Classics Comics

The Road to Serfdom in cartoons.

[Via Liberty & Power.]

Comments

Ruthless Santorumol | July 3, 2006, 10:35am | #

Wow! That was even better than the World's Smallest Political Quiz!
Now if we could just round up a bunch of people and force them to watch it!

Abdul | July 3, 2006, 11:38am | #

I like the part where the planners can't get Marmaduke of the couch. That big ol' dog is so funny.

mk | July 3, 2006, 1:44pm | #

It would be funnier with smurfs.

Richie O'Dell | July 3, 2006, 1:45pm | #

I like that panel where the military planner guy is breaking the golf clubs over his knee in front of people forced to do calisthenics. Is this what the fat police will make us do someday?

Adriana | July 3, 2006, 6:08pm | #

Again, the historian in me cringes as to the unhistorical view of serfdom, based on the growth of the power of the State rather than its weakness and eventual demise.

Or forgetting that while some serfs used to be free peasants, forced to buy protection in uncertain times, others used to be slaves, human chattels who, after a long day's work would go to sleep to the "ergastula" - dormitory/stable, all together, and for whom being a serf meant that they had they own cottage, and the right to marry and raise a family.

Then, of course, my pet peeve, people from Peru and Bolivia who complain about the left-led land reform, and then talk about "road to serfdom" while forgetting that the effect of that land reform was freeing the serfs in the estates...

Adriana | July 5, 2006, 8:56am | #

Rex:

Serfdom results where there is no higher authority to appeal to. The relationship between serf and lord was in many respect a contractual obligation, but since it was the lord who provided the judiciary, you can imagine how any disputes between him and the serf went.

It took a judiciary independent of the local lord and law enforcement independent of him to check his power. Of course, in European history, those were provided by the growing State.

Thus you have a paradox...

Not everyone who decries the power of the State or of Governmetn is a lover of liberty. He may be a potential tyrant chafing against the restraints that keep him honest...