Nov
29
Robin Hood - Socialist or Libertarian
Filed Under Uncategorized
First Published Tuesday 19th November 2002
As a young child the tales of Robin Hood caused me quite a bit of concern. As I saw it theft was theft, so why did responsible adults feed children with tales of a man who stole from the rich to give to the poor. When I questioned adults about this at a young age they gave me the same justification people still give me for the welfare state. That justification is ‘some people do not have the ability to provide for themselves so wealth needs to be redistributed to provide for them’. As I have grown older I have discovered that that analyses is simplistic and impractical. This lead me to the belief that Robin Hood was a tale used to indoctrinate children in to believing tax was good. I despaired that there was no great individualist hero in children’s tales. My view of Robin Hood remained unchanged for years until I decided to write an article on why Robin Hood preached socialism. After some thought about the matter, however, I came to a quite different conclusion. Robin Hood is supposed to have existed in feudal times. In feudal times the rich taxed the poor to build giant palaces. In doing that the rich were stealing off the poor by taxing them. Robin Hood is almost always portrayed taking taxes off the Sheriff of Nottingham and giving them back to the poor taxpayer. This makes Robin Hood appear to be more like an early Thomas Jefferson instead of an early Marxist. What is unfortunate is that parents fail to tell their children that Robin Hood did not really steal from the rich and give to the poor but took from the tax collector and gave back to the taxpayer