C.S. Lewis on the Welfare State: Dangers of Obamacare
By David J. Theroux • Thursday April 8, 2010 4:27 PM PDT • 12 Comments
With the enormous expansion of the welfare state with the passage of Obamacare, C.S. Lewis’s insightful essay on the dangers, dehumanization, and immorality of welfare/therapeutic statism, “Is Progress Possible? Willing Slaves of the Welfare State” (from his book, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics) is especially timely and noteworthy.
Here are some excerpts:
Two wars necessitated vast curtailments of liberty, and we have grown, though grumblingly, accustomed to our chains. The increasing complexity and precariousness of our economic life have forced Government to take over many spheres of activity once left to choice or chance. Our intellectuals have surrendered first to the slave-philosophy of Hegel, then to Marx, finally to the linguistic analysts. . . . The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good—anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name ‘leaders’ for those who were once ‘rulers’. We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which whole lives are their business.
I write ‘they’ because it seems childish not to recognize that actual government is and always must be oligarchical. Our effective masters must be more than one and fewer than all. But the oligarchs begin to regard us in a new way. . . .
I believe a man is happier, and happy in a richer way, if he has ‘the freeborn mind’. But I doubt whether he can have this without economic independence, which the new society is abolishing. For economic independence allows an education not controlled by Government; and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of Government who can criticise its acts and snap his fingers at its ideology. Read Montaigne; that’s the voice of a man with his legs under his own table, eating the mutton and turnips raised on his own land. Who will talk like that when the State is everyone’s schoolmaster and employer? Admittedly, when man was untamed, such liberty belonged only to the few. I know. Hence the horrible suspicion that our only choice is between societies with few freemen and societies with none.
Again, the new oligarchy must more and more base its claim to plan us on its claim to knowledge. If we are to be mothered, mother must know best. This means they must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists, till in the end the politicians proper become merely the scientists’ puppets. Technocracy is the form to which a planned society must tend. Now I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside their special subjects. Let scientists tell us about sciences. But government involves questions about the good for man, and justice, and what things are worth having at what price; and on these a scientific training gives a man’s opinion no added value. Let the doctor tell me I shall die unless I do so-and-so; but whether life is worth having on those terms is no more a question for him than for any other man.
Thirdly, I do not like the pretensions of Government—the grounds on which it demands my obedience—to be pitched too high. I don’t like the medicine-man’s magical pretensions nor the Bourbon’s Divine Right. This is not solely because I disbelieve in magic and in Bossuet’s Politique. [Jacques Benigne Bossuet, Politique tiree des propres paroles de L'Ecriture-Sainte (Paris, 1709).] I believe in God, but I detest theocracy. For every Government consists of mere men and is, strictly viewed, a makeshift; if it adds to its commands ‘Thus saith the Lord’, it lies, and lies dangerously.
On just the same ground I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They ‘cash in’. It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science. Perhaps the real scientists may not think much of the tyrants’ ‘science’—they didn’t think much of Hitler’s racial theories or Stalin’s biology. But they can be muzzled. . . .
A hungry man thinks about food, not freedom. We must give full weight to the claim that nothing but science, and science globally applied, and therefore unprecedented Government controls, can produce full bellies and medical care for the whole human race: nothing, in short, but a world Welfare State. It is a full admission of these truths which impresses upon me the extreme peril of humanity at present.
We have on the one hand a desperate need; hunger, sickness, and the dread of war. We have, on the other, the conception of something that might meet it: omnicompetent global technocracy. Are not these the ideal opportunity for enslavement? This is how it has entered before; a desperate need (real or apparent) in the one party, a power (real or apparent) to relieve it, in the other. In the ancient world individuals have sold themselves as slaves, in order to eat. So in society. Here is a witch-doctor who can save us from the sorcerers—a war-lord who can save us from the barbarians—a Church that can save us from Hell. Give them what they ask, give ourselves to them bound and blindfold, if only they will! Perhaps the terrible bargain will be made again. We cannot blame men for making it. We can hardly wish them not to. Yet we can hardly bear that they should.
The question about progress has become the question whether we can discover any way of submitting to the worldwide paternalism of a technocracy without losing all personal privacy and independence. Is there any possibility of getting the super Welfare State’s honey and avoiding the sting?
Let us make no mistake about the sting. The Swedish sadness is only a foretaste. To live his life in his own way, to call his house his castle, to enjoy the fruits of his own labour, to educate his children as his conscience directs, to save for their prosperity after his death—these are wishes deeply ingrained in civilised man. Their realization is almost as necessary to our virtues as to our happiness. From their total frustration disastrous results both moral and psychological might follow.
All this threatens us even if the form of society which our needs point to should prove an unparalleled success. But is that certain? What assurance have we that our masters will or can keep the promise which induced us to sell ourselves? Let us not be deceived by phrases about ‘Man taking charge of his own destiny’. All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of the others. They will be simply men; none perfect; some greedy, cruel and dishonest. The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be. Have we discovered some new reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before?
Tags: Civil Liberties, Civil Society, Corruption, Criminal Justice, Fascism, Free Market, Healthcare, Labor, Liberty, Nationalization, Natural Law, Personal Liberty, Police, Poverty, Power, Property Rights, Regulation, Religion, Science, Socialism, Technology, The State, Utilitarianism, Welfare 
I agree sir and thank you for putting into words what I feel. I have a horrible feeling about all this and no one seems to care enough to look up. They think it will all be OK and this will work out. I on the other hand have read books and watched the History Channel I know that these things don’t just work out. I have some questions if you are open to discussing this please email me at the address I provided.
Jeremiah Hazelton | Apr 9, 2010 | Reply
Wonderful, stimulating, important piece. Lewis had most to offer outside of religion, which he initially thought was rational, but as time went by he changed his mind. ( Read Beversluis “C.S. Lewis”, both editions.)
richard | Apr 10, 2010 | Reply
Richard,
Thank you for your comment.
However, please note that all of Lewis’s work is based on Christian theism, which is also where historically and philosophically are rooted the ideas of liberty, natural law and natural rights, reason, free will, science and free market economics (Austrian School). Such insights were discovered a la the tradition of ideas culminating in Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastics in the Middle Ages, hundreds of years before the “Enlightenment” (see Rodney Stark’s The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success; here also is his article, “How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and the Success of the West,” Chronicle of Higher Education).
Lewis was a rational Christian theist whose work set new standards in refuting naturalism/materialism as self-refuting and incoherent. Incidentally, Beversluis’s book and claims have been refuted now numerous times. Please see for example Victor Reppert’s C.S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason and Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis. Also, please see my paper, “Economic Science and the Poverty of Naturalism: C. S. Lewis’s ‘Argument from Reason’” (Journal of Private Enterprise) as well as “The Argument from Reason,” by Victor Reppert (PhiLo; revised version also appears in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, edited by William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland).
For the seminal work refuting naturalism, please see Alvin Plantinga’s work (e.g., Warrant and Proper Function and Warranted Christian Belief).
David Theroux | Apr 10, 2010 | Reply
Stephen R. L. Clark’s great little book, God, Religion, and Reality, also underscores the falsity of the view that Lewis abandoned his view that naturalism was self-refuting after his Oxford Socratic Club tussle with G. E. M. Anscombe (who, as a conservative Christian, definitely didn’t view the debate the way Lewis’s detractors have).
Gary Chartier | Apr 10, 2010 | Reply
Gary,
You are indeed correct.
In 1947, when the first edition of Lewis’s book Miracles appeared, he debated the analytic philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, also a Christian theist, at the Oxford Socratic Club. In response, Lewis revised his argument for the second edition of the book, in order to address the Anscombe criticism. It is also important to note that Anscombe did not disagree with Lewis that naturalism was a fallacy or incoherent but instead with the technique of his argument.
In addition, the Socratic Club hosted a re-run of the debate on February 2, 1967, a few years after Lewis’s death in 1963 and exactly nineteen years after the first debate, in which Anscombe was pitted against Oxford philosopher John R. Lucas who represented Lewis’s position. As philosopher Basil Mitchell, who succeeded Lewis as President of the Socratic Club until its final meeting in 1972, stated, “on that occasion, I think it would be generally agreed, Lucas succeeded in sustaining Lewis’ side of the argument. If one were to think in terms of winners or losers, I think maybe that Lucas was the winner on points. . . . Elizabeth and John agreed as to what the original Lewis-Anscombe debate had been about, and Lucas simply maintained that on the substantial issue Lewis was right and that, for the sort of reasons Lewis had put forward, a thoroughly naturalistic philosophy was logically incoherent. And the outcome of that debate was to make it perfectly clear that, at the very least, Lewis’ original thesis was an entirely arguable philosophical thesis and as defensible as most philosophical theses are. So there was no warrant for supposing that in the original debate Lewis had been shown to be just hopelessly wrong.” See Basil Mitchell in conversation with Andrew Walker, “Reflections on C.S. Lewis, Apologetics and the Moral Tradition” in Andrew Walker and James Patrick (eds.), A Christian for All Christians (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990) 9-10.
More recently, philosophers James Jordan, William Hasker, J.P. Moreland, Richard Purtill, Victor Reppert, and Alvin Plantinga have defended versions of the proof. See James Jordan, “Determinism’s Dilemma,” Review of Metaphysics 23 (1969-1970), 44-66; William Hasker, “The Transcendental Refutation of Determinism,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 11 (1973), 175-83, and Metaphysics with C. Stephen Evans (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1983), and The Emergent Self (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 58-80; Richard Purtill, Reason to Believe (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974, 44-46; J.P. Moreland, “God and the Argument from Mind,” in Scaling the Secular City (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1987), 77-105; Victor Reppert, “The Lewis-Anscombe Controversy: A Discussion of the Issues,” Christian Scholar’s Review 19 (September 1989), 32-48; and Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function, 216-237. Anscombe also complimented Lewis’s revised argument for addressing her concerns: see John Beversluis, “Surprised by Freud: A Critical Appraisal of A.N. Wilson’s Biography of C.S. Lewis,” Christianity and Literature 41, no. 2 (1992), 179-95; and G.E.M. Anscombe, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind, vol. 2 of The Collected Papers of G.E.M. Anscombe (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), 224-231.
David Theroux | Apr 10, 2010 | Reply
I can’t not express how much I disagree with C.S Lewis here. I had much faith in him for many of writings, but this just ruins everything. He fails to realize that the government’s not an institution being controlled by the PEOPLE. It’s usually the Wall Street Banks and of large corporations that control the government. If the government of the US was truly a democratic government (or even a Marxist style government as Lewis wrote) money shouldn’t play a role in the whole decision making process. And as to “economic freedom”, does the Constitution say that people have a right to be protected from paying more in taxes? In fact, Congress IS EMPOWERED to levy taxes (It’s called expressed power of Congress) And I think Lewis also misinterpreted the definition of economic freedom here. Less money you have, less freedom of choice you’ll have because not having a lot of money in a business dominated society like ours means limit as to what one can do. Why is it that not everyone’s given an equal opportunity? 1/3 of the nation’s public schools are dysfunctional (due to disproportionate fundings).
And my personal belief on what is moral is that developing welfare state is in fact a moral thing to do. J.S. Mill said that it’s our goal, as a moral and rational being, to “maximize the utility”—meaning that we should promote policies that give the greatest benefit to the greatest number. Isn’t that what Christianity is about in the first place? Help the poor, love your neighbors, etc? Isn’t it moral to help more people then?
Louis | Apr 20, 2010 | Reply
Louis, Helping the poor, loving one’s neighbors, etc., are indeed Christian, but using force against innocent people is not, just as C.S. Lewis brilliantly critiques regarding the welfare state. Lewis well understood that liberty and morality were intricately intertwined with Natural Law. Jesus taught that the end never justifies the means and this forms the basis for the universal moral principles of the Natural Law. Two excellent sources for this and why this invalidates any moral claim of welfare statism are the following:
The Law, by Frederic Bastiat
The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis
For sample references on how non-government institutions and aid for the disadvantaged work, please also see the following:
The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society, edited by David T. Beito, Peter Gordon, and Alexander T. Tabarrok
“Health Insurance Before the Welfare State: The Destruction of Self-Help by State Intervention,” by Pavel Chalupníček and Luká Dvořák (The Independent Review, Winter 2009)
David Theroux | Apr 20, 2010 | Reply
Louis,
if indeed you want to help the poor, rather than FEELING like you’re helping the poor or CONVINCING YOURSELF that you’re helping the poor, you should restrain government, and work to help the poor yourself. You will do a much better job of it. You will be able to evaluate whether the individual help you give is benefitting them or enabling impoverishing behavior. The government will never come close to what the individual can do, will never come up with the brilliant ideas for helping that individual people will come up with. Trying to help the poor by government will undermine the overall effort to help the poor, by: sucking money out of the system; encouraging people to think the poor are the government’s problem; paying people to be poor and thus encouraging impoverishing behavior patterns; etc.
Furthermore, restraining government can help the poor help themselves. There should not be licensing for running a cab. A homeless person with a car could use it to make money if it didn’t cost thousands of dollars to license it. Braiding hair for money is illegal in some places without a license. Braiding hair. Think about that.
The more government there is, the more law there will be that keep poor people poor.
msouth | Nov 8, 2010 | Reply
It is stated that C.S. Lewis said,”You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” Did Professor Lewis believe as Dr. Emil Brunner and Baptist Theologian Frank Stagg that we are instantaneously resurrected at the moment of death since time and eternity are not the same. The dead experience the Second Coming at the moment of death.
May God bless you.
Charles E. Miller, Deacon | Aug 11, 2011 | Reply
Charles, Since time and space cease to exist after death for anyone and as Lewis noted, everything becomes “now” in which there is no past, present or future.
David Theroux | Aug 11, 2011 | Reply