Frank Chodorov: Individual

Frank Chodorov was American libertarian thinker. Explore interesting quotes on individual.
Frank Chodorov: 88   quotes 0   likes

“The ultimate of taxation-for-social-purposes is absolutism, not only because the growing fiscal power carries an equal increase in political power, but because the investment of revenue in the individual by the State gives it a pecuniary interest in him. If the State supplies him with all his needs and keeps him in health and a degree of comfort, it must account him a valuable asset, a piece of capital. Any claim to individual rights is liquidated by society's cash investment. The State undertakes to protect society's investment, as to reimbursement and profit, by way of taxation. The motor power lodged in the individual must be put to the best use so that the yield will further social ends, as foreseen by the management. Thus, the fiscal scheme which begins with distribution is forced by the logic of events into control of production. And the concept of natural rights is inconsistent with the social obligation of the individual. He lives for the State which nurtured him. He belongs to the State by right of purchase.”

Frank Chodorov

“Taxation is Robbery,” Chicago: Human Events Associates (1947)

Health , Way , Nature

“That is the central idea of our current tradition. It is the idealization of the mass and the negation of the individual; its panacea, its method of realization, is political direction; its goal, as always, is the undefined Good Society… The aim of pedagogy today is not to prepare the individual for his own enjoyment of life, but to enable him to better serve the mass machine; the psychologist makes adjustment to mass-thought the measure of healthy thinking and living; jurisprudence puts social responsibility ahead of individual responsibility; the concern of the scientist in the discovery of principles is secondary to his preoccupation with mass production; the economist studies institutions, not people; and philosophy rejects speculation as to the nature of man or the purpose of life as effort that might better be put to the practical problems of society. Ours is the culture of ‘the all,’ rather than ‘the one.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: One is A Crowd: Reflections of An Individualist (1952), pp. 36-37

Life , People , Idea , Nature

“Compulsion means force; there must be a policeman to see that the individual does not follow his own inclinations. But policemen must live. Since they do not produce a thing by which they can live, others must support them. Hence, the planners must have the means of getting at the production of the very people who are to be improved by the policeman. That means taxes, and the more taxes the greater the number of enforcement agents, and therefore the more comprehensive the plan. No plan can be bigger than its bureaucracy. The income tax is the ideal instrument for the planner.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 54

People , Support

“When the individual is relieved of the obligation of self-respect, he acquires the habits of helplessness; he is inclined to retreat to the security of the prenatal state. The more he is taken care of the more he wants care.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 41

“The purpose of teaching individualism, then, is not to make individualists but to find them. Rather, to help them find themselves. If a student takes readily to such values as the primacy of the individual, the free market place, or the immorality of taxation, he is an individualist; if he swallows hard, he must be counted a recruit for the other side.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: One is A Crowd: Reflections of An Individualist (1952), p. 3

Help

“There is now a strong movement in this country to bring the public school system under federal domination. The movement could not have been thought of before the government had the means for carrying out the idea; that is, before income taxation. The question is, have those who plug for nationalization of the schools come to the idea by independent thought, or have they been influenced by the bureaucrats who see in nationalization a wider opportunity for themselves? We must lean to the latter conclusion, because among the leaders of the movement are many bureaucrats. However, if the movement is successful, if the schools are brought under the watching eye of the federal government, it is a certainty that the curriculum will conform to the ideals of Big Government. The child’s mind will never be exposed to the idea that the individual is the one big thing in the world, that he has rights which come from a higher source than the bureaucracy.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), pp. 34-35

World , School , Idea , Question

“For, it must be kept in mind that individualism is the modern radicalism. In the true sense of the word, individualism is always radical, for it rests its case on root ideas; I delves into the nature of things for basic causes; it rejects the idea that man is best served by a series of expedients.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: One is A Crowd: Reflections of An Individualist (1952), p. 6

Idea , Nature , Sense

“Dependence on the State became a virtue; dependence on oneself was derided as ‘rugged individualism.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist (1962), p. 154

Dependency

“The income tax completely destroys the immunity of property. It flatly declares a prior right of the State to all things produced. What it permits the individual to retain is a concession to expediency, not by any means a right; for the State retains the liberty to set rates and to fix exemptions from year to year, as its convenience dictates. Thus, the sacred right of private property is violated, and the fact that it is done pro forma makes the violation no less real than when it is done arbitrarily by an autocrat.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: One is A Crowd: Reflections of An Individualist (1952), p. 47

“When the individual says he has a valid title to life, he means that all that is he, is his own; his body, his mind, his faculties. Maybe there is something else to life, such as a soul, but without going into that realm, he is willing to settle on what he knows about himself—his consciousness.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 12

Life , Soul