Why is the belief in man's self-sovereignty the first necessary step toward socialism?
Answer: It tell us we have the authority to relieve ourselves of the pain of living.
In Tocqueville's "Speech on the Right to Work" (9/12/1848), Tocqueville attacked socialism for making of man "an agent, an instrument, a number." He denounced it for "energetic appeal to man's material passions," its "unending and continuous" assault on the "principles of individual property," and for its confiscation of human freedom. In words that became the the inspiration for the title of Friedrich Hayek's famous book, Tocqueville wrote that "if...I had to look for a definitive general conception to express what socialism as a whole appears to me to be, I would say that it is a new form of servitude." Tocqueville identified democracy with "equality in liberty" and socialism with "equality in penury and servitude."
p. 102 What is the great modern outrage of the world that Tocqueville predicted?
Answer: "The democratic principle of human and civic equality has been radicalized, as Tocqueville predicted, into a passion for equality the perceives 'every distinction...as discriminatory, every difference as inegalitarian, every inequality as inequitable.'" So to connect with p. 19, the "pain of living," which is the greatest outrage of modern "values" has identified distinction itself as chief among the pains of living.
Also connect with Edward Norman's Secularisation. Same thing happened within the modern church.
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