the philosophical inadequacies of those who chose to masquerade under the banner of liberalism.

If anyone should have any doubts as to the necessity for the formation of a new political party, then let him make his own honest and impartial appraisal of the performances of the so-called anti-socialist parties in Australia.

Let’s not fool ourselves. The socialists and their ideology are leading this country and the world into some new Dark Age. Unfortunately, to date, there has been no party with the intellectual honesty and courage to stand in their way. There has been no political party to expose their shoddy rackets and their totalitarian dreams dressed up in high-sounding humanitarian phrases. There has been no political party confident enough of its own philosophy to offer a rational alternative to statism, whether this be of the overt or of the creeping variety.

The underlying motive of all statists whether they call themselves communists, Fabian or democratic socialists, fascists, welfare-statists, mixed economists or middle of the roaders, is the control of other men’s lives and property, and, as an essential pre-requisite to this iniquity, the control of the money supply and the banking system. All forms of statism, whatever their title, can exist only with the tacit consent, and at the expense of, the productive workers, for it is from these men and women — those who create the wealth — that the statist extorts the money that he needs to satisfy his insatiable lust for power.

If anyone is naive enough to imagine that socialism and welfare-statism are benevolent humanitarian systems designed to help the workers, then let him think again, for it is the productive workers of a country who are the victims, not the beneficiaries, under such systems. It is the productive workers who must be robbed and cheated before the irrational whims of those posturing as leaders can be fully satisfied.

A thinking man might be tempted to ask why it is that so many men and women are unable to see through the cruel deceit that is perpetrated on them. Either force, fraud and coercion, the tools of the welfare-statist, are not immoral acts or else our society has got its values hopelessly confused. What has happened to those values that people rightly condemn the initiation of force, fraud and coercion when practised by individuals but turn the blind eye to them when practised by governments? Could it be that our society has become morally rotten? If it has, then how has this happened? The answer is not difficult to find. The conditioning processes are the key to the sickness that we see about us. People’s minds have been so bombarded with irrationality, half-truths, distortions of fact and even downright lies that most of them have become incapable of distinguishing good from evil, truth from falsehood and wisdom from stupidity. This national sickness has become so chronic that many people are now completely unable to differentiate between morality and immorality.

In this regard the hard-boiled gentlemen of the Press should shoulder their share of blame, for, by confining their exploratory diggings to the mere scratching of the political topsoil, they have never found the true wealth of knowledge that lies hidden just beneath the surface. But perhaps the greatest blame must be laid fairly and squarely at the feet of most University academics, particularly those in the Arts Faculties of philosophy, politics and economics, for, with a few notable exceptions, these men and women have made little or no attempt to think objectively or to question rationally. More often than not, the academics in those faculties have shown scant regard for facts, for truth, for intellectual honesty, for reality or for logic. All too often, they have debased their learning and turned their faculties into propaganda factories — for the dissemination of their own nonsensical political and economic dogmas. If any of you should wonder at the successes gained by the illogical doctrines of the Old and New Left, then I suggest you take a hard look at your Universities and your colleges of advanced education.

It is surely the most damning indictment of our modern State-run Universities that the student with an enquiring mind, has, on graduation, no option but to unlearn much that he has spent so long in absorbing. It is also a sorry reflection on our State-run Universities that the fresh wind of new ideas and political concepts should spring not from within these so-called seats of learning but from outside them.

University academics should be the first to diagnose correctly the causes of our political and economic ills (and the causes are not difficult to diagnose) but they will probably be amongst the last to understand the disastrous consequences of the welfare-state ideology.

Because of the conditioning process to which people have been subjected, the productive worker is seldom aware that it is he, and he alone, who is the victim of big government. Only by stealing, in the form of taxation or by fiddling with the economy in the form of inflation, can a government acquire the money necessary for its lavish hand-out schemes, its top-heavy bureaucracy and the centralisation of power into its own hands. The sole victim of this treachery is the productive worker.

How many workers ever stop to reason why, after 45 to 50 years of honest toil, all the majority have left is a tenuous hold on houses, bits of furniture, a few personal belongings and inadequate pensions for which they have paid many times over during their working lives. Most of these workers have been conditioned to blame everyone else for their plight except those persons actually responsible — the “do-gooders” with the welfare-state mentality who are too gutless to admit, even to themselves, that they cannot perform their pretended humanitarian works without resorting to theft, fraud and violence.

Who are these productive workers on whose backs the welfare-statists ride? They are the men and women who worker with their brains and who are prepared to pay their own way in the world. Make no mistake about this: All productive workers, whatever their occupation, work with their brains, and all but the incapacitated also work with their hands. A man could not be a lawyer, a shop-assistant, a doctor or a press operator without using his brain. Similarly, a man could n0t be a dentist, a bricklayer, an architect or a panel-beater without using his hands.

The productive worker may be a labourer, a professional man or an executive. He may be an employer or he may be an executive. The productive worker may be a man, woman or a child. He may earn $100 a week or $1,000 a week. All those people are prepared to get up of their backsides, pay their own way in the world, stand on their own two feet and produce goods and services by trading, and not by sponging on others, are productive workers.

Until such time as the productive workers, in all walks of life, both big men and small men, both employers and employees wake up to the fact that it is they who are being exploited, robbed and swindled by non-productive power-lusters, they will never be able to plan their lives, achieve their goals and live as happy dignified human beings. On the other hand, the lusters for power — the welfare-statists who claim that they have a moral duty to redistribute other people’s earnings; the non-productive bureaucrats who make a specialty of obstructing commerce and industry; and the left-wing union bosses who are experts at manipulating their members in order to advance their own sinister ends — can exist only by attaching themselves to, and living off, the productive workers.

It is high time the productive workers of this country discarded their hang-ups, straightened up their spinal columns and re-examined the havoc caused by the conditioning processes to which they have been subjected for a lifetime. When they have done this (and it is the purpose of our Party to help them do it), then they will come to realise that it is only in a free society with a free economy (in which the initiation of force, fraud and coercion are outlawed) that they can ever hope to receive their just rewards for their efforts.

In science and technology, the 20th Century has demonstrated the tremendous untapped potential of the human mind. In a mere seventy-five years — the life-span of one human being — man has progressed from the horse and cart to inter-planetary travel; from purgation, blood-letting and herbalism to antibiotics and heart transplants; from the burning of coal to nuclear power and solar energy. During the same period, what has been the record of the philosophers, the politicians and the economists? The answer is a grotesque nightmare — two world wars, a universal depression and now the horrifying spectre of economic chaos. and reversion to total control by the all-powerful State. Whilst our scientists and technologists are forging ahead, most of the philosophers, the politicians and the economists are still wallowing, out of their depth, in a mire of ignorance, immorality and irrationality. As the men and women who deal in facts, reason and logic make the world a better place in which to live, so others who prefer fantasy, irrationality and idle whims turn back the clock of progress and lead us all into some lost age where men were nothing more than pawns of the State.

The natural ally of one productive workers is another productive worker. Whether these men be employers or employees is immaterial. It is not surprising that the distrust and even hatred of the employee for the employer is intentionally fomented by socialist politicians and communist union bosses. How else could these men hope to split the productive work-force and so create a smoke-screen behind which to hide their power-lusting ambitions?

If the productive workers wish to live as free men, then they must face up to reality. Governments have become too big, too powerful and too expensive. They are no longer the servants of the people but their masters. Only by reversing this trend can men and women hope to live in a society that is fit for human beings. It is the role of the new Party not only to expose the injustices, the stupidities and the immorality of all existing political parties, but to show the productive workers of this country the way to individual freedom and prosperity. There is no place in the new Party for leeches, parasites, hangers-on and power-seekers. The Party is only for those men and women who value individual freedom, who wish to learn how to attain it and who have the courage to stand up and be counted.

The new Party is designed specifically for the productive workers of this country. What more fitting name, therefore, should it have than “The Workers Party.” This Party is committed to getting governments off the backs of the workers, to reducing the size and power of governments, to reducing taxation and so leaving the worker free to manage his own life.

As I said in the beginning of my speech — tonight history is being made. Because of its sound philosophy, based on morality and logic, the Workers Party is here to stay. I have no doubts that we will be mocked, smeared and attacked by all those who wish to see individual freedom erased from the face of the earth, but I make this prophecy now — whatever hard times there are ahead — in the end we will WIN.

(in order of appearance on Economics.org.au)

Up the Workers! Bob Howard's 1979 Workers Party Reflection in Playboy
John Whiting's Inaugural Workers Party Presidential Address
John Singleton changes his name
Workers Party Policy Speech
New party will not tolerate bludgers: Radical party against welfare state
Workers Party is "not just a funny flash in the pan"
Who's Who in the Workers Party
New party formed "to slash controls"
Democracy = Fascism

(in order of appearance on Economics.org.au)

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"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant or pine for something they can’t get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods."
~ H.L. Mencken

"[T]he crucial question is not, as so many believe, whether property rights should be private or governmental, but rather whether the necessarily 'private' owners are legitimate owners or criminals. For ultimately, there is no entity called 'government'; there are only people forming themselves into groups called 'governments' and acting in a 'governmental' manner. All property is therefore always 'private'; the only and critical question is whether it should reside in the hands of criminals or of the proper and legitimate owners."
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"The most absurd public opinion polls are those on taxes. Now, if there is one thing we know about taxes, it is that people do not want to pay them. If they wanted to pay them, there would be no need for taxes. People would gladly figure out how much of their money the government deserves and send it in. And yet we routinely hear about opinion polls that reveal that the public likes the tax level as it is and might even like it higher. Next they will tell us that the public thinks the crime rate is too low, or that the American people would really like to be in more auto accidents." ~ Lew Rockwell, Speaking of Liberty, p. 281.

"A tax-funded protection agency is a contradiction in terms — an expropriating property protector — and will inevitably lead to more taxes and less protection. Even if, as some — classical liberal — statists have proposed, a government limited its activities exclusively to the protection of pre-existing private property rights, the further question of how much security to produce would arise. Motivated (like everyone else) by self-interest and the disutility of labor, but endowed with the unique power to tax, a government agent’s answer will invariably be the same: To maximize expenditures on protection — and almost all of a nation’s wealth can conceivably be consumed by the cost of protection — and at the same time to minimize the production of protection." ~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe

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