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Aug. 26, 2024 - Fresh & Fit
03:13:36
Andrew Wilson VS Haz Debate Communism, Morality And Religion
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Time Text
Thank you.
And we're live.
What's up, guys?
Welcome to Fresh Up Podcast, man.
We're here with Andrew Wilson and Haas.
We're going to be talking about what led to degradation in the United States.
Capitalism vs.
Communism.
Let's get into it.
Let's go. Let's go.
Let's go.
Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.
It's going to come out in 4K, so it'll be really good quality for you guys.
I did a pod with Rolo Tomasi, did a couple of gym streams.
Hot Swins.
I went on their show, and then they also went and did our show.
Go check that out with Hot Swins, by the way, guys.
It was literally hilarious.
One of the funniest podcasts I've done in a while.
A lot of you guys actually commented positive things on it.
You guys really enjoyed it.
We're just shooting a shit talking.
And then, obviously, when they drop theirs, I think it's going to come out either this week or next week.
And it'll be a good time, man.
But other than that, what else?
What about you?
How was your...
I saw you kick the four girls out.
Yeah, bro.
It was crazy, man.
I mean, listen, your job is not easy, bro.
I would say law and order is hard on the podcast with ladies.
But, you know, we made it work.
All things happen at Bunny Seeds.
Do sponsors, new updates, and some new guests on the show.
So, let's run it.
Here's a clip.
Literally.
Yeah, it's a fight.
And I guess, Mo, go ahead.
You got something to read real quick, and then we're going to have the guests introduce themselves.
I think we posted the video of them in the elevator.
Yeah.
When they were fighting each other.
Just hilarious.
Oh, they fought each other in their elevator?
Yeah, they did.
So apparently, two girls didn't want to leave, but they wanted to follow their friends, so they left.
They're like, why did you miss?
You guys got kicked off the podcast.
This fucking sucks.
And they started fighting in the elevator.
Yeah, it was crazy.
Oh, shit.
I didn't know that.
Yeah, it's on Castle Club right now.
So go check it, guys.
It's great.
So...
Yeah, because four of them walked off, so you're telling me two of them actually fought with each other?
So this one right here was the one I kicked off originally.
Yeah, I remember.
Because she kept interrupting everybody in the show.
So then they're like, you know what, this is our friend, we're going to leave too.
I said, okay, go ahead, leave.
But then two of them wanted to stay, the youngest ones.
So they had to change their heart when they were in the elevator waiting.
Pretty much.
And they started fighting.
Well, I can see why they would be mad because, yeah, you fucked it up for everybody.
I've won them three times, bro.
Three times.
And you know I'm nice about it.
I'm a nice guy, man.
Alright, well, whatever.
Stupid.
What I'm further ado, though.
Mo, you got a quick message and we're going to introduce our special guest and get into the talk about the debate.
Yes, we do.
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Alright.
You're reading like fresh there for a second, man.
You need some Hooked on Phonics.
Alright, let's go ahead and introduce our special guest in the house, guys.
Welcome, man.
You've just been here a million times, but Haz, this is your first time on.
Welcome to the Fresh Hit Podcast.
Whoever wants to go first, introduce themselves, man.
Yeah, my name is Andrew Wilson.
I'm the host of The Crucible.
To those of you who are watching from The Crucible, what's up, Crucible Crew?
Make sure to come over here, donate generously to Fresh and Fit.
The reason you should is because they put this debate together, and we were able to do it in person because of that.
So I think, you know, I think, Myron, you're like fresh off a...
He got right out of a plane, came right into the studio, was like, I'm moderating a debate.
So yeah, he made it happen.
That was great.
So come over and show a little bit of love to Fresh and Fit.
I'm Hazaldeen, the host of the Infrared Show.
It was a political live streaming show that was mainly on Twitch before I got banned, moved to YouTube, and is now on kick.
I'm also the executive chairman of the American Communist Party, which is a recently launched Communist Party that consists of myself, Jackson Hinkle, the Midwestern Marx crew, and several others on the executive board.
Is that where you did that recent speech?
No, the speech I did was in Dearborn, and that was for the Institute for a Free America, which is a different thing.
So I guess I don't want to know, what's your stance on communism itself?
Me, or?
Well, yeah, unless you wanted to mention in your opening statement.
No, no, it's okay, I can get into it.
So I regard myself as a capital C communist, which is the real deal, a real type of Marxist-Leninist orthodox, just as in the Soviet Union with Stalin and China, with Mao, China today, communist states in general around the world.
And typically this is something that is foreign and not very prevalent in the Western countries, in the United States in particular, because here the self-identified communists are mainly just liberals who are becoming increasingly radicalized in the direction of wherever the Democratic Party is going.
I'm a communist in the sense that the communism in the sense of leading nations through industrialization and focusing on the development of the productive forces and focusing on consolidating sovereignty and political dictatorship In such a way that can't be usurped by the interests of the capitalist class.
So this type of communism is not very much...
The history of it in the United States is limited.
The golden age of the Communist Party here was in the 1930s, right?
And then with the Cold War, the onset of the Cold War...
You know, the rest is history.
They began to persecute them, and then they basically became irrelevant.
And then afterwards, you had the rise of liberalism, you know, left liberals.
You had so-called leftism, which was mainly based on students rather than the industrial workers that were the base of historical communism.
So, Jackson, Hinkle, and I, and others, we represent a revived communist tendency in the United States.
We're trying to restore something that has been lost in this country, which is a type of politics that's based in the working class, based in the interests of the common people, and which brings to the fore the economic question, the property question, back into politics.
Okay.
So the way we're going to do this, guys, is we're going to have five...
Well, we're going to have...
Okay, so first we're going to have opening statements.
It's going to be five minutes where they're going to be able to...
This is going to be kind of a broad debate.
Obviously, we talked about capitalism versus communism, but there's going to be other things as well because the topic is what caused the issues in the United States, and obviously that's going to come into play and a multitude of other factors.
So we're going to have opening statements, five minutes each to state their arguments, and then we're going to have...
Five rounds, three minutes each, where they're gonna, you know, be able to make their arguments, you know, uninterrupted, of course.
And then we're gonna have three rounds, five minutes each, where it's open dialogue and they're able to kind of go back and forth and speak at the same time.
So, who wants to go first, by the way?
I can open first.
You wanna go open first?
Alright, cool.
So, let's put five minutes on the clock.
I'll have my timer here as well.
And we'll hand it off to Andrew and he'll make his first opening statements.
We gotta watch two bills on the side.
Give me one minute.
Yeah, bills will fire one up.
Yeah, I'll keep mine for now.
Okay, Andrew, whenever you're ready.
Yeah, so first I want to thank you guys, of course, for hosting and Haas for coming out here today.
I've known Haas for a long time.
I mean, way back when I started streaming, it was around the same time he started streaming.
I've always liked him personally.
I just hate his politics, right?
So I think that that's a fair assessment.
So we're getting to what is the root cause in America of the problem.
It comes down to the founding of the Enlightenment principles of the United States.
Which, in this founding of these Enlightenment principles, we had no American identity.
There was no American identity which we were able to adopt.
The egalitarian and Enlightenment principles have led to the current kind of progressive, I would almost say, zeitgeist that you see now.
So to go through what these principles are for egalitarianism, the idea that all men are created equal, for instance, these are all enlightenment principles.
Now, Haas, he kind of adheres to a philosopher named Hegel.
Hegel was part of the idea of many of these enlightenment principles, in fact.
I reject Enlightenment principles categorically, and I believe that those Enlightenment principles are the direct route.
Now, that said, I also think that Bolshevik murderous Jewish communists killed...
The Orthodox king.
They killed the Orthodox king in Russia.
They did a Bolshevik takeover of the entire nation.
I do think that this is part of what is considered a revolutionary spirit.
And that spirit is alive and well inside of the communist ethos and ideology.
And I think that communists often pretend that it's not...
But it is.
The idea of continual revolution.
And that is part of the egalitarian principle of the United States, which was founded on revolution.
So I think that this is a huge problem inside of this ideology.
Now I'm going to move, because it's such a broad topic, I have to kind of move around a little bit.
To kind of understand the central communist plot, the idea is...
And Marxist theory is pretty broad, but the general idea here is a continual social revolution until we get to the point where we get it right.
Whatever that means, right?
The reason I wanted to do this debate specifically with Hobbes is because what I don't want...
Is I don't want traditional commie speak.
And here's what I mean about this.
It's language academic prattle that relies on communist linguistics without actually speaking plainly what it is that you mean to say.
So what I'm asking Haas to do tonight for me and for the audience is to just speak very plainly.
And the reason that I'm asking that is because, and you know this, there's tons of communists who do obfuscation by moving towards Marx's principles, and they have distinct meanings which are different than the meanings how we see them in the commons.
Example of this is freedom.
Perhaps Marx has a distinct definition or way he views freedom.
And I don't know exactly what that's going to be.
I'm going to view it a different way.
So I would like it to be plain speak and not typical Marxist prattle.
So that's why I wanted to do this debate specifically with you.
And now you kind of have the outline of how I view the world, why I view Marxism as such a problem and communism as such a problem.
And what the root is of the problems inside of America, which start with egalitarian principles.
I believe that communists take advantage of egalitarian principles.
They always plan to take advantage of those principles to institute communism.
And with that, I'll yield my time.
I'll put five minutes on the clock for Haas, whenever you're ready.
I'm not a big fan of semantics.
I don't think anyone is.
It obfuscates the ability to communicate words clearly and get the meaning across.
However, I think an exception should be taken, semantically speaking, for something that's actually not necessarily Marxism.
Let's just begin with Christianity and the Lord's Prayer.
Let's begin with the etymology of the word sin in Christianity itself.
And scholars will find that etymologically and linguistically, they'll find that the word sin can be traced back to debt.
And the Lord's Prayer, which says, forgive us of our sin, and Jesus, who announces...
In his first sermon, the Jubilee Year, which was a cyclical...
A cyclical tradition among the Jews to cancel the debt every so often.
The core of the whole thing was about debt, and that's what really my view about the chief contradiction or the problem of America stems from.
I mean, we could go to the Enlightenment and defining exactly what that is, I think, would be difficult.
Although we could use Kant's definition and so on.
But in my view, the root cause of America's decay and the root cause of America's problem is actually very simple.
It's debt.
It's the fact that our total liabilities have far surpassed our assets.
There is no way that the total national debt in the United States could ever imaginably ever be paid off.
The amount of personal household debt that Americans have could never be paid off.
And we are faced with a problem where the debt is being used as a pretext for the 1%, an extremely small minority of exploiters and capitalists, to gobble up and seize all of the assets and all of the wealth of this country on the basis of them being collateralized in the first place.
So, to me, the real root cause of the problem Is that we are being held to an economic principle, namely the strict kind of narrow terms of a very ruthless form of capitalism, and we're being crucified and penalized for having basic economic needs that we need met, not only at the level of public spending, but at the level of individuals who need to get by and make a living for themselves.
And just because of that, they're being punished with endless and self-multiplying An unpayable debt.
And to me, communism, if you want to simplify it as far as how I see it in this country, communism means cancelling the debt.
This is precisely what those murderous Bolsheviks did, which is what incurred the response of every major great power on planet Earth invading Revolutionary Russia in 1917, 1918, because what was Lenin's first act?
He cancelled all of the foreign debt.
The Tsar had accumulated all of this debt from the French banks in order to finance the limited extent of industrial development that he was partaking in, and the debt was unpayable.
It was immiserating the Russian people, the Russian peasants.
They were becoming slaves.
They were becoming proletarianized.
So what does the revolutionary Bolsheviks do when they take power?
They cancel the debt.
I don't think the elites really care about your ideology as much as they care about what you do.
And the one thing consistently we see across history is that when you cancel the debt, when you raise the question, the property question of debt, you are touching upon something that they regard as very sensitive.
You're touching upon the very source of the power of the international capital.
That's the thing that allows them to gobble up and steal and loot the material wealth of all mankind.
And to me, communism is already in the Bible.
You know, it's not necessarily something that begins just with Marx.
The revolutionary message of Jesus Christ, and I do regard him as a revolutionary, was to cancel the debt.
And it's also my message.
I'll yield the rest of my time if there's any.
Alright, yeah, there's a minute left, but I guess we'll go on to round one.
So are you saying communism is freedom?
Yes, I think so.
I mean, if you look at the Liberty Bell, it uses a term, a Hebrew term.
You'll have to forgive me, because I don't think I remember it exactly.
Something durier, or something like that?
Anyway, the term refers to the emancipation of debt servants.
It refers to the emancipation of people who had to pledge their families, their land, and even themselves, because they couldn't pay back debt to the creditors.
So this is even on the Liberty Bell that we have here in the United States, using that term.
Okay.
Alright, so we're going to go into round one, so we kind of see where both of you stand.
I guess I'll give a quick summary here, for those of you that are just tuning in.
We're having a debate on what led to degradation in the United States, what the root cause problem is.
And obviously we're going to get into the topic of capitalism versus communism.
But Andrew Stant says he rejects enlightenment.
He believes that enlightenment was the beginning of the end here.
And Marxism.
And Haas is more along the lines of debt is the main problem and communism solves that.
Would that be a fair summation of what you guys said?
Obviously, I, you know, grossly simplify it.
Yeah, you're paraphrasing.
We understand.
Okay.
All right, cool.
So we're going to round one here.
I'm going to put three minutes on the clock for Andrew.
Andrew, whenever you're ready, I'll start it.
Sure.
Three minutes on the clock.
From this point forward, we're going to do five three-minute rounds, and then we're going to do three five-minute rounds.
And then we're going to have a Zoom call after this, by the way, guys, so you guys in the Q&A and you guys can interact with us and have a good discussion with the Cals Club guys.
So that'll be after, so stay tuned.
But yeah, whenever you're ready, Andrew, and I got my time here.
Okay, I'm ready.
Yeah, so the idea that communism would be necessary to cancel out debt is absurd.
It's absurd on its face.
We have plenty of history to demonstrate this.
Andrew Jackson already did this.
Andrew Jackson killed the central bank.
He used the entirety of his administration to pay off all the national debt, which he did.
Okay, so why communism would be necessary to pay off the national debt?
I have no idea.
There's certainly tons of systems and models which could be used that are non-Keynesian to do this.
So I have no idea where their criticism is.
If you're saying that debt can be crippling to a nation, I totally agree with you.
However, communist nations in the past, including Stalin's nation of Russia, was also under crippling debt.
I mean, communism did not prevent it at all from incurring a massive amount of debt.
Which also led to financial collapse, in fact, because it didn't have access to external capital and needed it very desperately, in fact, I would say, in order to keep its country propped up.
So I would kind of categorically reject first in term of we need communism to cancel the debt.
We have a historic example.
The president already did this in Andrew Jackson.
He completely Killed a central bank concept, gave the ability to Congress to coin money, paid off the entirety of the national debt.
He had nothing to do with communism whatsoever.
Most certainly wasn't a communist.
Communism had nothing at all to do with that.
And I'd like to start there.
Maybe I can start the inquiry there so that we can just kind of dive into it without kind of bloviating for three minutes so we can just get right into it.
Okay.
All right.
I'll put three minutes on the clock for us to respond to that.
Sure.
I think that the problem, though, is that even if we accepted face value that Andrew Jackson somehow, in this sweeping way, acted against the creditor class, which I think is false.
I think what he actually did was he got rid of the Hamiltonian, which is more like a national bank, not necessarily a central bank like the Federal Reserve, which is strictly privately owned.
And that could also be interpreted as a pro-creditor move.
But even Andrew Jackson, what is he regarded as historically?
He's regarded as a populist, right?
So what communism and Marxism will often talk about, politically speaking, is that society is divided by a class struggle.
And if you want to act against the interests of creditors, you have to have your base of support somewhere.
And if your base of support is not in the people who have all the money and have all the resources and have all the wealth, it seems like at face value you're going to be screwed.
But actually, the multitudes, the majority of people, the working class, that's a base of support that could be relied upon to achieve goals that are in favor of them, right?
There's more of them.
Numerically.
So that's an advantage that can be drawn.
So part of the historical class struggle is always this struggle between a ruling class and the masses, which are part of a different class, right?
And in the case of Andrew Jackson and other cases of populist leaders, I mean, for example, even the Farmers' Alliance and the Populist Party, they were calling for a cancellation of debt, and they weren't Marxists, and they weren't explicitly communists.
But as long as they're unable to scientifically understand the ability for their strategy to work and succeed, as long as they're unable to understand the dynamics I just mentioned, that it's a class struggle, that you need this reliable basis of support, inevitably what's going to happen is exactly what did happen in American history.
The creditors will return.
Again, this is off of the premise that Andrew Jackson was an anti- Accreditor president, which I disagree with.
But even if we assume that was true, it's clear that the way history played out was exactly the opposite.
It's clear that the banking class, the creditor class, actually emerged here in the United States from the indigenous industrial capitalists that were promoted already under Lincoln, right?
So I would respond basically with, well, why did the debt come back if it was so simple?
Yeah, so...
Okay, so that concludes that round one.
We'll go ahead to round two.
I'll put three minutes on the clock again, and go ahead, Andrew.
Yeah, so I mean, this is going to be a continual struggle.
As long as you have leadership, which wants access to money, the only thing that they can do is offer up their people as a form of credit for that money.
That's the only thing they can do is offer up the tax basis as a form of credit.
You know this, and I know this.
This is the way that all nations basically back up What they need as far as credit for their nation.
They're going to put the taxpayer as the kind of collateral for whatever the loan is that they need.
So the reason that this is kind of occurring again and again and again, cyclically, I would actually say that this is due to egalitarian principles.
So this idea where you form...
You're taking humanity out of this, I think.
I think that what happens with egalitarian principles is they form small microgroups.
These microgroups then have their own assessed and addressed interests.
And once they realize that they can raid the Treasury via the vote, once they realize that they can vote in their own interest to steal your money, whatever these groups are which formulate, they will do that.
And that is part of, I think...
Democracy in and of itself and egalitarianism in and of itself.
Communism does nothing to solve for that.
How would communism, absent a central authority, where it was some type of totalitarian dictatorship, I do not understand how communism can actually solve for this issue.
If you're going to allow people to participate in any sort of democratic process whatsoever, and you're going to allow them to participate in any sort of government process whatsoever, They're going to have to be able to vote or somehow participate.
Once they realize that they can steal...
Group A can steal from Group B via the vote, they will do so because Group A will always outnumber Group B. Group B will always outnumber Group C. They can always vote themselves Group A, B, C, and D's money.
All you need to do is have the numbers.
Communism, this was known, was a big problem with...
This is why Giovanni Gentile himself kind of points to the idea of these large trade corporations swallowing up the smaller trade corporations.
Now these were actually trade unions, but he kind of understood he came from the idea of Marxism and Communist theory.
So he says, well wait, we need a body of the state which can control for these small groups Coming in and basically taking over these other groups just via numbers.
You point to this yourself when you say, look, they have the numbers.
I agree.
Group A has the numbers.
Group A can always vote or use force to take from Group B. You still haven't really explained to me how communism solves for this problem.
I don't understand how communism itself, or Marxist theory, is going to solve for that very human problem.
Okay, I'll turn it back to Haas here.
I'll put three minutes on the clock, and whenever you're ready.
I'm a little bit confused about exactly what you're talking about, because it seems clear to me from concrete historical examples that the only forces politically in modern world history that have ever been able to wage and mount a long-term defiance of the global creditor class, and which is therefore the global capitalist class, have obviously been communist states.
I mean, what loans did Stalin need to take out and indebt the Soviet Union into?
Loans did China need to take out under Mao in order to enslave and indebt their country to international capitalists?
No such thing, because we have to look at the source of where credit comes from.
Credit doesn't just come out of thin air.
It comes from actually controlling the means of production.
I don't want to use Marxist jingo, because I know you have a kind of allergy to that.
It's fine to do.
Just explain what the term means.
It means a production.
It just means the fundamental way in which the basic necessities economically, economic necessities of your country are produced.
How do people get clothed?
How do they get fed?
How do they get shelter?
Right?
How are things made?
So this is the natural resources.
This is the factories.
This is the technology.
These are all the fundamental meat and potatoes of an economy that are necessary for human beings in a given context of civilization to exist as they do.
Credit, the ability to actually issue credit, comes from a fundamental stranglehold and control over means of production.
Historically speaking, it was always land.
If you controlled the land, you could use that land as collateral to give out loans and further gobble up more land because debtors would have to pledge their land in order to...
Take out the loans.
So historically, this is the origin of pro-creditor classes emerging across many different eras of history.
But in the case of the capitalist era, it's actually clear that we have an ownership of the means of production that is purely for-profit, which is owned by us and gobbled up by a small minority, which inevitably culminates in monopolists, like the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Morgans, and so on and so on.
And they are the ones who actually built the foundation of the Federal Reserve Banks in the United States.
If it wasn't for the fact that they owned the railways, they owned the oil, they owned all of the factories, and so on and so on, the steel, the rise of the Federal Reserve and the pro-creditor policies we see today wouldn't have been possible.
So this communism solves this problem because the fundamental means of production are owned in common.
They're owned by the state, they're owned by the people in some other form, and this allows...
This prevents the need, A. It prevents the need from taking out foreign loans necessarily in order to develop your country.
You can develop from scratch.
Now, there's drawbacks from that because it creates instabilities.
Instabilities that, you know, historically, I won't deny, have led to brief but very, very severe, you know, economic dysfunction, right?
Ten seconds.
Yeah.
So, but I don't see the problem.
I don't see how communists haven't solved this problem.
I don't understand what you're getting at there.
Okay, that's three minutes.
We're gonna go on to round three, put three minutes on the clock again.
Are we got chats?
You know, I'll reach out after this round, because this is in the middle of a good thing here.
Ready, Andrew?
Yeah.
Alright, alright.
Yeah, you still haven't actually explained how communism has solved this issue.
So, yes, it's true that rich industrialists definitely got together with the political class in order to pass the Federal Reserve Act.
There's no doubt that that's true.
I agree with you that there's a groundwork setting for this with rich industrialists who definitely move towards the Federal Reserve.
There's just no doubt that's a matter of historic fact.
However, you still haven't really explained how it is that you would prevent Group A, Group A if they're going to participate in your communist utopia or society, from stealing the wealth of Group B. As long as they can vote or somehow participate in the political process, they can vote themselves Group B shit.
I don't understand how communism solves for that.
You say, well, the state owns the means of production along with the people.
So when it comes to credit, well, the people are still going to be the form of credit.
You say, well, traditionally it was land.
That's true, but people have to work the land, so it's still the people who are the credit.
They're still whatever the bond is for your collateral.
So if you're a nation and you want to take out a big loan, you're going to say, hey, we can pay this loan back because here's our tax base, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, etc., etc.
You still haven't actually explained how in communism, if people are allowed to participate in the political process.
How do you prevent them from stealing the capital if they have a larger group than Group B? Can you just directly answer?
It's still my time, but just go ahead and give a direct answer.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, China is a communist country which doesn't have this problem.
Does that not answer it?
Because the reason they don't have the problem...
That's a mixed economy.
Well, look, the Soviet Union didn't have that problem, and neither did China, because in order for different private groups to constitute themselves as separate political interests...
They weren't allowed to participate, though.
You're right, precisely.
That's the meaning of proletarian dictatorship.
You have a one-party state, you don't allow different groups and private interests to constitute themselves as a political power.
So you want authoritarianism, ultimately.
Absolutely.
Yeah, so authoritarianism under a single person.
Not necessarily under a single person, but certainly under a single party.
Okay, so if we're moving towards authoritarian communism, right, now we can kind of move into...
The real kind, like historically.
Yeah, so now we can kind of move into the rest of it here.
So, this dictator, he's going to set all trade policies, right, or this authoritarian group.
People themselves will be unable to participate inside of the government structure that you propose.
I completely disagree.
I think that one-party dictatorships, such as in the Soviet Union and China, have been much more able to integrate the input and participation of the masses.
I don't mean to cut you off.
It was a question, so it wasn't a disagreement.
Okay, what's the question again?
I'm asking specifically, are you just moving towards authoritarianism?
If you're moving towards unilateral authoritarianism, can you explain how that mode works?
Do you want me to answer directly how it works and historical examples?
This time is up, so we'll turn it over here anyways.
Real quick, you guys are okay with that?
As long as you guys are both okay with it.
Sometimes we're going to have to clarify these things.
No problem.
This is what I'll do.
Since you guys are not fucking idiots like other debaters, you guys can ask each other questions in the middle of your thing, and it'll count for your time, right?
So that way we'll keep it fair, but clarifying questions and stuff like that is a complex topic.
I'll turn it right over to you in three minutes.
Go ahead.
When you just have a single party, which is based on the single purport that we want to increase the prosperity and serve the common interests of your country, then there's no more negotiation and political debates about what the goal should be.
Everyone's on the same page that the goal is about serving the common interests, serving the people, increasing the productive forces and the wealth, and so on and so on.
Now, now that you've set that goal about, the question is how do you acquire the input and the data from below from the people who are the least assimilated within the party's power structure apparatus in order to make decisions that are popular and reflect the sentiments and the reality, more importantly, of your people?
Right?
Well, for example, we have historical examples that show how this would work.
In China, at the lowest, most rural, smallest village level, you have party members that are there that are leaders of their community, that are getting input from their community, that are actually accountable to their community.
The accountability measures that, as a party leader, as a local political leader, not even necessarily a party one, you have to perform.
You have to be doing good for your community.
If you're not performing, if you're doing...
Bad by them and abusing your power, they'll report you to the person above, right?
So this is not a matter of a hypothetical system we have to dream up and conjure from scratch.
Hang on, hang on.
Let me get clarity on two points, if you don't mind.
So point one, when you say own, own the means of production.
The people also own the means of production.
What does ownership in this context mean?
However the means of production are used, they have to be pledged ultimately, in the last and final sense, for a common goal, right?
And whatever that common goal is defined by and by who, that's who owns it.
So the Communist Party in China owns all of the land, right?
But they don't strictly define the parameters in every detail as far as how the land can be used.
You can lease land for them and use it, In ways that they can't account for beforehand as long as it doesn't violate the fundamental goal, right?
So if you're using the land in a way that ultimately benefits the country and benefits the overall goals of the party, you know, they're giving you room to be creative and entrepreneurial as far as how you're going to do that.
But can you own land just for the purpose of, you know, of speculative profit?
What if you just want it?
And you don't have any goal whatsoever.
Yeah, you just want it.
Yeah, I mean, it needs to be something that is compatible with the overall goals of the country, right?
So this is what is meant by ownership.
It's not necessarily – see, people have a misunderstanding about communism as common ownership and state ownership because they think it's a matter of unilateral managerial control.
That's not necessarily – control and ownership are two different things.
Control is about management and administration and the degree to which there's flexibility and freedom for people to find different ways to realize the same goal.
But ownership is fundamentally about sovereignty, right?
Ownership is about the fact that, okay, if you're in China, this is our land, foreigners and bankers and capitalists, they can't just take this land and use it for willy-nilly to enslave all of us and hold it against us.
It's ultimately ours in the last and final sense.
So, instance, that's what I meant to say.
Sorry.
No, no, no.
It's fine.
I added 30 seconds extra because he asked you a question in the middle.
Oh, okay.
That's why I added more time to you.
That's time right there.
Yeah.
But did you want to finish your thought before I... Yeah, yeah.
I was going to say...
I was going to say...
You're talking about the...
Ownership is about sovereignty.
It's a sovereignty question.
It's not necessarily about administration and management.
Okay, fair enough.
I'll put three minutes on again.
And do you guys want this where we go ahead and you guys can ask questions to each other?
Yeah, I prefer to just open it up, honestly.
You guys want to open it up?
I'm cool with that.
Yeah, I'm totally cool with that.
Okay, so that completes, because you went first, that completes round three.
So we'll go ahead and make these.
I'll put five minutes on.
You guys okay with five minutes?
Yeah, we'll take a quick break.
We're from our sponsor.
Yeah, a quick break from our sponsor, and then we'll go ahead and restructure this stuff.
So we completed opening in three rounds.
Go ahead, Mo.
Or I can reach out.
I can reach out.
Alright, yeah, go ahead, read the ad, and then we'll do chats after.
That's good stuff, man.
I've been taking notes the whole time.
I'm learning a bunch from you guys.
Go ahead, Mo.
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I'll retell the charts, and then we'll get back into it.
So we completed an opening round, right, where they gave their stance on everything, and then obviously three rounds back and forth, and then we're going to open it up for five minutes of open dialogue, versus only three.
So it'll be a total of five rounds of open dialogue, five minutes apiece, and you guys will be able to kind of just have dialogue, because you guys are pretty much...
We've established your grounding, and now it's more about clarifying the other's positions so that you can respond to it.
So that makes more sense in this situation.
Got to be fluid, right?
We got here, Myron.
Have you heard about Telegram CEO getting arrested for not moderating in individual chat groups?
I know, bro.
It's fucking crazy.
What will this mean going forward for FNF Telegram group?
Well, we still got our Telegram group, but it might have to move to Signal, man.
This is wild.
France is a failed nation.
What else we got here?
Eggie goes, WFNF for having such great content, especially this year.
We got you guys.
Always the best when Wilson is on the pod.
W Andrew, WFNF, God bless.
So where are the beads at?
Fucking beads.
The beads.
I told you, Mo.
The beads.
Speaking of which, by the way, guys, we're going to actually have Hobbs and Andrew on tomorrow.
We're going to do FNF News tomorrow, guys.
Mo, Mo, shut up, man.
Goddamn, let me say what I'm saying.
Yeah, so we're going to go ahead and have FNF News tomorrow, guys.
With Haas and with Andrew Wilson.
Maybe we'll get Jackson Hinkle in here as well.
It'll be a good conversation.
And then, obviously, Wednesday, I think we're going to go ahead and drop the Dan Bilzerian interview.
So we're going to do the debate tonight, and then FNF News will be tomorrow, guys.
Tomorrow night, 9 or 10 p.m.
Nice change.
Yeah.
What do we got here?
Yo, Mo, I sent you a DM on IG, agl.sdl99.
I'm trying to start.
No.
Oh, man.
This dude, bro.
Communism will win.
Stop crying.
B-Men.
Okay?
That's from Janner.
Meyer needs to check his ears.
Mo spoke fine.
Okay, just quiet.
What else do we got here?
Anything else?
Oh, okay.
Beyond Sarah Penn, he goes, What does communism have to say about morality?
Communism being a strictly materialistic philosophy, what's to stop degeneracy from developing in your communist utopia?
We'll get into that probably during the debate.
And then we got, What Haas means by brief economic disruption is the single greatest loss of human life in recorded history caused by mass famine.
Um...
I don't know if you want to respond to that.
That's complete nonsense.
China had cyclical famines regularly, all the time before communism.
So much so that nobody even noticed it.
Nobody cared.
It's like in Africa today when we know everyone's starving, but we somehow don't attribute this to capitalism.
We just say, ah, they're starving.
That's how it is.
Okay.
What else we got here?
Alright, cool.
So we're going to go ahead and put five minutes on the clock, guys.
And we're going to go into more of the open dialogue.
We'll start with, I think it's, yeah, it's on Andrew.
Andrew.
Yeah, so, Haas, I appreciate you opening it up, too, because some of this requires a lot of clarification so we can get to the heart of these positions.
And you're welcome to ask me whatever you want.
And if you think you have a point that needs to be clarified and you need to cut in, I'm not going to take any offense to that.
Okay, sure.
Yeah, so to kind of dive in here, I did notice something of a contradiction, and this is why I'm focusing on the ownership portion, what you mean by ownership here in the means of production.
Yeah.
To me, ownership is this belongs to me, the individual.
You're making kind of a different claim here.
I think that ownership of property is a way to exercise power, and I think that you're trying to control that exercise of power at the individual level.
And perhaps regulation could be good for that.
But can you just clarify one more time because we just had to break what you mean by ownership here?
Because when you gave the example of the Chinese, you said, well, wait a second.
What can happen is they have a rep, and if the rep isn't doing, you know, or...
That's just the ability to get people's input in the political process, not necessarily the fundamental ownership.
The ownership is that all of the land, for example, in China is either owned by the state or it's owned by the cooperatives of the village level, collectively.
And they have the power to lease out the land to whoever they want.
And these leases are never permanent.
They're a few decades or something.
What about individual interests?
Individual interests for land ownership for just the sake of having it.
How could that be an immoral proposition?
How could that be a proposition in which you can say, this is wrong for a person to do, to actually own a thing which is then theirs?
Well, because it's not a matter of morality, it's a matter of power and politics.
To own land, to truly own it, you have to conquer it by the sword.
That's how you own land.
Why would that be an entailment that it must be conquered by the sword?
Because there is no ownership of land to anyone or anything in history that was not conquered forcefully.
Perhaps you could say certain groups come in and they take land, right?
Sometimes the land isn't even occupied, right?
They don't even need to use force.
They just put up a flag and say, this is mine.
What makes it not theirs?
What makes it not theirs is...
I mean, what makes it theirs, historically, from classical political economies, they'll say because their labor was used to cultivate the land and their labor is being used to participate in it, this is what makes it theirs.
This is what makes it reflect their fundamental essence and their fundamental being, right?
When you have societies constituted by a very complex division of labor, where in order to produce the civilization itself at the aggregate level, You have a bunch of different moving parts and a bunch of different kinds of labor that are working together that are necessary and indispensable for each other.
I mean, for a factory, you need, you know, there's so many different specialized roles just for something like that, right?
That's just at the factory level.
Now think of it at the level of a country.
There's so many different types of labor that are necessary for a nation to exist, just to be able to feed itself and clothe itself and so on.
No disagreement there.
So how can we pin down, you know, if you want to take this at a more moral level, that someone in particular is entitled absolutely to own this in the way that you're talking about, like at the level of sovereignty and power, when they are interdependent on others just as much as well?
Because if all we have is what's intuitive...
And it seems like this is the system that you're advocating is intuition.
I don't see how else you're advocating for anything other than I would, and I'm going to be tongue-in-cheek a bit here, my preferences, right?
And my intuition.
Intuitively, people seem to want to own things themselves.
They want those things to be theirs.
They don't want them to be collective.
For instance, right?
I own my wife.
Now, I don't mean ownership the same way that, you know, I would maybe own this studio or something like this.
But I think you understand the gist, or the geist, as Hagel would say, of what I'm getting at here.
She's mine.
I'm not sharing her.
I'm not sharing my kids, right?
Now, aside from the wife thing, we can get into that later, but let's just say this mug, this is your mug, I want to drink out of it, I don't want to share it with anyone else, it's mine.
No, no, no, this is, yeah, I get what you're saying now.
This is my mug.
I use it for something.
It's mine.
I'm the one who uses it, and it's mine, right?
So you're giving content to it.
You're using it in a way that is reflective of your humanity, reflective of your existence, and, of course, any civilization recognizes and respects those boundaries, that this is yours because this is what you use, right?
But here's the problem.
Capitalist private property isn't just I want to use this, and that's what defines its exclusivity.
It's about an institution where you're pledging fundamental means of production and resources that we all depend on and all rely upon for the sole and exclusive purpose of making a profit.
Not even necessarily making profit For, like, a predefined goal of, like, I want to get rich, I want to have a yacht with women, and I want to have a luxurious life.
Even that would be more compatible with communism, because at least there's a goal that's human at the end of it, right?
But the capitalist system doesn't have human goals.
It's a maddening process of capital just self-expanding blindly only for the purpose of profit.
And that's five minutes there.
I was going to just let him start.
Can we extend it for a minute?
Yeah, yeah, we can.
These systems don't exist in a vacuum.
When you say a capitalist system, you're talking about people.
These are human beings who are at the heads of these systems.
I don't believe that just because you're a capitalist, you're a monster.
Of course you don't believe that either.
Nor if you're invested in a capitalist system, you're a monster.
Clearly though, people want to individually be able to have at least some autonomy.
Auto, law, right?
Law of yourself.
To own things which are theirs, and they share with nobody.
It's not yours.
It's not to help you.
It's not to do anything for you.
And you can go fuck yourself, right?
But that's just a personal use.
That's for personal consumption.
Yeah, but the thing is, is like, why is it that that would in any way...
Well, but hang on.
You said earlier, when I asked about private land ownership, you said, no, you can't own that unless it's benefiting somebody else.
Yeah.
Ah, no, no, no.
Okay.
There's a misunderstanding there.
I can clarify.
I'm talking about, for example, owning fundamental means of production that, like, everyone relies upon, right?
And you're just saying, I want this just because I want it for no reason.
Well, if you want it just because you want to use it exclusively, that's still a reason, right?
That's not for no reason.
That's not an arbitrary thing.
There's civilization, and it varies...
By what civilization we're talking about, recognizes boundaries by which, you know, privacy of the individual is recognized.
See, this is the thing that I think is so difficult, and I think this is maybe the language stuff you were talking about earlier, that Marxists are obfuscating language.
Well, it's because things didn't always mean...
What they mean to us now, like private property.
We think of private property, we're like, this is my lawn, it's private property, fuck off and don't come on my lawn.
Like, oh, that's private property.
But in reality, the private part of private property wasn't that it was an exclusively individual or human use, it was that this was institutionally cast off Yeah.
Yeah.
of what you mean when you say this?
An example of private property being utilized this way when you say, well, what it actually is is this other thing.
I would say when banks own so many homes that are meant for people to live in, just for purposes of speculation and just for purposes of generating fictitious capital and fictitious profits that are not even productive...
This is exactly what I'm talking about.
A bank owns an asset.
Hang on, I'm sorry.
Let's back up.
I'm talking on the individual level.
Before we get to the corporate level.
That's the beautiful thing about what I'm talking about here.
That's the kicker.
We tend to think that capitalism promotes individual ownership and individual autonomy or whatever.
But the opposite is true.
Capitalism has led to banks owning everything, not individuals.
And to me, that is exactly the consequence of the system of private property itself.
Yeah, but communism itself, the way that you are promoting it here, is not really telling us why we wouldn't just be shifting from bankers owning everything to just Group A owning everything.
If you believe in forced doctrine, Group A, in this case government's just going to own everything.
They'll allocate the housing how they see fit instead of the bank.
It seems like all you're doing is shifting from one person who owns everything And is then utilizing speculation and everything else in order to profit themselves to just another group doing the exact same thing.
Well, I would say, although there's no guarantees that it would be perfect, I would say it would be an improvement.
Why?
Because the banker is accountable to no one.
It's my private property.
I do whatever the fuck I want with it, and I'm accountable to no one.
Even if you have a corrupt...
Haas, hang on.
Who the hell are you accountable to when you have the force doctrine on your side?
What do you mean?
Banks don't have individual...
I mean, banks themselves don't have force doctrine.
They rely on governments who they bribe to protect them from the people or whatever it is.
They own the government.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
But in this case, all you're doing is shifting the goal to the government doing the exact same thing you're claiming these banks are doing.
And now they have all the machine guns, too.
What redress do you think the people have?
Okay, so even if we're talking about a corrupt authoritarian government that's communist or something, even if it's corrupt...
Wasn't that all of them?
No.
No, they weren't fundamentally corrupt.
But even then, even if we assume they were, it's still better because even in order for them to not get overthrown instantly, right, they have to at least justify themselves on the basis that this is what we're using it for and have to be held to that standard.
Even that, even if it was corrupt, that's better than if a banker owns everything or bankers own everything for totally antisocial purposes, just to, you know, systemically dysfunctional purposes, ones that don't even make rational economic sense, just for the purposes of making money, but the money's backed up by nothing, and it's self-multiplying because of the way interest works, and it's totally negating its own fundamental premises.
It's not being reinforced.
Even if I agree that this could be superior to a banker class, right?
It seems like neither class is necessary for humans to be dominant.
So humanity can still move towards its interests, absent having an authoritarian, autonomous, communist government.
What's an example of that, though?
So, an example of people's self-governing, during Jackson's day, this happened often.
So, you can look at an example in American history.
Often, this was the case that people self-governed, especially around land ownership.
Now, you talk about people who bought up large swaths of land.
That's true.
But originally, you have to remember that that was done away with as well.
You could not buy up X amount of acreage if it was outside of the public use.
So, the reason for this is they wanted to stop those monopolies from happening.
So I agree with you in this sense, that it's okay.
But they happened.
Well, but, okay, under communism, the same exact types of things happened.
Like what do you mean?
Like the government now, you just have shifted the means of ownership.
But when has this happened under a communist government?
What?
Which thing?
When has a creditor class, a monopolistic class, been able to just come and take over everything?
You just shift who has it.
So you're just shifting the authority from the bank to the government.
So when does this happen under communism?
Hang on.
It always happens under communism.
It's just that you shift who owns the means of production to the authoritarian portion instead of the banker portion.
It's the same thing.
But at the worst, a communist government is mismanaging.
They're not fundamentally using the resources for an antisocial private goal.
So, okay, when you say...
Or else, if they are, then it's like the collapse of the Soviet Union where oligarchs just come and they just say it's no longer communism.
But when you say antisocial goal, what do you mean by antisocial goal?
One that in no way is accountable to the public and to publicly accountable and stated and enunciated goals like the five-year plans they have.
That's all private property ownership.
I don't have to account for what I do with my private property to the public.
It's none of their fucking business.
You're right, but a Communist Party does.
Yeah, right, exactly.
So the thing is, if I'm under the Communist Party, right, and I have my private property, do I have to give a fucking accounting to them of what I'm doing with my private property?
If I own 300 acres and, you know, there's an eaves there, there's something in the public domain, public interest...
Under communism, all of the fundamental means of production, including land, will be owned in common.
Now, if you're leasing out the land, let's say, to the state, and you have the rights to the lease one way or another, because historically, your parents had it or whatever, do you have to be accountable for everything?
I mean, no.
I mean, look, you think Chinese fruit stand sellers have to report to the government everything they're doing?
Absolutely not.
There's even more, it's even ironic, they have more autonomy and freedom and wiggle room than here.
Yeah, because the government's turning a blind eye to it for the purpose of social cohesion.
No, no, no.
Well, it's not that they're turning a blind eye.
It's that they're not interested in just meddling and interfering with people's day-to-day lives.
But what the Communist Party is ensuring, though, is that people, in the course of just living their lives normally, are doing so in a way that is harmonious and compatible with the reproduction of civilization.
The problem in America is not necessarily there's too much government or too little government.
It's that we're not holding ourselves to the standard of being reproduced as a civilization.
So anti-social values can be freely cultivated.
Pornography, OnlyFans, you name it.
These are things that are not compatible with a functioning civilization.
These things thrive under communism.
So let me give you some examples.
Abortion completely thrived under communism.
It's only stamped out by Stalinists because they were extinguishing their civilization.
The great abortion advocates in feminism...
We're, in fact, communists.
Some of the greatest abortion advocates.
That is not conducive to...
I don't think that's true at all.
I think that what you're talking about is that abortion was legalized and relaxed initially because they eliminated all of the civil codes.
But even the...
I wouldn't call them feminists, but even Alexandra Kolontai, for example...
You don't think she was a feminist?
No, I don't.
Even though she was in favor of the legalization of...
She's considered one of the great feminist minds of our time, Haas.
By Western feminists, sure, but in Russia, that's not how she would be regarded.
But anyway, look, the point is, even they recognized that even if it was to be legalized, they didn't think it was a good thing.
They thought it was a necessary evil, and that their idea was that, oh, it's harm reduction, because people are doing it anyway, because these are wartime conditions, and it's very dangerous to their health.
And they said, our goal is to eliminate this, but we're just going to make it legal so it's less dangerous to them.
Now, we could disagree with that or agree with that.
That's not necessarily my point.
But even when communist countries allow for abortion, and many of them banned it, by the way, at different periods, I don't think there's any states in history that were more aggressively pro-natalist in terms of how much they were trying to pursue these policies than communist states.
Let's remember that.
But even in the cases where it is legalized...
But that came later, Haas.
You have to concede that that came later.
We're talking about the first ten years...
Yeah, but the thing is, they foresaw that when they looked at how many abortions were happening, they went, oh shit, this is not going to be good for the numbers that we need for the state that we want.
They didn't have any moral qualms with abortion itself.
There was nobody out there moralizing about the great evil of abortion.
inside of these communist nations.
Kolontide most certainly was not.
And many of the feminists, who I would consider to definitely be feminist thought leaders who worked alongside Stalin, were not.
They were doing everything, in fact, to promote abortion inside these communist nations.
I think that that is antithetic But who is promoting abortion?
I can give you a massive list, and you can also go to Occult Feminism.
My wife wrote it.
She gives an entire list.
But Kolontide is another one.
These people worked directly with the Soviets.
The Soviets definitely, well, before they were even really Soviets, as communism comes in, definitely abortion is something which was running rampant.
All over the place.
This is not an inherently communist thing.
This is just a modernity thing.
That wasn't that modern, right?
What do you mean by modernity?
Because many European countries had already laxed their abortion rights at that time.
This is not a uniquely communist thing at all.
Which ones?
I can't name them off the top of my head, so I could have seen that.
But look it up.
They had already legalized it in some of them.
Yeah, some of them, maybe, but the thing is, it's like, no, this was not considered a good thing at this time in history.
The communists themselves did not regard abortion ever as a good thing.
I would like one example where communists are promoting it as a good thing.
What was this year of time that you guys were talking about specifically about abortion being a thing?
He's trying to say that.
I mentioned how there's anti...
Oh, abortion was legal in the Soviet Union up till 31 or 30, I forget exactly.
That's all I want to know as a time for the audience to understand.
Neutrality on an issue like abortion is in and of itself an evil.
Saying I'm neutral to the murder of others is in and of itself an evil.
Listen, I... I respect your opinion.
I think there should be room for opinions like that, but it's not everyone's opinion.
You know, for the world.
For the world's majority.
Even in the strictest Islamic countries that have Sharia law, they still make exceptions where abortion can be allowed.
Even in the most extreme religious conservative countries in the world, they don't ban every kind of instance of abortion.
But regardless, I don't want to get into a debate about abortion.
But that wasn't what they were doing.
They weren't like, oh, the mother's life is in jeopardy.
Yes!
What did you think?
No, they were making an allowance for any case where a woman wanted to have one, they could have one.
They had nothing to do with the health of welfare.
Read their moral codes.
They had moral codes about how communists should behave.
And they shouldn't be promiscuous.
They shouldn't be sleeping around and doing whatever.
They promoted morality.
They weren't just telling everyone to...
And so the original point, though, is that we're talking about antisocial things like pornography and OnlyFans and prostitution and all these things.
I consider that to be an antisocial thing.
Right, but every communist state...
You said, well, communists promote things like that.
Every communist state totally cracked down, eliminated, and banned all of those things.
What?
Which things?
Pornography?
Prostitution, pornography, all this sex industry in general.
Yeah, sure.
The kind of tightness which was around there, but so did fascist states.
They did the exact same thing.
Fascist states will also clamp down on moral degeneracy.
This is not a point towards communism.
No, no, no.
Fascist states...
Fascist, I would say, fascist-occupied countries were hypocrites.
They would claim that, oh, we're against degeneracy, and they would target the degeneracy on a superficial level, but as far as the root causes of the degeneracy, they would leave a blind eye to it.
The Nazis, when they occupied Europe, they would establish institutionalized brothels where they would...
Yeah, yeah, I'm just telling you, they didn't...
Yeah, but you're moving the goalposts.
Hang on, hang on.
Saying, well, wait a second.
Yes, they did the exact same thing that the communists did by outlawing it.
They did.
You're just making the claim, oh, they weren't going after the root, which is capitalism.
Right, so they didn't eliminate it.
Failed to demonstrate, though, that capitalism itself was the root of the problem.
And the thing is, is like, look, they crack down on the same sorts of degeneracy inside of fascist states, and you don't need communism nor fascism to crack down on this.
This type of degeneracy comes from egalitarian principles.
It comes from equality principles.
It does not come from theological principles.
So is communism egalitarian?
I think, fundamentally, it proposes egalitarianism.
So why were communists so severely against moral and cultural degeneracy, then?
Because I think it wasn't in the interest of the state to pursue those things.
But I just gave you an instance where the ultimate degeneracy, which is murder in the womb, they definitely stayed completely neutral on that.
I think the sex industry is a much more fundamental evil than a case where some abortions are allowed.
I'd rather that there be prostitutions and dead babies.
I mean, again, I understand it's a contentious issue, and there's a lot of extremes.
For example, the United States, liberal states, had very extreme lax abortion law, right?
Where you can terminate at eight months and nine months.
Nowhere in the world was this...
I mean, it's unthinkable in liberal Europe.
It's unthinkable anywhere in the world.
I don't think this is an egalitarian issue.
It's a liberal problem.
Where they promote the most forms of egalitarianism they possibly can, under the idea, even surpassing equality to equity, saying, okay, equality's not even enough, has to be equitable, right?
Where now, if your box isn't big enough at the analogy, you've heard this, right?
If the box isn't big enough, we have to build you a bigger box.
You could look over the fence, too.
Let me ask you a question.
Why take them at face value?
They say, we want to have equity for all these oppressed minorities.
Why take them at face value?
I don't, but I don't take communists at face value.
Well, communists have results, and meanwhile, what Kamala Harris has is promising World War III, more funding for Israel, and more enriching of the capitalist class.
So, but here's the issue, right?
This talk of equity and stuff, is it not clear that this is just a way to stem the majority working class populist occurrence in your country?
If I'm constantly propping up minorities as a political tool, it's not that I want everyone to be equal or it's about egalitarianism.
It's just a political strategy to demoralize the working class majority.
You're absolutely right, but...
That being said, I can concede the point that this type of class warfare is being utilized on purpose to create division among individual people.
You and I both agree that that's true.
There's no dispute there.
But saying that communism, the answer to this, is to strip autonomous property rights, period.
Which is basically what your position reduces to.
Seems like you're really throwing the baby out with the backwater here.
I want to draw from the spirit of the Communist Manifesto, which is like, we don't want to strip the autonomous property rights of the individual because capitalism has already done this.
Capitalism has enslaved and immiserated this entire nation with debt such that even business owners...
And this is the quintessential example that we're told of free enterprise.
Majority of them are in debt.
They don't own everything.
They're in debt.
They have to pay mortgages.
They have to pay interest on the loans that they took out.
And how many of them are actually profitable?
Even the biggest corporations in this country.
Are in debt.
They are not autonomous.
Even the largest, most, you name them, Starbucks, McDonald's, whatever, they all are in debt, and it's ultimately the bankers and the financial institutions that control everything.
They're not really in debt.
They get obscene profits, and they report that they have a lot of debt, so they don't have to pay taxes.
That's true.
They're not in debt.
That's only true for the industries that collateralize.
That's most industries.
No, no, no.
The industries that collateralize the loans that creditors give out, this is oil, this is energy, and on that account, you're right.
This is what the oil industry does.
And going back to force doctrine, right?
Who gives a shit how much debt you have when you have the most powerful military on planet Earth with a navy that can say, oh, we'll just blow you up, fucker.
But who owns that military?
Well, the United States government owns it and deploys it.
But if the government is in debt and 50% of my income taxes are going to servicing the interest on the national debt, then our government is clearly occupied and controlled by the private interest.
By who?
By the private interest.
And who are they?
The international financial institutions, the bankers.
And who owns them?
That's the thing.
There's no individual that owns it.
It's an institution that is set aside and is the basis, the purport of this institution.
If you had to give a representation between a people group of who owns most of these banking institutions, who would it be?
You think it's the Jews?
I'm asking you.
I don't think it is.
I've looked up the numbers.
I've looked up the names.
I've studied this.
I've had my people study it.
We do not find any case where the ruling capitalist class is majority Jewish.
Now, is there over-representation relative to their population?
Of course, yes.
Is that because, though, Haas?
But there is no one ethnic group or ethnic or religious group.
I want to make sure I'm totally clear here.
Okay, real quick.
I just want to make sure I'm completely clear here.
Yeah.
I want to make sure that you're not being biased because Bolshevikism, which you believe in, Big C Communism, was conducted, orchestrated, and executed by Jews.
No, it wasn't.
It was.
I mean, okay.
Well, if it was conducted and orchestrated by Jews...
Why is it that only for two years, and not even two years, just like specific months within a year, was the Politburo even half Jewish?
For the all-round majority of the existence of the party, Jews were a minority at every level and at every rank of a position you can have.
So, when you take a whole, you take a whole of an organization...
Right.
You can have people who over-represent different key positions inside of an organization.
If they over-represent these key positions, they're still in positions of authority.
Over-representation doesn't imply control.
That's just relative to your population.
That's true, unless we have the positions of which they're in control.
Such as which?
Well, so, for instance, inside of a bank, right, you would look at who are the policy makers?
Yeah.
Inside of government, you would look at the same thing.
Who are the people who actually...
Right.
So in the Bolshevik Party, who controlled everything in the Bolshevik Party, then?
Who?
You tell me.
It wasn't Jews.
Well, who was it?
Well, okay, we have Stalin as the General Secretary.
He's not a Jew.
The major Jew is Lazar Kaganovich, who's the Commissar of Transportation, okay?
So that doesn't sound like having an office or an administrative position where you're like...
Controlling everything or controlling everyone.
All the main positions of executive control...
I mean, for a few years, you had an NKVD chief who was Jewish.
That was Yagoda, right?
After Yagoda, he gets purged, he gets shot, so clearly he wasn't...
What about Lenin?
Lenin wasn't Jewish.
Okay, what about Trotsky?
Trotsky was killed, okay, and he was kicked out in 1926.
Was he Jewish?
Trotsky was a Jew, but he was not a Bolshevik.
The thought leaders definitely were Jewish.
Give me the list.
I'll explain the history to you.
Trotsky, the Bolshevik party existed for decades.
That was Lenin, that was Stalin.
These were the OG Bolsheviks.
They were a group that stuck together, right?
Trotsky was never part of this group.
Trotsky latched onto the revolution at the last moment in 1917, and because of his pledging of support and enthusiasm, the Bolsheviks let this guy in.
Now, when all is said and done, the civil war is over.
Trotsky is trying to usurp power from the Bolsheviks.
Stalin has to come and say, you're not one of us.
You weren't an OG. You know, you weren't there with us in the very beginning.
So Trotsky wasn't a Bolshevik, and he was kicked out in 1926, shortly after the state itself was created.
So to say that Trotsky was a thought leader of the Bolsheviks, A, he's not even really a Bolshevik, B, he wasn't in all significant influence on the formation of the Soviet state, because he was kicked out in 1926.
Let me concede the point that it wasn't.
And then we'll fast forward to modernity, when you're trying to talk about these issues which communism is going to solve.
When you're asking about the same thing, who is in these key points?
Who is in these key demographics?
Who?
Who in terms of their ethnicity, or what do you mean?
Well, I'm asking...
The capitalist class.
Yeah, so who's in control of the means of production of information?
Let's start with that.
The banks.
It's really gonna come down to the financial institutions.
Let's talk about the media itself.
Same thing.
Okay.
No, there is no...
Is there any over-representation?
Yeah, yeah.
Look, there's so many different groups with over-representation, though.
Episcopalans have over-representation.
As a matter of fact...
Yeah, but if you look at a percentage which is narrow, the narrower the percentage gets, the more the over-representation becomes.
The reason I'm hesitant to focus that it's the Jews, the Jews, the Jews, because the majority of Jews...
Yeah, yeah.
But the majority of the Jews are not in power, and the majority of the people in power are not Jews.
Now, if there's a relationship of over-representation relative to their population, that's fine.
We could talk about that and what the causes of that are.
But over-representation doesn't prove they control it.
It just proves that they're over-represented.
That's it.
Yeah, but so what would be the proof that you control a thing?
The proof, it's in the very nature by which your power over the thing is executed, and it's all superficial.
There's a capitalist system in which all of the wealth...
We need to be super clear.
We need to be super clear.
I need to know, how do I know if you're in charge of a thing?
How do I know that?
You will know them by their fruits.
Right, you know them by their fruits.
Right, okay, so all we need is critical positions.
That's it.
The critical position, the decision-making, this type of thing.
Okay.
That's how you know who's in charge of a thing.
And the only consistent variable as far as how power has been executed and has been used, right, let's just talk about the last 50 years, is to enrich the capitalist class.
That's the only constant variable.
Is it to enrich the Jews?
Well, why are there all these poor Jews in New York that are dirt poor, that have literally nothing, that are Orthodox Jews?
Why are they literally broke, you know?
Why are there so many Jews that are broke?
It's clearly not for the benefit of...
By the way, nothing has been a bigger disaster for the Jews, if you ask me, than Israel itself.
Okay?
The Zionist project has been a total failure and a big disaster.
In whose interest was the Zionist project?
Yeah, but hang on.
Let's move back a little bit.
Yeah.
What the fuck would...
Oh, there's some poor Jews in New York have to do with anything that we're talking about when it comes to the key...
Because the only consistent variable, know them by their fruits, enriching the ruling financial class.
That's the only consistent variable.
Okay, so you can have poor people who are in New York, who are whatever ethnicity.
I still don't understand what that would have to do if you have an over-representation of certain groups in keyed-in positions.
Well, what are they doing in those positions?
On behalf of whose interests?
What are they using their power to do?
To enrich themselves.
There you go!
So that's the capitalist class.
It doesn't matter if they're Jewish, it doesn't matter if they're...
Yeah, I don't believe that if you were a communist that you couldn't do the exact same thing.
That you couldn't enrich yourself...
Show the examples, though.
...of communists enriching themselves?
Yes.
Did Stalin die poor?
Absolutely!
He died with nothing.
He died with a pipe, he died with his shirt and his suit, and I think he had one small cabin in the woods somewhere, and that's all he had.
Look it up!
He had nothing!
He had no bank accounts.
He had no wealth.
He literally had nothing.
He could just get whatever the hell he wanted when he wanted it.
What evidence is there that Stalin was living a luxurious life?
Even Khrushchev in his memoirs, Khrushchev would complain and say, Stalin, he's so hard on us.
This is in the 1930s.
He makes us eat porridge every night.
We're never able to eat nice food.
He makes us live austere, ascetic lives.
This is the nature and character of Stalin.
So what?
So he makes you eat forage?
This somehow means that he doesn't have complete and total unilateral control?
He clearly did.
Where is the proof that he is using power to aggrandize himself and...
You mean, the proof that Stalin is what?
He's utilizing the state's resources to enrich himself?
Yeah, where's the proof?
Yeah, he's in charge of the state.
Could he have whatever he wants when he wants it?
So, Stalin is someone who fully put himself in the service of his country and his people.
Fully.
Not even 1% was dedicated to himself.
Where is the evidence of that 1%?
I'm trying to be clear here.
What is it that you're asking me?
Was Stalin not the head of the state of Russia?
Yes.
Could Stalin get whatever the hell he wanted whenever he wanted it?
Could he?
I mean, could he abuse his powers?
You're saying maybe, but had he abused his power, there would have been consequences.
When you're in a position of total unilateral control, whatever your preferences are then...
He didn't.
Even the CIA released a memo in the 1950s that said it's a big myth that Stalin has total control.
He doesn't.
He's accountable to his party.
He's actually accountable to his party.
Unless he wanted to kill him.
He could only kill people in the party if he had a consensus of the party.
That's the thing.
It's not just that Stalin didn't like this guy he had him killed.
It's a big nonsense myth.
So Stalin, who is the unilateral leader, would you say that Kim Jong-un or Kim Jong-il, same thing?
Yes.
The problem is we have an information blackout because all we get from North Korea are bullshit stories, like Yanmi Park and all.
We have an information blackout.
The reason we know, as much as we know about Stalin's Soviet Union right now, is because when the Soviet Union collapsed, the archives opened up.
So we can actually look and see about how it was working and what was going on.
We have CIA stuff that was leaked, all this kind of stuff.
North Korea, there's not a lot of information, and the only information we do seem to be getting is bullshit, you know?
Yeah, but, well, so let's move back again.
When you're talking about North Korea, you say, okay, there's an information blackout.
What I'm asking you specifically, though, you say Stalin has never used his position of power to enrich himself.
Where's the evidence of that?
Yeah.
So, when he's in service to the people, what is he doing as part of this service?
What is it?
Leading them.
He does what a leader does.
What do you think a leader does on their day-to-day tasks?
I'm asking you.
What is Stalin doing here as the position of leader?
He is attending and overseeing the business of the state, making sure that the five-year plans are being executed correctly, attending and being sent.
He's literally reading the letters of ordinary people that are being sent on a regular basis to him.
He's actually reading these things and replying.
He's overseeing the people that are under and making sure that they're doing their job.
He's consulting with all the different departments of the state in order to make sure that everything...
And how many people died under his reign due to the massive famine which was caused...
The one in 32-33, where there was a combination of one of the biggest droughts in their history and there is proof that the Kulak class was destroying and burning grain as a form of political resistance.
That they were trying to reallocate and redistribute these supplies, and they were literally putting them in grain houses and in storage units and things like this.
They were rotting away because they were trying to distribute equally these types of supplies.
Listen, the famine was a disaster, but let's actually place things into context.
Real quick, guys.
We've been going 35 minutes on this topic, and I didn't want to stop anything because you guys were going...
But, you know what we'll do?
We'll take a quick break, and then I'll read some chats, and then we'll go back into this, and we'll talk about the famine and Stalin.
This is getting heated, man.
No, I mean, no, I didn't want to stop it.
Obviously, this is open discourse here, and doing time rounds would probably interrupt the flow.
So what I'll do is, this is like a good little point to put the bookmark in.
We're going to continue to talk about Stalin and, obviously, the famine.
What else do we got?
We got any chats here to read?
Yeah, we got chats and then that.
Okay, go ahead, Mo.
Do whatever you want to do first.
All right.
Go ahead, real quick.
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Alright, so I'll read some of these chats and we'll get back into it.
Was the Hold'em War a cynical, cyclical famine also, Haas?
Weird how the famine in China coincided while Mao mobilizing peasants to make big iron during the Great Leap Forward instead of growing food?
Okay, that will be addressed, I think, in this next conversation, right, brother?
Yeah, yeah, hopefully, yeah.
And then, thanks to both Andrew and Haas for this great debate and the Fresh and Fit host and crew for setting it up.
Communism is her on, bro.
Okay, let me go.
I just wonder what the chat thinks, who's winning this debate right now.
It's like split half and half.
It's going everywhere, but it's good discussion.
Hey guys, big fan while Andrew's out there.
Can you guys do a Money Monday with him on how to support a family on a low-income and or how to change policy in your local government?
If Andrew wants to do it, we can.
Sure.
WFNF, fresh updates, thank you.
And then Emmanuel goes, quick question, Haz.
Why did communism, if so great, lead to nearly 100 million deaths?
Why have you never thought critically about whether that's true or not?
Because I'll spoil it for you.
It's fake.
It's not true.
And then Godboy says Gorilla's in control.
Okay.
Anything else?
Alright, cool.
So we will go ahead and turn it back.
Do you guys need anything to drink or anything?
I'm good, yeah.
You sure?
I'm ready to keep going.
You guys just want to keep going free dialogue or you want to put a timer on the clock?
I'm cool with it.
Free dialogue is okay with you guys.
Because you guys are actually respectful and you guys are able to answer each other questions and keep going.
I do want to get into, and I've been kind of fleshing this out, pulling out the dialogue so I understand exactly what your position is.
I'd finally like to get into the moral position of communism.
But not the famine?
Because I kind of want to...
Yeah, we can get to that.
Can we start with the moral position of communism?
And then we can dive into the famine portion.
That's where we left off with the fanning, but wherever you guys want to start.
Yeah, I'm cool with the morals.
I want to make sure that we don't bypass it because it's an elongated conversation.
I'm going to start the timer anyway, just so I know it, but you guys go ahead.
Take it away.
Yeah, so my biggest issue here is the reconciliation.
So I'll concede a few points.
There's no doubt that Haas knows far more about communism and communist history than me.
He should, right?
He's not an orthodox apologist, for instance, nor...
So I expect that he knows inside of his domain more than I do about X thing.
But it still has to, from his view, logically add up to two things.
One, the practical application, which I can concede even there could be some practicality to communism.
But I need to know the moral implication.
And this is what we're diving into, is the moral implication.
And I need to know what you're basing this on, other than your own intuition.
And if there is something external to your own intuition, and why we should follow it...
I would say, and I'm going to posit this, that people themselves need to have something which is higher than them to move towards.
I think that you would say the same thing with the state, right?
History.
But when it comes to decadence, right, how is communism preventing this except with the barrel of a gun versus argumentation and the ethics around argumentation that you find from religion and theology?
And I'd like to dive into the moral discussion of that.
You know, I think, yeah, it's a good question.
I think that, you know, I reject the separation of morality from the other spheres of the division of labor, so to speak.
I think that a human existence, inclusive of its economic reality, inclusive of its social and political reality, and its historical reality, is infused with the moral.
The moral has significance for every historical era, for every historical situation we find ourselves in.
So, for example, we don't have to get into the conflict itself, but just an example, you can disagree.
I think, for example, the question of morality for a Palestinian, it's not a question of propositional logic.
It's not a question of reasoning.
It is based in a concrete historical circumstance in which their people are being occupied by a foreign aggressor, and it is...
Yes, maybe it's a matter of intuition, but it's the clear moral path, which is to resist, right?
So, history is riddled with situations like this.
I would argue that every instance of the emergence of prophets, biblical prophets historically, they're giving people a message, but the message is not being justified to them on the basis of propositional logic.
It's not being justified on the basis of...
A rational authority.
It makes sense in the time that it's in, and people heed the call because they receive it as something that's making sense of the injustice of the era they're living in.
There's many things here which would make sense even in this situation, which could be superior to picking a side.
For instance, why do I care if Jews and Palestinians kill each other?
Fuck them, right?
What do I care?
Yeah, but if you were a Palestinian, you would regard it as the moral thing to resist, no?
Or if I was a Jew, I would regard it as the moral thing to exterminate the Palestinians, right?
But what kind of morals would you have?
I think as Stalin...
But this is why I'm asking for kind of the epistemology here.
I'm not asking for anything too precise.
Yeah.
Right?
Kind of the general idea.
I don't actually understand what the moral proposition of communism is, and Hegel certainly is not offering one.
Okay.
So what is it?
What is the morality of communism?
I think, you know, look, I don't want to...
I'm not dodging the question.
This is a direct response.
Putin said that the moral code for communist builders was a document the Communist Party of the Soviet Union released precisely to answer this question.
He says it's the same thing as the Bible.
It's the same thing.
It's not the same thing.
Well...
In my view, the morality of the communists is not a morality separated from the one that is actually ingratiated and is based in the historical existence of the people through the Bible, through the Quran, through the Confucianism in China, for example.
The communists were killing the Christians.
They weren't elevating them.
Communism, we can get into that, but communism doesn't propose creating a morality from scratch.
We regard the real moral sensibilities of the people as they actually exist, as they've been inherited and passed down by generations.
What are those moral?
Like, what is the moral thing we should be moving towards?
That question is a descriptive question.
It's not a propositional one.
It's not what should it be.
It's what is it.
It's a question of analysis.
So, for example, we can say the morality...
It's also a question of the analysis of...
Hang on, hang on.
I'm sorry.
I don't mean to cut in.
I want to clarify, though.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's a descriptor, that's true, but we're looking at an is and an ought here, all the same.
So you say, okay, we can adopt to the description of whatever the morality is...
Clearly you're not going to adopt the prescription of the morality of putting someone on a pyramid, cutting out their heart, holding it up to the sun god.
You would say, no, we're not doing that.
But human beings did do that for a long period of history.
Yeah, but that doesn't mean communism would endorse that.
No, absolutely not.
So it's moving towards some moral something.
Because communism is not something that is separating itself from the development of history.
It's the culmination of history.
We're not here to reject the Bible and reject the religious traditions of the people.
What is your grounding to say you can't take them on top of pyramids and cut their hearts out?
Why does there need to be a grounding for that?
And by grounding, by the way, you're talking about propositional logic.
You're talking about something that is basically the self-consistency of a concept.
Well, we do need to know why we're moving towards something.
The foundation of morality does not lie in logic.
The foundation of morality lies in existence.
It lies in the real existence of people struggling to make sense of that existence in relation not only to themselves, but toward others and toward the natural world.
Let's back up a little bit.
Yes, I will agree that there's something far more expressive about what morality is than propositional logic or logic of any kind can really ever express.
The external that you're talking about.
But you should still be able to give me a general idea of what it is communism, the moral descriptions of communism, are moving towards.
So in Christianity, for instance, let me give you the example.
Inside of your worldview, isn't it true that you believe that it's material conditions, right, which set what men will do, not some sort of ontology which is the man which sets what they will do?
Materialism is not about a single directional cause and effect.
What man is doing is a material reality.
It's not that the material reality is the cause of his actions.
The context by which his actions are suspended in a way that reproduces his real existence is a material existence.
So if this was a video game called Communism, the game, what's the win condition?
What do you mean?
So if you have a video game, let's say you have World of Warcraft, it's going to have its own economy, it's going to have its own player base, it's going to have its own everything, right?
It's not reality, but it's like a demi-reflection of reality, right?
So, inside of the game, there's going to be a victory condition, right?
The victory condition is, you know, kill this bad guy, right?
Ah, you beat the game.
So, what is communism's answer to beating the game?
So, the Christian answer is theosis.
That's how you win.
You beat the game, you become more like Christ, you enter into theosis.
This is our objective.
Hang on, hang on.
What we're moving towards.
This is what we want.
Theosis.
That's the victory condition.
What's the victory condition side of communism?
What is it?
What is the thing that we're moving towards so we know we beat the game?
You know, broadly, I would say the overall development of the productive forces and the prosperity and well-being of mankind.
And how do we know that that is the moral thing to move towards?
Probably in terms of population growth and the growth of wealth.
So, the growth of wealth?
The growth of wealth and the growth of human beings.
For the nation or for the individual?
For the people, not just for the individual.
Of course, not just for the individual.
And how is it that you, Haas, describe what is a wealthy person?
What is wealth to an individual?
Is it money?
Is that what you're talking about?
Material conditions?
I think it can be recorded objectively.
I mean, by wealth, I'm not just talking about luxury, I'm talking about the necessities of people to exist.
So the growth of a population, for example, can clearly be an indication that there's an expansion of wealth.
It can be, but the poorest people also populate the most now.
And they could not survive relative to...
They survive better often than the rich who abort their kids, and the middle class who abort their kids.
But if it was not for at least a relative degree of the expansion of the overall productive forces in material wealth, they would not be able to survive.
The poor seem to survive better than the rich do.
Then why weren't there 8 billion people in 1800?
Well, so, you have, and by the way, we're about to go way less than 8 billion people now.
Sure.
And there's never been more wealth.
But in 1800, we couldn't...
Hang on, hang on.
There's never been more wealth produced...
I agree.
...on planet Earth.
So, hang on.
In 1800, we couldn't support that amount.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
That's the question.
You have just contradicted yourself.
How could it possibly be that we have now produced more wealth on planet Earth than ever before, but we're moving into a birthrate crisis like we've never seen before?
There's no possible way that we're going to be able to reproduce at 8 billion long term.
That's fine.
No projection is saving that.
But in 1800, 8 billion people could not exist on Earth.
Because the material wealth and the productive forces in technology wasn't to advance to a sufficient degree to support them.
There's also an issue of it takes X amount of generations to reproduce X amount of people.
We don't know exactly when the starting point was.
How long do you think human beings have been around?
I don't know.
Neither do you.
No, I don't.
I'm just saying, like, do you think it's at least...
I have no idea.
Is it at least thousands of years?
Yeah, thousands, sure.
Okay, so there's thousands of years, okay, and we can clearly...
Do you think that we're recording the population accurately, or maybe like in ancient Egypt, there was like billions of people...
No, I don't think there was billions of people in ancient Egypt, but that makes my point not yours.
I think that there's a clear case in which we can see the expansion of the growth of the population globally, you know, corresponds, at least, if it's not absolute, it's a rough general tendency that this is...
This is because of the expansion.
Hang on, I'm not going to let you evade this.
You didn't really answer the question of how you reconcile this contradiction of saying, well, wait a second, it really takes a lot of wealth for this expansion to happen, and then you say we're creating more wealth than we ever have before, but this expansion of population is not happening.
In fact, it's going the other way.
Well, okay, I think there's two different arguments.
I'm not...
I'm not necessarily saying that growing wealth will inevitably, under all circumstances, expand the population.
I'm just saying...
Because materialism is not the goal, right?
Hold on.
That's not...
I'm saying it's a necessary prerequisite for it to be possible, though.
I'm saying that I don't think so.
I think that the people being born itself...
People need to eat.
They need to eat.
They need food.
But necessarily additional labor is going to create additional food.
That's what the population bomb was all about.
The population bomb had the same ideology that you do.
Oh, hey, there's too many fucking people.
Too many mouths to feed.
I'm not saying that.
I'm not saying that.
I don't know why.
Listen, listen.
I'm actually saying we should have more people on Earth, okay?
Yeah.
My point though is that in order to have more people, you need to be able to support them through developing the productive forces.
Yeah, but just having more people is going to necessarily do that.
It necessarily adds to labor.
Even if we...
I don't know if that's exactly true.
How could it not be true?
Because it's not just labor, because there's finite resources, but when you increase the methods of production with the same amount of resources, you can actually yield more.
Yeah, that's going to require labor.
Yeah, but labor alone is not enough, I think.
I think it's clear that...
What else could...
I mean, yeah, the resources are everywhere.
Here's the problem, right?
We have a steady rate of population growth for thousands and thousands of years, right?
Thousands and thousands of years, right?
In some areas, yeah.
Okay, and then in the last 200 years, it's like, wow!
It's like all the way going up.
In the last 200 years, it's gone the opposite.
So from the year 1800 to right now, I'll pull up a graph right now and show you.
It's literally done this.
The birth rates have dropped and dove out like nothing you can even imagine.
Wait, so the population has decreased significantly in the last 200 years?
Going to.
So you're going to see the zenith of this.
But I'm not talking about what it's going to.
I'm talking about what has happened as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution.
Yeah, I'm saying that the birth rates in the West have sunk like this, even though they're producing the most material wealth.
Because we utilize immigration coming in to bolster our numbers doesn't mean shit.
We're bringing into the tune of one million immigrants per year.
Let's say I concede the point that in the foreseeable future, the population numbers we have now are not going to be sustainable.
What does that have to do with the fact that the only real...
I mean, how do you explain why in such a rapid period of time the population has grown as significantly as it has?
Because it has land to expand.
What?
Because what?
Because of land to expand.
So, for instance, let's take the United States, for instance.
Population density has nothing to do with it, because most of the land on Earth is not dense, populated densely.
Yes, so you can expand into it.
So technology assists.
There has never been a deficiency of land.
Technology assists with that, yes, but you have to have people.
People are the ones who drive technology.
But there has never been, there was not a shortage of land 3,000 years ago.
There was a shortage of people.
Every single human being can fit.
In Texas with a homestead.
There's not a shortage of land on Earth.
There was a shortage of people.
Why was that?
Because you have to hit a zenith snowball effect forward for reproduction, just like you have to...
I'm going to explain it, Oz.
Give me a second.
What causes that, though?
I'm going to explain it.
it there can be a multitude yeah of uh of different things which can cause this there can be religious puritanism that can assist with uh reducing population hang on there can also be uh wars which assist with negating population and there can be a lack of expansion but what i'm saying is is that you have to have x amount of people constantly reproducing you have to everybody has to have be able to replace at least themselves And somebody else, right?
You have to be able to replace at least you.
Most people were not even able to do that.
I just want to clearly understand something.
You agree that we've been around for thousands of years.
So, for a short period of that time, the population has exploded, yes?
Well, it's all throughout history there's been times where that's happened.
It hasn't been a steady rate of growth.
You can look at the chart.
I didn't say it was.
Within a short period of time, relative to when we've existed.
It just happened multiple times.
This is what I'm saying.
Do you think that there was a point in human history before where there were this many people, or what?
I'm not saying that, but that doesn't logically make sense.
I think that it's clear that the main cause of population growth, as far as the modern period, Has been the development of the productive forces and industrialization.
I think that's pretty obvious.
I'm not disputing that technology has assisted with this.
What I'm saying is that the thing which makes the technology possible is the people element.
It's the human element.
Humans have been around for thousands of years.
Why is it only until recently?
Because you still have to have X amount of numbers who can run the production of this technology in order to continue this bloodline going.
You have We have to have that.
But why is it only recently that the population exploded?
It's not recent.
There's been many times in history where there's been explosions of population.
Relative to the 8 billion people that are on Earth right now, yes, it was recent.
No, okay, but you know what else?
If in 4000 BC... When you're eliminating half of your population like you're doing in China, where you go, oh, we have too many people, we're just going to start drowning them, right?
When did they do that?
You can curtail, oh, the one-child policy in China?
Yeah.
How did they eliminate half of their population, though?
They're slated by 2050 to have eliminated half of the population via birth rate.
I've seen different statistics on that, so I'm not going to really get into it.
No, I think we need to get into it.
By 2050, 2060...
I've seen by 2100 it's going to decrease to 1 billion.
I've seen that.
I haven't seen the extreme numbers that you're talking about anywhere.
They're slated, okay.
2050, half the population, that's crazy.
Let me ask you a question.
In South Korea right now, do you know what the birth rate is?
Low.
Very low.
Do you know what it is?
Not exactly.
It's 0.7.
Yeah.
And it's slated to go to 0.5.
Yeah.
Okay.
Is that culture doomed, Haas?
It's a crisis.
It's an existential crisis.
If they don't find a way to fix it, then yeah.
Well, could you hit the point of no return?
Where, in just one generation, you just don't have enough people.
I think, look, I want to get back to this point, though.
I'm in this point.
Wait, wait, I want to get back to this point.
I'm in the point.
Hang on, hang on.
We'll get back to it, but I need to finish my inquiry here.
Yeah.
Okay?
They're doomed.
If you get underneath a certain threshold in your birth rates, your population is doomed.
Listen, Andrew, I am ready to accept that, but we need to get back to the point, which is that if you don't expand the material wealth through modern industrialization and so on and so on, it's not even possible to expand the population.
But humans have been around for thousands of years, so why is it only recently that it exploded?
I don't understand why you keep making my point.
It exploded to 8 billion people only recently, okay?
For thousands of years, we have never gotten the rate of growth that we have since the rise of industrialization.
That's because we didn't have aircraft travel and mass land travel and steamboats and steam engines and all of those things.
And I wonder what contributes to the possibility of these things.
It's the expansion of the productive forces.
All it takes is one technological marvel to open up possibilities.
So, for instance, okay, if we invented a spaceship that took us to Mars...
Tomorrow.
Okay?
And we could have viable life on Mars.
Do you think the population of Mars would fucking explode?
Okay, so you agree it's technology then, right?
Hang on, hang on.
That's my question.
If we had a spaceship to go to Mars...
If you had a spaceship that would go to Mars...
Yeah.
...and you landed on Mars, right, would the population there on Mars explode?
Yeah, sure.
Absolutely it would, right?
Yeah.
So you can have one technological marvel...
But we can't even do that.
...which can complete this...
So what are the factors that contribute to that?
...but it takes the human element to go to Mars, thus expanding the labor pool on Mars.
Human element by itself has no explanatory value.
I'm being more specific about the nature of that human element.
I think it does.
I think the human element itself is the pinnacle of the value.
Once again, human beings have been around for thousands of years, and only recently, okay...
Have we seen the explosion in the population relative to every other point in history?
Yeah, but that's the Mars argument I just made.
Sure, absolutely.
They've been around for thousands of years, but the second they can make a rocket ship to Mars, now the Martian population explodes!
What about the human element, and this has to have explanatory value, is necessary for population growth that we've seen?
What about the human element needs to be there?
It can work.
It can work.
So human beings have not been working for thousands of years until recently?
I didn't say that.
So what needs to be there?
What's the decisive thing?
The human being.
Because absent the human being, you can't expand.
Right, but human beings have been around for a long time.
So what's the decisive thing for the past few hundred years?
They weren't around.
I don't understand your argument, Horace.
I think, just to bring it back to the whole topic at hand, I think both of you are obviously correct.
You're talking more about technology.
He's talking about the human element, which creates the technology, but both need to be there.
I'm presupposing the human element.
I'm not denying it.
That's a given to me, right?
But I'm just saying, let's be more specific.
Maybe you can make the argument about which one matters more, which I think is what this argument is going down.
But the human element is not in question right now.
It's not called into question.
I think it was in question.
Why?
Because you questioned it.
You said, no, it's an expansion.
I don't understand this misunderstanding.
Okay.
I'm not calling into question the human element.
I'm calling into question the idea that industrialization is somehow not the decisive thing relative to the thousands.
We're presupposing we've always been human beings.
Okay?
It's not like we were sheep 500 years ago.
The human being thing, it's like it's taken for granted.
All right?
Yeah.
But specifically, right, the past few hundred years, something new happened, right?
Which is what we call industrialization.
I'm not disagreeing with the technological element, though.
I think the big thing here is that both of you are correct.
I think just going back to the...
Because we got in a kind of little bit of a circle there with the whole industrialization versus human concept of creating said industrialization.
What about, I guess...
So hang on, hang on.
I think I can make this easy, right?
Yeah.
I think I can make this easy.
Because this is, remember, the corruption of the United States.
Human beings can't exist absent technology.
Technology cannot exist absent humanity.
Okay.
Do you agree?
Yeah.
Then that would mean, definitionally, that the human element is the most necessary element for the expansion of humanity.
Who's calling that into question?
I'm not saying we should mutate into a different species.
Yeah, but you're saying because there was a technological advance.
Yeah.
Okay, which nobody disputed that a technological advance couldn't lead to more of a population increase.
Nobody's stating that that is not the case.
What I'm stating is that the necessity of the human element is what allows that to happen.
That's all.
Now, let's presuppose the necessity of the human element, because again, I'm not arguing people were sheep 500 years ago.
We've always been human.
Now, what...
Okay, I don't know why this is so confusing for you.
Why specifically, over the course of the past few hundred years, did we see the dramatic explosion of the population that we have?
Specifically.
In a way that has explanatory value, such that it happened at this moment, not 7,000 years ago, but at this moment.
Because there was technological advancement.
Sure.
Okay.
So industrialization and the development of the productive forces, which is what I said.
Well, no.
See, there's kind of an insertion of language here, which is why I didn't want the commie speak, but we're going to have to get into commie speak.
When you say the explosion of the productive forces.
Right.
So I think that you can have technology which actually pulls back productive forces in such a way where it makes labor far more simple.
That's why I say productive forces rather than just technology, because productive forces also refers to the way human beings are organized and their social relations.
But human beings are the pinnacle of that technology, then.
That was my whole point.
What do we disagree about then?
I said the goal of communism is to expand the productive forces and the overall wealth and prosperity and happiness of the people.
Yeah, but it's going to take the people to do that.
I guess that was what our hang-up is.
I agree.
Yeah, but you didn't agree a few minutes ago.
A few minutes ago, you were so worried about the idea of a technological advancement.
Here's the issue, though.
You were trying to say that...
You were saying, okay, so what are ways in which you can measure the development of the productive forces?
And I said, one of the ways you can measure it is the expansion of the growth of the population and the material wealth.
And then you said, well, hold on, wait a minute.
Um...
You seem to call into question the relationship between those two things.
Yeah, but here's why.
Again, so I've already reconciled this and showed that you're giving a contradictory position, not myself.
So here's a contradictory position.
Materialism itself can be self-defeating to humanity.
The poorest on planet Earth are those who reproduce the most.
Okay, but this is why we got into this argument, because I'm trying to explain to you that they're poor relative to us today, but compared to 7,000 years ago, the only reason they're able to survive and live is because we have more wealth than we did 7,000 years ago.
Yeah, but, okay.
We can support, I told you, we can support 8 billion people today.
We couldn't do that in 1700.
Okay, prove it.
Why didn't we have 8 billion people in 1700?
That's not proof.
That's the question.
So you think 8 billion...
No, no, no.
Don't ask me a question.
Yeah.
Give me the proof.
I think the proof that we couldn't support 8 billion people in 1700 because we didn't have the productive forces to produce enough.
Oh, so the thing...
So...
Oh, I'm sorry.
What productive thing do you think was necessary to support 8 billion people in 1700?
Things like the Green Revolution, where we revolutionize agricultural methods to yield outputs that are not even conceivable in 1700?
Saying that technology has advanced and is better than it was in 1700 is not a dispute.
You're not getting away with this.
I need the proofs that in the year 1700, there could not have been 8 billion people on planet Earth.
I need the actual evidence for that, Haas.
I mean, look, I have to concede there is no way for me to give you absolute proof because it's like proving a negative.
So you have no proof?
I have no absolute proof.
Then why do you make the assertion if you have no proof for it?
Because I think it's fair to infer we couldn't support 8 billion people in 7 billion...
Based on what?
Because...
The growth of the population reliably seemed to correspond to being able to yield more outputs in agriculture and material wealth and goods that are necessary for people to survive.
That's completely speculative.
Andrew, you tried to say earlier that the fundamental factor is actually just more labor.
More people.
Yeah, more people.
But we've had the capacity to grow the supply of people for a very long time.
It's only when we added the factor of industrial modernization that that seemed to compound in the explosive population growth that we've seen in the past few hundred years.
Yeah, but correlation is not causation.
And this is why you would need to demonstrate that in the year 1700, we could not have supported 8 billion people.
What about the technology could not have supported 8 billion people?
You don't think medicine was important or anything?
I think that when I look back in history, after you got out of, I think it was about three, you lived about as long as you do now.
Okay, so the medicine wasn't a decisive factor to support more people?
I think that it's helpful, right?
But I would also make the counter-argument that medicine can also be very detrimental.
That obesity, all of these different things.
What about more intensive agricultural methods that allowed us to have with the same amount of land?
None of this is a demonstration, though, that in the year 1700, there couldn't have been 8 billion people who lived comfortably on planet Earth.
Where is the proof that you have?
No, no, no.
It's not my assertion.
It's yours.
You can't put the burden of proof on me.
So I want to know where you stand on this.
That's why.
So in 1700, I suspect that they didn't have the agricultural methods to feed 8 billion people in 1700.
Okay, so what are the requirements for these agricultural methods?
The argument started at 1800, but, I mean, it's fine.
Yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever.
Yeah, whatever.
Again, it's a combination of the increase of technology, as you put it, and the relations of production organized in such a way that frees up the means of production from their, you know...
Real quick, guys, I think we've kind of, like, hit a standstill here, because, like, you guys are both actually correct, and I feel like, just from listening to this, you guys are kind of talking past each other, because both of you are 100% correct.
I'm not sure we are.
Thanks to the famine.
We'll never know.
You're arguing more along the lines of, hey, it's people and population, and then you're arguing more it's technology, because there's been people forever.
But going back to the whole situation, because we were talking about the famine originally, and then communism versus, I guess, capitalism.
Can we go back to that?
Just going back to that whole topic.
I think we left off when we were on that conversation on famine.
You guys discussed morality, and then we went into this whole thing with technology.
I think your turn for famine now.
I feel like we didn't really get into the morality very much, but that's fair.
I'm fine getting into that, too.
I would like to finish that up.
Who wants to kick it off with the morality, then?
So, how does Christianity fit into communism, Hoskins?
I think that communism has always presupposed, even if it's unconsciously and not explicitly, Christianity and their biblical traditions.
I think even Stalin, who is kind of a vowed atheist for a large period of his life, was, when he was giving speeches to the Bolshevik Congress, quoting the Bible all the time, you know, to make his points.
So, if you had a church, let's say the Orthodox Church, the Christian Orthodox Church, who says communism is anathematized by the Orthodox Church, You mean Patriarch Tekin's anathema against the Bolsheviks in 1918?
Oh, no, no.
There's a current status, even now, that all communism is anathematized.
When was the date for that?
When they anathematized it?
Now, I know that in Catholicism, I think they can't reverse the anathemas, but in Orthodoxy, is it not possible that through confession and through apology, the Church can decide to reverse them?
Maybe perhaps individually.
The church could collectively, I guess, have an ecumenical council or something like this, or they could reverse this.
But hang on, the question still logically stands.
If Christianity itself rejects communism, will communism impose itself on Christianity?
I think it's a simplification and misunderstanding of...
To the extent of my knowledge, how the Orthodox Church works, that there's no active relation...
And discussion about church decisions.
It's just infallible, and that's all Christianity could ever be.
Whereas, it seems to me, from what I can observe in Orthodox Christianity, at least there's lively debates, there's discussions, there's people who disagree with these decisions, right?
And they're not necessarily...
There are certain things that are binding and unquestionable, like the seven councils or whatever, but...
But decisions like this, I mean, look, in Russia, the overall majority of the second largest party in Russia is the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.
They're Orthodox believers.
I mean, do you think that they're just stupid?
That, oh, okay, they don't understand that they can't take inventory of the fact that there's been difficult relationships in the past between communism and the church?
To what the Orthodox Church and their policies are.
But the majority of the...
Their job inside of Russia...
The majority of the people in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation are Orthodox believers.
So what?
What do you mean so what?
You can be inside of the Federation, that does not mean that you yourself are in support of Communism.
No, I'm not saying the Orthodox Church officially supports communism.
No, it doesn't.
So the thing is, again, what do you do if you're anathematized by the church?
They say, we reject communism.
We don't want it.
Will communism impose itself?
First of all, I can get into that in a second, but just to be clear, it doesn't mean that every communist is anathematized.
Doesn't mean every member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is anathematized and can't participate in the Church, because I know that's not true, because Zhiyuganov, who's the leader, meets with Church officials and participates in the faith.
So it's not true that individual...
Can he take the Eucharist?
He's a baptized Orthodox Christian.
Yeah, that doesn't matter.
Can he take the Eucharist, right?
I'm not concerned about these details, but I see no reason why he wouldn't be able to.
Well, it's important because then we would know that he can participate.
Now, regarding the relationship between communism and Christianity, look, I think it was off to a bad start, so to speak.
I think that there was a lot of misunderstanding and difficulty in the history.
And my goal as a communist, when it comes to all of the major traditional religions on Earth, is to mend that banned relationship.
This is a This is literally the official position of the Communist Party, the Russian Federation.
Work closely together in a new alliance between the believers and the communists to work on common goals and hopefully in the future we can come to a better understanding with one another and the church can be open to communists more and then communists can be open to the church more.
This is my official position to you about my understanding of the relationship between communism and Christianity.
Yeah, but I need this question to actually answer the one that I'm asking.
Sure.
If the Orthodox Church rejects communism...
Now, for now they do.
Yes, for now.
Yeah.
Will the communists impose their will, if they can, and make the Orthodox comply with communism or not?
No, no.
Well, for example, when the Bolsheviks made the Orthodox Church comply, how is that different than when the Tsars controlled the Orthodox Church?
Which Tsars?
The Romanov Dynasty, for example, which abolished the Patriarchate.
Yeah, what does that have to do with anything?
You're saying, hang on, you're saying, what about them?
The Church is receptive to political circumstances.
That's a fact of history.
So it can be so.
Yeah, it can be so.
Hang on, it can be so that the Orthodox Church, the Patriarchs could, I guess, come together and say, it's not anathematized tomorrow.
That really has nothing to do with my question.
Yeah.
Right?
So you're entering into the logical possibility of thing X being true.
I'm agreeing.
I guess, logically, it could be so.
If the church...
My question specifically, the church says, no fucking communism, we don't want it.
Yeah.
And the communists are able to seize political power.
Yeah.
Are you gonna make them comply or not, Haas?
No, I think they should have religious freedom.
No, no, no.
They don't want to comply at all with whatever communism.
They have their own ecclesiastical authority.
What does that look like in practice?
Their ecclesiastical authority has been in practice.
So they have religious freedom, and they don't have to agree with communism, and they can continue carrying out their religion as they want to.
That's my view.
Okay, so what if they're preaching against the state?
Then they would be treated like any other enemy of the state.
Yeah, right.
Damn!
So then, just to make sure we got this clear, if they're anathematized, okay, in communism, you say, nope, you're going to have freedom of religion as long as the thing...
Christianity itself preaches compliance with the law.
I just want to make sure that I got this right.
If the Orthodox Church itself says, no, we don't want communism, and they publicly state this, they need to be treated as enemies of the state, correct?
In a wartime scenario, absolutely, in a peacetime condition.
You know, people can challenge the state, they can disagree with it, but I don't know what you're getting at here.
What are you trying to get at?
What I'm trying to get at is you will, if possible, the religious aspect of Christianity, which you claim is recognized by communists like yourself.
I recognize it.
It's definitely something which I think that Marx is preaching towards, that we're moving towards.
You just got done saying that if the pinnacle of the original Christian church says, no, we don't want communism, they're the enemy of the state by your own lips.
Anyone who takes up arms and fights...
I didn't say take up arms.
Okay, so what are you talking about?
I said if they speak out and say, we do not want communism, and they preach against the state, they are out in the streets preaching against the state.
Does that mean they're telling people to rise up and overthrow it?
They're telling people that they don't want communism.
They're telling people that they need to say no to communism.
Well, I would hope that communists, you know, hope to change their mind.
I don't know what to tell you.
Because my understanding of Christianity is that it's about following the spirit of the law.
It's not the dead letter of the law.
Christianity is based on a specific tradition, which is about certain principles of justice and fairness and even social justice.
Yes, you can ask the Orthodox Church in Russia if they think that.
Because it's happened.
Unless the Christian church had become so corrupt that it's only a Christian church in name, I don't foresee that happening.
Yeah, but this has happened.
What do you mean it's happened already in communist nations?
Has there ever been cases?
They've been persecuted in communist nations.
They've also been persecuted under the Romanovs and under the Tsar.
He abolished the Patriarchate.
Yeah, so the thing is, that's a whataboutism.
No, it's not.
It's a real historical example.
Saying, saying, but wait, this other thing also happened is not answering to this question of communists.
No matter what the political system is, no matter what country it is, all religious authorities are going to be bound by the political circumstances.
Name me a single exception to this.
Whether or not that's true...
Name an exception.
Of what?
Of which thing?
Of religious authorities and establishments not being beholden to the political circumstances of where they were then.
I'm sure that all of them would be beholden to it.
Yes.
However, there's a different way of reacting to that by certain political ideologies, which does not include you're an enemy of the state because you say, I don't want communism.
That's what you just said they would be, an enemy of the state.
All right, look, look, look.
You can say you don't want communism, that's fine, but if people are struggling and giving their lives and shedding their blood to make their country sovereign and free and take back their factories and their land so they're not slaves anymore, nobody is going to get in the way of that.
Yeah, but if you are going to say that the martyrs who are orthodox, who are struggling against communist yoke of suppressing the spirit, are saying, no, we'll be martyred for this, you communists are not going to get in the way of that.
What do you mean?
Yeah, but I am here to deny communism.
I understand that.
And I believe for 100% that you just outed yourself and said they would be under my circumstances the enemy of the state if they spoke out against communism.
Alright, let me ask you a question.
I'm guilty as charged as far as that's concerned.
Let's say, since this is such a strange, abstract, hypothetical scenario, let me counterpose one to you as well.
What if we end up in a scenario where the Orthodox Church comes out and says they want child pornography legalized?
Are you with it?
That would be against the nature of the Church.
No, no, no, are you with it?
No, of course not, but that would be a demonic act.
Who are you to say that?
Well, so I believe that 100% the gates of hell will never succeed against the Orthodox Church.
If you do something which violates the nature, it would no longer be orthodoxy.
It would still be communism.
It's the same thing with me as far as communism.
No, it would still be communism.
I don't believe the gates of hell will prevail.
You just said it would be the enemy of the state.
They would be the enemy of the state and treated as such.
So you believe it's impossible that the Orthodox Church could ever make a mistake, so you believe they're infallible?
I didn't say that.
That's a literal contradiction of church doctrine.
They didn't say that they were infallible.
So is there any scenario in which the Orthodox Church, in your mind, could make a wrong decision that you would oppose?
Of course, but you're the one postulating that this decision, they would be treated as the enemy of the state for rejection of communism.
What does that entail?
Do they go to prison, Haas?
Do they get shot?
Would you put them up against the wall and put a bullet in their head, Haas?
What you don't understand is that you're talking about the Russian Civil War.
You're talking about a very extreme, different harsh time.
I'm asking you right now.
No!
The answer is no!
They wouldn't go to jail.
So what happens to them?
Nothing!
Nothing.
So, inside of your...
Why are you being so dramatic and acting like there's some urgency to the situation, like I'm about to seize power and kill all these clergymen?
Assuming that you were about to seize power...
No.
If the Russian...
No, I would be the best.
If Haas was about to seize power, he was about to be the new Stalin, you have the right mustache, and the Orthodox Church opposed you, did it get put to the sword, Haas?
No.
If they oppose me just peacefully, no.
Let them live.
What does that mean, peacefully?
Don't bomb my army.
Don't bomb my government.
Don't attack us with guns.
What if they just tell everybody, look, communism is bad and advocate against you?
Okay, I'm fine with that.
I'm fine with that.
Let them...
I don't understand that.
It's kind of ridiculous, though.
Like, what are you talking about?
We'll go to a quick break, and then we'll continue on here.
Go ahead, Mo.
You had some?
Actually, we got Jackson Hinkle in the house as well.
He sent in a chat that he wants me to read.
Go ahead, bathroom break, whatever you guys need.
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Let's hit some of these chats real fast.
All right.
We got Patriarch Tacon revoked his anathema in 1923, and Patriarch Kirill blessed the KPRF today.
Honestly, I don't mean to butt in, but that's the crazy thing to me.
It's such a non-issue, because you look at Russia today, and the communists and the church are close.
So this is a non-issue you're bringing up, in my view.
Yeah, so I'll bring this up real quick for you, Andrew.
This is Jackson Hinkle in the house.
He goes, Patriarch Tikhon revoked his anathema in 1923, and Patriarch Kirill blessed the KPRF today.
Yeah, so what happens is, inside many of these countries, which would include Russia, by the way...
There's an old, old tradition of Russia itself.
Oh, and he has something else here, too, as well.
Do you want me to read that second one, too?
And it's up to you, Andrew, by the way, if you want to engage with this.
Your discussion is with Haas, so if you want to engage with Jackson, sure.
If you don't want to, I understand that, too.
Patriarch Tikhon...
Praise the USSR. In 1925, on his deathbed, Patriarch Sergius, Patriarch Alexei, and Patriarch Piment also supported the USSR. It was Trotskyites that created martyrs, not Marxists.
This is from Jackson.
Yeah, so let me respond directly to Jackson.
Are you okay with that, House?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So there's a long history, especially inside of communism with orthodoxy, of the orthodox making communist priests say and do different things in order for them to survive.
The church understood this, allowed for this to happen because they knew that it was under duress.
Now, I don't know what the exact position is here.
I would have to dig in and do a little bit of research.
To figure out what that position is, but my understanding currently, and I've asked every single patriarch that I can find about the anathemization, the fact that communism is anathematized, and the reason that it is, is because they have persecuted traditionally Orthodox Christians non-stop.
That is why.
And this has happened all over Eastern Europe, by the way, and they fucking hate him.
They absolutely loathe him, Jackson.
And I think that you should talk to Jay Dyer about it, because Jay Dyer has absolutely taken the subject on many, many times about the destruction of orthodoxy by communists.
Look at China.
Good example.
I mean, you know, China, Christianity is one of the official religions it recognizes.
The church flourishes in China.
Okay.
Alright, so what else have we got here?
We got Luzu Pan.
Ten bucks.
Appreciate that.
From Castle Club.
And then the spirit of Marxism.
All of Marx's poems and writings were to the devil.
Okay.
Goddamn.
That's nonsense.
I don't know.
Do you have one response to that?
Yeah, it's schizophrenic nonsense.
I mean, at no point was Marx ever dedicating anything to the devil.
He's talking about the old poems when Marx was like 17 years old or something.
This is just a total...
First of all, it's a misinterpretation.
Second of all, he would laugh at these poems in his later life, so it's nonsense.
Okay.
What else do we got here?
E.G. A.K.A. Sauce.
Another 10.
Alright, thank you.
And then we got Capitalism is Christianity applied to money.
Communism is anti-Christian, no free will.
I think that that was demonstrated kind of over and over in this debate, that there would be an isolation.
So what happens with Haas is that he'll say a thing, and then I'll catch him on the thing, and then he'll kind of move it towards something different.
It's very frustrating.
It's just a misunderstanding.
It's like a tube of toothpaste.
I squeeze here, it moves here.
I'll clarify.
When you said they go out against communism, I'm thinking in my head, like, oh, they're going to, like...
Participate in the counter-revolution and take up arms.
If you're just talking about expressing speech, you know, I'm pro-free speech.
I don't want speech to be clamped down on.
Are you or are you pro-limiting free speech?
I mean, here's the toothpaste.
Look, it's a matter of good faith.
Yeah, here's the toothpaste.
Are you going to tell me, like, oh, so you support child pornography?
I'm like, no, wait, wait.
I mean, like, in good faith, what is meant by free speech?
Within reasonable limits, and I feel like that doesn't have to be...
I would think that a communist...
Because, look, in good faith, do I support the range of authentic political...
And no, I'm not saying authentic is going to be defined bureaucratically and formally.
Reasonably in a way that resonates with the actual people and the population.
Do I think that elements...
That speak out against a communist dictatorship should be, just for speaking, should be totally crushed and eliminated.
It's not my opinion.
I don't think in America that should be the type of communism we have here.
But I will defend the decisions made by the Chinese and the Russians in their context because their context was different.
They didn't have a kind of culture of free speech.
They had a culture where if you're talking, you're not just talking, you're standing on something.
It's an intent to act.
Well, then you're holding two different standards.
Yeah, I think America's a different country, a different civilization.
So you just think that all morality is going to come from your cultural standard?
I think it has a lot to do with it.
That's not what I'm asking.
I mean, how would you say, ah, it's inappropriate here in America, that would be immoral to curtail the Orthodox Church from speaking out, for instance, against communism.
But in China, fucking off with their heads, right, Haas?
You have to understand, Russia was in a civil war.
It wasn't just a peace time.
I'm talking about China.
What about it?
So I'm asking you, if in China they're like, hey, no, you're not going to speak out against a state, or you're going to go to fucking prison.
You don't have an actual objection to that, because in the cultural context, it's fine.
But why would the church speak out against the state?
That's not my question, Haas.
You're asking me a question.
Why do you have a double standard?
When I give you a hypothetical about a potential church act, you say, no, no, it's not possible or thinkable.
You can ask me the hypothetical after you answer the question.
Yeah, what?
So answer the question, then ask me the question.
I think that that's fair.
Inside of China, under what you consider your cultural relativism, morality, if China jails these people, speak out against the state, you would say that that is fine.
You just would say it's not fine in the United States, right?
Yeah.
So you're just a cultural relativist?
No, I'm not.
How is it not cultural relativism?
Because it's not a relativism of the absolute moral standards you hold to a culture, it's the actual state functioning in its capacity in a way that's receptive to the context and civilization it's in.
Which is based on the culture.
Not only the culture, but also the history.
Which is the culture?
It's part of it.
It's 100% the dictate of what the culture will be.
Culture is the product of history, I would argue, in part.
But it's not just...
History is not just culture, just because culture is a fundamental product of history.
History is an index of blood and struggle and actual experiences people have.
It is impossible for your current culture to exist without its history period.
By the way, guys, I don't mean to be too loud.
Am I too loud?
No, we're good.
Because I have these, I can't even hear.
Yeah, it's the same.
Oh, you can't hear yourself?
No, no, I can't.
I just can't parse how loud I am.
It's all good, Hoss.
But all of your current standard for society is based on your history.
It can't be based on anything else.
That's what it's based on.
I think societies are based on the actual record of that society's development and existence, yes.
History.
Yeah.
So the thing is, that is purely 100% a double standard based on cultural relativism, Haas?
No, because you're not giving history enough credit.
Because, for example, as a Hegelian, you say I'm a cult Kabbalist Hegelian.
No, no, I didn't say a Kabbalist.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand.
But as a Hegelian, I would say that the divine itself reveals itself...
Through the development of history.
That's not what Hegel believed.
History, well, it's kind of what he believed.
History is not just like different zoo animals and different pens developing.
History is how truth itself comes into being.
History is how all of the truth of religion came to be realized.
Hegel believed...
The Bible is about...
I've got to correct something real quick.
Hegel did not believe that.
Hegel believed that the divine was revealed through man.
Through history.
No, through man.
In fact, I can give you the exact belief structure.
Hegel believed, his Trinitarian doctrine, was that God could only see himself through the vision of man.
That's it.
I can give you the exact term for it, even.
It's Hermeticism.
He was a big believer in Hermeticism, and so was the faith which he ascribed to at the time.
He believed that that...
He was a Protestant, Lutheran.
Yes, he was a Lutheran, and he was a theologian.
But he believed that mankind was its entire purpose, including his...
Was to show God God's reflection.
Through history.
No, through men.
Through people.
No, no, through history.
No, where does he say that?
Because for Hegel, your interpretation is one of the interpretations.
It's not the one I share.
Because it seems clear to me through Marx's criticism of Hegel and that of the young Hegelian humanists who did draw that interpretation, but Hegel did not himself openly avow it.
For Hegel...
All of history was the development of the mind, the divine mind.
This mind, this super-individual reason, rationality, that is being developed through history, he doesn't say that's of a man, that's of an individual.
He ascribes to it a metaphysical status.
In fact, I'll give you the exact quote.
It's a metaphysical status which we can deduce or presume to be God, you know, the mind of God.
After this Hegel thing, I was going to go bring it back to America.
God reflects me.
Says Hegel.
I am God's pen, says Hegel.
And the reflection of God could not exist without me, says Hegel.
How in the world could you say, then, that Hegel's not a believer that man reflects God when he himself believes he reflects God and God reflects him and God can only see his own image in man?
How could you even say that?
Totally...
You know, this is kind of like a Christianity itself.
Like, why did God need to assume the form of a man through Christ?
This is a distinct criticism that has nothing to do with what I just said.
That's Hegel's interpretation of Christianity, though.
So what?
That God has nothing to do with what Hegel assumed?
Okay.
With what Hegel assumed, which was that God can only see his own image in man itself.
Do you think that, as a Christian, do you think that the incarnation was necessary?
A necessary consequence of God's existence?
It's irrelevant to my point.
No, no, answer it, answer it.
Do you think the incarnation, Jesus Christ, was necessary as a consequence of God's own being, that he had to be incarnated as a man through Jesus Christ?
Was that necessary?
No, can you answer yes or no?
I can't answer yes or no, because I would have to go back and get the dictates of the terms from a theological perspective, what you mean by necessary.
What do you mean by necessary?
Like, as a necessary consequence of the very existence of God, like ontologically, he had to be incarnated as a man, as Christ, the Son.
I think, it depends on how you're phrasing this, from the position of, did Jesus Christ need to become incarnated based on the orthodox vision of theology from God's intention?
Yes.
But when you say necessary, this means that God could maybe not have had ulterior plans or something like this.
Necessary is a very direct word.
And I would need it clarified.
Like ontologically, like as a fact of God's being, that he self divides into the Trinity.
It is part of God's nature, his trinitarian nature, yes.
So why is Hegel so scandalous to you?
As a Muslim, if anything, I should be the one offended.
You're not a Muslim.
Yeah, well, you know, it's haram to say, well, you're not a Muslim, so it doesn't apply to you.
But if I say I'm a Muslim, I'm a Muslim.
That's Islam.
You can't say that someone's not a Muslim.
Why not?
Because it's a confessional faith.
All you have to do is recite the Shahada to be a Muslim in Islam.
You don't believe Allah is God or that there is a God, Haz.
You're a self-described agnostic.
Based on what?
You have self-described yourself in your most recent speech as an agnostic.
What are you talking about?
Why?
Why did you...
I don't know why you described yourself as an agnostic.
Where did I say I'm an agnostic?
How could you say you're an agnostic and also that you're a Muslim?
I'm a Muslim!
Are you an agnostic?
No.
So you do believe in Allah is God?
Yes.
Every night I say the fat.
Then why do you self-describe as an agnostic so often?
I think if I've in the past distanced myself toward religious identification, because I don't like religious hypocrisy.
I don't like people who use it as a cudgel over people's heads and LARP with it and use it as an identity.
I think it's more important to prove it by deed.
Like, I'm a communist because I believe...
If I believe in God and if I believe in the message of the prophets, it has to have a concrete and real living application.
I can't just identify with all these different rules and all these different superficial, you know, I can't just words, you know, and that makes me the religious.
No, you have to follow the spirit of the law.
You have to follow the spirit of their teachings.
I want to bring this back.
Finish your thought, and then I want to bring this back, because the conversation was, what led to the, you know, degradation of the United States, and we've kind of like...
Well, I told you it would go everywhere, right?
Yeah, we went into religion, we went into, obviously, Russia, the so-bullshipping revolution.
But Brian, if you don't mind, please, I do have to ask.
Yeah.
All right, and then we'll go back to the topic.
I thought you were atheists, bro.
Like, directly, directly, directly, give me the answer directly.
Yeah.
You understand that it is a contradiction to say that you're an agnostic and a Muslim.
That is a contradiction.
You understand that?
Yeah.
And you have stated multiple times you are an agnostic and you just told me you're a Muslim.
I've always said I'm a Muslim though.
Yeah, but how can you be an agnostic Muslim if it's a contradiction?
You're gonna have to play me the clip and give me the context, and I'll explain why I would have said that in that context.
Have you described yourself as an agnostic, yes or no?
It's definitely possible, but again, it's context.
What do you mean, punk?
Have you described yourself as an agnostic?
This is the thing.
I know I'm a Muslim.
I'm not strict about these terms in every possible context.
Muslims are.
Here's what I know for a fact I have said in the past.
I don't care.
I don't care if you think I'm not a Muslim or if I'm an atheist.
If you think I'm an atheist, let me be nailed to the cross of atheism.
I don't give a fuck what you think.
That's always been my position consistently.
Okay, but can you give me your position consistently now?
Are you ever going to identify yourself as being an agnostic again?
Because that would be saying that you're not sure if Allah exists.
That would be a heresy inside of Islam.
I believe in God.
Alright.
So you're not an agnostic?
No.
And you've never said that?
Don't hold me to that, because I may have in the past.
You have to show me the context.
That's fine.
Let's go back to...
What led to the degradation of the United States?
Let's go back to that, because that's what the main thing was.
Obviously, you believe enlightenment, communism, etc., Marxism, and egalitarianism is the problem.
You're saying it's debt.
Let's go back to that real quick.
Who wants to take this first?
I can let Haas open.
Back to the morality stuff?
No, no, no, no.
Back to the degradation of the United States.
You're saying it was debt.
That was the original argument.
Yeah, I think it's actually...
And communism solves this issue was your primary stance.
Yes, I think it's simple.
I think that, on the one hand, the United States was officially a Christian country.
The majority of people were confessional Christians, practicing Christians.
But they were just following the word.
They weren't following...
The spirit of it, right?
So as a consequence, we have a satanic economic system where everyone's being looted and robbed and enslaved, and it's purely for mammon, right?
You can't worship both money and God at the same time, that's what the Bible says.
So as a consequence of us deviating from the spirit of the gospel, Right?
Partially, at least, that's one of the causes.
We have a situation of hypocrisy, where the conservative religious kind of authorities are hypocrites.
They're preaching something, but in reality, look at the Republican Party.
Look at the evangelicals in the Republican Party.
They're preaching Jesus.
They're preaching the message of Christianity.
But what are they supporting in practice?
They're supporting Wall Street.
They're supporting mammon.
They're supporting Zionism.
They're supporting all manner of anti-human...
Real actions, not just things people say, but actual ways in which we become defined as a people as far as how we relate to each other and our existence.
How we feed ourselves, right?
If the way we feed ourselves is fundamentally rotten and unholy, I don't care what religious labels you're going to be throwing on yourself and how you're going to be identifying.
You are participating in a reality that is conducive to wickedness, to evil.
Well, then explain care.
Explain the Muslims doing the exact same thing.
Explain the Muslims voting 100% Democrat.
Okay.
Well, not 100%, but you get my gist.
Majority Democrat, right?
Yeah.
When you make these claims...
I didn't say Muslims are absolved from this.
But you made the claim that Christians are hypocrites.
Muslims are, too.
So is...
I'm sorry.
The Muslim faith is hypocritical?
There are hypocritical Muslims, just like there are hypocritical Christians.
Okay, so I just want to make sure...
Islam is not any more impervious.
The majority of the Muslim voters inside of the United States are hypocrites?
They are voting in a way that is hypocritical.
So they're hypocrites?
I mean, look, you...
No, no, no, no.
Are they hypocrites in every possible respect?
No.
That's not what I asked.
I asked if they're hypocrites.
What you're doing is bad faith.
It's not bad faith.
So there could be a Muslim guy who votes Democrat, but is like a saint in every other respect, and I have to nail him on the cross of hypocrisy just because he's doing one thing that I regard as bad.
It's in the core of your faith.
What?
So inside the core of your faith, are you allowed to denounce these different Muslim segments for being hypocrites?
Are you allowed to do that?
I don't know, but even if...
You don't know.
Yeah, I don't know.
I'm not...
Look, look.
You don't even know.
I don't know.
I'm not an expert on Islamic theology.
Just so I know that, Andrew, could come back, you're saying that the concept of capitalism in itself is wicked.
Promotes wickedness.
Promotes wickedness.
What's your response to that, Andrew?
No, I think that the ethics of an individual population promotes wickedness.
And I think that, I think this, and here's my bone I'll throw Hoss if he'll throw it back to me.
We'll see if he does.
I think that you could logically have a population of people who were very moral under a communist yoke.
It's logically possible.
Okay.
If you can at least say back to me that you could have a moral population under capitalism.
There has never been one in history.
That's not what I asked you.
So no.
No, there couldn't be?
No.
Can you explain logically how it's impossible for people to be moral under capitalism?
It's impossible because people are thrusted into situations in which they have to make impossible decisions.
If a woman has a child and the only way she feeds her child is by being a prostitute, should she let her child starve or should she be a prostitute?
Impossible decisions like these are what define the nature of capitalism.
You haven't expressed the impossibility of being moral under capitalism.
You have not shown this.
To be immoral.
If people do not, if there is no economic sovereignty, and it's not even a factor systemically that accounts for people's real existence, the need for them to feed themselves, the need for them to have an economic existence, it is inevitable that they're going to be thrusted into impossible situations where you can't really say they're immoral.
You can't say they're moral.
Because the system itself is immoral and putting them in a fundamentally immoral position.
Yeah, but that could be the criticism of all governance.
Anytime the governmental body makes a bad decision, this criticism would apply to communism as well, that it could thrust the people into a situation.
My question specifically to you, Haas, was, and I'm going to repeat it, and I need an answer to it, please.
The answer is no.
You cannot have a moral population under capitalism, but you can under communism.
Yes.
Okay, and what is the distinct metric, the delineation, which would make the allowance such that you could under communism, but never under capitalism?
Because under communism, the way people feed themselves and the way that they account for their existence economically is not in a way that's contrary to their humanity.
You didn't say anything.
What do you want me to say?
What do you want me to say?
The historical record is clear.
The reason you can't be moral under communism is because communism does things in such a way Where it distorts their humanity.
Did I just say fucking anything?
No.
So I need, again, I'm going to ask you the question.
What is the delineation point?
I would ask you for examples.
Okay, I'm asking you the question.
If you said that, I'd ask for examples.
So, Haas, I'm going to ask you again.
Yeah.
What is the delineation point which would guarantee that the population under capitalism has to be immoral, but under communism can be moral?
What is that thing?
Because capitalism incentivizes people to sell out their neighbors for money, and communism doesn't.
It incentivizes people to sell out their neighbors to the state.
Maybe they're guilty of something.
Well, right!
So, I mean, what the fuck?
This is the same decision!
If I'm, if I'm, if I'm, if I'm, if I'm, no it's not!
Because if, uh, if I'm under attack by Germany and my neighbor's a collaborator, fuck him!
He is, he should be sold out!
Okay, well...
If my neighbor is a child molester, fuck him, he should be, he should be, uh, sold out to the state.
If he is making bombs in his basement and he's going to go do some crazy shit because he's been bribed by Britain or something to destroy my country, then I should sell him out.
And if he's just against the government, you should sell him out.
But Andrew, do you notice the distinction?
Do you notice the distinction, though?
As much as we want to be cynical about this point and it's funny...
You know, the distinction is, though, the scenario you described doesn't necessarily have to be an immoral one.
It's just that in capitalism it is necessarily immoral.
Why?
Because capitalism incentivizes people to sell out other human beings.
So does communism by your own admission five seconds ago.
No, no, no.
Because if I'm selling out my neighbors to the state, I can think of scenarios in which they would have deserved that.
I can't think of a scenario in which human beings can be priced to a dollar.
That it's worth it to sell out a human being for money in which that would be morally acceptable.
I can't think of that.
I can't think of exploitation being morally acceptable.
Wait a second.
You think that snitching, right?
You can make moral exceptions for that, but you can't put a price on the snitch.
You can't put a price on your neighbor, their humanity.
Oh, right.
So if you throw their ass in fucking prison, right, is that going to cost money?
You're not selling them for gain, for profit.
You're selling them to the state.
Andrew, let's narrow this down to what we're talking about concretely.
You have a neighbor under communism who is a child molester.
Are you calling the police?
Sure.
So that's not inherently immoral.
It's not inherently immoral.
I want you to remember my claim.
My claim is that I believe that you could have a moral population under communism if you'll concede that you could have a moral population under capitalism.
The distinction is, Haas says, under capitalism, no!
It's impossible.
Andrew says, it is possible under communism.
The demonstration then is on you to show me why it's impossible under capitalism.
By the way, you've still failed to do so.
Okay, so you want me to demonstrate an example of...
I want you to show why it's impossible for a population under capitalism to be a moral population.
Do you agree that capitalism means profit is the fundamental and primary goal?
I think that, um, no.
So you're defining capitalism differently than me.
So, do you understand?
What is capitalism to you then?
Stop, stop.
Even if I were to concede that it were true, that, hey, it's all about profit, do you think that moral men can make profit?
Yeah, in an isolated scenario, sure.
Why not?
Wait, wait, wait.
If moral men can make profit, and they can be responsible with profit, profit can't be inherently bad.
But this is what you're missing, I think.
This is the problem with capitalism, in my view.
Everyone can individually be moral, and not be saying, oh, you're an immoral individual.
Even if we assume that was true, they're producing inadvertently a fundamentally immoral outcome, where no individual will be held responsible.
What makes it immoral if all the people are moral?
If people are falling deeper and deeper into destitution and pauperization, if people are falling into desperation, if people are having their livelihoods robbed of them, having everything alienated from them in terms of their means of production, guess what?
It's going to lead to inadvertent outcomes that are not necessarily the result of one wicked individual will, but are the result of a wicked system.
Can a system exist without individuals?
No.
But individuals, by virtue of their interdependency, of course the individual, any given society, though it's composed of individuals, produce an outcome inadvertent and irreducible to the sum of its parts.
Is it the outcome that they wanted?
Are you like Margaret Thatcher and you think that society doesn't exist, only individuals?
Hang on, hang on.
I'm almost on the internal critique.
I'm happy if you give me one.
I'm fine with that.
Yeah.
But I need to ask you, if the population desires this, whatever it is you think is immoral, if you can consider the population to be moral, and then you still say, well, the results of the population are immoral.
It's hypocrisy.
What's the hypocrisy of saying that the population itself is moral?
Because they're producing an outcome that is contrary to the moral purport that they're exercising individually.
So how can every individual in a population be moral, but have an outcome which is immoral?
Like I said, because men and women make history, but not as they please.
Because history itself is the product of individuals producing outcomes that are not reducible, and even oftentimes contrary to their intentions individually.
Hegel calls this the cunning of reason, actually.
Yeah, no, let's move, we can even move back to Hegel.
Yeah.
How can every single individual in a population make nothing but moral decisions, and they all come to immoral outcomes?
Well, okay, so this is like a system, a closed system you're talking about.
They could start off as moral, and then produce an immoral outcome, which will then corrupt their morality, inevitably.
So I don't believe that they could...
Well, then they're not moral.
I don't believe they could remain moral, no.
But I think they could start out as moral and produce an immoral outcome, which could then corrupt their morality.
So let's move back to communism, then.
So when we're talking about communism itself, what is the thing about communism which inherently is going to make the population moral?
The thing about communism is that it's going to make it so that the means by which people exist are not inevitably immoral.
So you're opening up the opportunity for society to be moral.
There's no guarantee that it will, but at least it's possible.
Yeah, but you still haven't actually demonstrated why it would be impossible in our capitalism.
Okay.
All you've done is claim that there's a possibility that an entire society could be moral, adopt capitalism, and then somehow it could be corrupted.
You haven't demonstrated that it's necessary.
Okay, so...
Okay, okay.
We agree that capitalism is about the pursuit of profit at the expense of everything else, correct or no?
At the expense of everything else?
No.
What is an example of a capitalist society that doesn't fall under that qualification?
Because I think people can make moral decisions with profit.
Okay.
I'm talking about societies.
I'm talking about societies.
Okay.
Societies are individuals.
No, they're not.
Yes, they are.
No, they're not.
What else are they?
Societies are a common reality shared by individuals, which is irreducible to all of them.
Are you different than him?
Sure.
And is he different than him?
Sure.
Okay, so then, is it you and you and you that makes a society?
No, it's the inadvertent outcome of our relationships that produce the society.
Which would not exist without you being you, and him being him, and him being him.
Which we give recognition in super individual ways.
We, in our language, recognize these things.
We recognize such a thing as society, and the state, and history, and nations, and groups.
Yes, because the underlying etymology of these things is promoting individualism.
No.
Okay, can society exist without?
Individualism.
Hang on.
If zero people existed, could society exist?
Individualism is not just the reality of individuals.
Individualism is the view according to which...
You're not answering my question.
If zero individuals existed, could society exist?
Of course not.
What if three individuals existed?
Couldn't be a society, probably.
What is a society, then?
I would probably define society as an ability to reproduce a people.
So three individuals could definitely do that.
No, no, no.
Because what I mean, a people, you reproduce a specific mode of reproduction.
Like, for example, you're passing down moors and norms between different peoples, and these moors, these norms, these relationships themselves could viably be reproduced across generations.
I think that's probably how...
Well, one family couldn't do that by itself.
Why not?
Well, okay, if you started out with Adam and Eve, it could eventually lead to a society.
So then yes, one family could do it.
One family could not constitute a society.
Why not?
Because a society isn't just made up Of an arbitrary number of individuals.
A society is the inadvertent result of different individuals coming into relation with one another.
In the case of a family, a single family unit, you couldn't really call that a society.
Because in the very nature of what a society is, it already implies there's multiple different families who are mediating their relationships with one another in a specific way.
If there's no individuals who exist on planet Earth other than one family, is that society?
Honestly, it's just kind of like a retarded question.
I don't think it's a retarded question.
Saying it's retarded isn't an argument.
If there's one family on planet Earth...
It's not a society.
It's not a society.
What is it?
It's a family.
Which exists absent a society?
Um, well, could it exist absent the context of one?
No.
That's it!
It would have had to have descended from some society then.
Nobody's saying anything...
Well, no.
Why would it have had to, actually?
Because there is no specific...
There is no way for human beings to exist outside of a society.
Why?
Why?
This is the nature of human beings.
They're social beings.
Could you exist on a desert island by yourself?
But you would have borne the artifacts of some society you came from.
So you would be imprinted by some society still.
So then your society?
Sorry?
Your society on the island?
No, you came from somewhere.
Could a baby...
This is the question.
Could a baby on an island raise itself and grow up by itself, just totally absent from the influence of any society?
No.
Impossible.
It's an absurd question.
No, it's not an absurd question, because it's getting into the idea of what you consider a society to be.
And I think that that is important.
I'm not trying to be tricky or debate burly.
Yeah.
I just want to make sure that we're clear on what it is that we're talking about.
I think most people understand very clearly what we're talking about when we use words like society.
I don't think we need to create invariable parameters that are relevant only for abstract cases like propositional logic or math.
You know what?
When we're using words like society.
Okay.
When we use words, we're relying on people's intuitions and sensibilities.
If we had to qualify every single word that we use in the most invariable, precise manner and never deviate from that, language itself would be impossible.
There would be no way to communicate anything except math.
Okay, so...
Agreed.
But here's the thing.
So, maybe we can find common ground again.
I agree that almost all of society, when I say the word thief, is going to agree on what that means.
It means I stole shit that ain't mine.
You would agree with it?
You would agree with it?
He would agree with it?
I would agree with it?
I agree.
I'm not sure that we would hold a shared definition or idea of society and what that is.
And so, I think it is necessary...
When we're talking about a distinct concept, when you say, ah, you know, we can't define every single word or human language would become obsolete, I agree.
So you think in order for me to use the word society, I have to establish absolute invariable definition?
No, I just need a general idea.
That's it.
So what is so wrong with the general idea of a society as the inadvertent outcome of many individuals in their interrelations?
Because I have a different general idea of that than you do.
Okay, that's my best shot at from scratch, off the top of my head, trying to define that word.
I think that that's fair.
I'm just saying to you that if we're talking about...
Societies in general.
Yeah.
We're talking about their morals, right?
The idea of morality under communism.
Okay.
I just want to know, Haas, what is the thing that makes communism moral and capitalism immoral?
The thing, the delineation point here.
And I feel like we haven't really gotten that.
All I have said is that communism makes morality possible.
Capitalism makes it impossible.
Yeah, you haven't shown me how, though.
What do you want me...
What precise answer are you looking for?
Because I tried to...
I'll show you.
I'll explain.
I tried to begin from a shared premise of capitalism.
Like, we're talking about the same thing.
A system, not an individual, but a system in which profit is in command and is supreme.
You said no, because there can be moral capitalists.
I don't give a fuck that there can be moral capitalists.
But you said there couldn't be.
I said the system itself...
It would inevitably lead to widespread wickedness and immorality.
Yeah, but you never demonstrated that, Oz.
Okay, okay, because I'm trying to begin from somewhere with you.
If we agree that capitalism as a system means profits are in command, even if there are some moral capitalists and some moral people, and I don't deny that they exist under capitalism, even the majority may be moral.
But we will see the rise of widespread immorality and wickedness, not because of the shortcomings of individuals, but because of the nature of the system itself.
Despite the fact that there are some capitalists that are moral, that doesn't change the fact that we're all participating in a fucking system that's producing immoral outcomes.
For example, all of our tax dollars right now are going to Israel.
Does that make me immoral, that I support personally immoral?
Does that make you personally immoral?
Yeah, but that's not a concept.
Our tax dollars are going to genocide right now.
Are we both immoral?
Can you agree with me that you can have a capitalist society where they send no money to Israel?
Show me.
Can you agree that you can have a capitalist society where they send no money to Israel?
I don't like hypotheticals because I like to talk about reality.
You ask plenty of them, but now you suddenly don't like them.
I've only brought up hypotheticals in response to yours to demonstrate their absurdity.
Can you have a capitalist society where they don't send fucking money to Israel or not, Haas?
Apparently fucking not!
No?
Apparently fucking not.
Well, I don't know what to say about that, bro.
Based on actual fucking reality, no.
No.
All right.
Based on the actual world we live in and not the fairytale castle we construct in our minds and our heads, fuck no, we can't.
Your example of this is that the reason capitalism is immoral because they're sending fucking money to genocidal Israeli...
I'm giving...
No, no, I'm giving...
Can you, though, have capitalism where they don't do that?
I'm using honor.
Alright, let's calm down a little bit.
I'm going to calm down.
All I'm trying to tell you, I'm trying to use this as an example of how you and I can be moral individuals, but as an inadvertent consequence of the circumstances we find ourselves in, we are participating in producing an outcome we will agree as immoral.
I don't know if you agree or disagree.
But I think that the Zionist genocide is immoral.
I pay taxes.
Those tax dollars go to funding that genocide.
Now, I could be within my limits a moral person.
After all, it's not my problem.
I'm not directly personally responsible for this, right?
So I could still be considered moral.
But I'm involved inadvertently in producing an immoral outcome.
So it's the same for the nature of capitalism.
And that's why I wanted to use it as an example.
I'm going to have to give you some major pushback here.
It doesn't seem to me that it would be necessary under capitalism to support a Zionist regime.
Your failure here is to demonstrate why it would be that because capitalism exists, Zionism regime support must also exist with capitalism.
What if I say, if it's not the Zionist regime, it would be something equivalent to the immorality of the Zionist regime.
Show me!
Show me why that would be a necessary entailment.
Because...
You want me to explain it to you?
Can you not interrupt me?
Do you think I've been ridiculous here?
No, I just want to be able to, uninterrupted, give an explanation.
So, the origins of capitalism itself, in order for everything to be pledged purely for the pursuit of profit and completely alienated from the tangible kind of concrete existence of traditions and relationships and societies people have, requires something that...
I don't want to get into terminology and phrases you don't like, but it's called primitive accumulation, where, for example, through colonialism, you have You have capitalists come and separate people from what they call their natural means of production.
So, for example, if a given group depends on this land to subsist and survive, and it's the bedrock of their society, their culture, and their traditions, you separate them from their means of survival.
So in England, for example, they had the enclosure movement.
You had a traditional rural life of peasant farmers.
and they lived on farms and this was the bedrock of so much culture and whatever and morality and all this kind of stuff.
The enclosure movement, what it did is it made it legally allowed for landowners to enclose off the plots of land, drive the peasants off of the land that they needed to survive, separating them from their means of production.
And it's on this basis, on the basis of this violence and this theft, which happened on a world scale in the history of capitalism through colonialism, that the capitalist mode of production, that's what we call it, was able to be possible.
Only when we violently uproot people from their traditional kind of normal ways of life and means of production is it even possible...
For what they call general commodity production, where everything is subordinated and gobbled up purely for their pursuit of profit.
For the only way for that to be possible is through the violence.
Okay?
The same violence that's going on in Gaza with the Zionist genocide.
I'll just let you go.
Can you show me where communism was implemented without violence?
No.
But violence in and of itself.
I don't regard violence in and of itself as the problem.
What's the problem?
So saying to me, Andrew, in order for these means of production to exist, there must have been violence and therefore it's evil.
No, no, no.
There must have not...
My turn, my turn.
Sorry.
I'll let you speak completely on the bridge.
Go ahead, go ahead.
In order for these means of production to exist, there had to have been violence.
Okay, fair enough.
Counter.
Haas, can you show me where communism was ever implemented without there being violence?
Haas, no.
You have not demonstrated the immorality of capitalism with this argument, Haas.
But you're being presumptuous when you isolate violence alone from what I'm...
Violence is a constant of all human history.
But what I'm talking about is a fundamental extermination of people's history, traditions, and way of life.
It's a fundamental genocide.
It's a destruction of peoples.
It's not just acts of violence.
Violence can be righteous.
That's the purpose of the violence that you're arguing, right?
Precisely.
Okay.
So, I don't understand.
What would make...
I have to kill all opposition or half opposition.
What makes one more moral than the other?
Because the opposition under communism was not coming from the people.
It was coming from antisocial elements that had benefited for a very long time from the immiseration and destruction and the same extermination process being committed in China and in Russia.
That same process of primitive accumulation was ongoing.
And a small minority of people were benefiting from that.
So these are the ones that had the incentive to take up arms and rise against communism.
They represented the forces of Satan.
They represented the forces, not only enemies of their people, but all humanity.
These are excellent assertions, but Haas, why is killing half of a population somehow more moral than killing the entire population?
Where did they kill half the population?
No, no, no.
There are circumstances in which killing is justified.
The reason I ask this question is because you are making the kind of really bold claim.
Under communism, the killing is justified to the ideology.
Under capitalism, it is not.
And you say the reason, the distinction, is because one is genocidal and the other is not.
And yet, I don't know where the delineation point for white genocide itself, the wiping out of an entire...
You don't understand it.
...the entire versus just half, which is your opposition, is more moral than the opposition.
Because, first of all, it's not just half.
And second of all, basically what it boils down to is you don't understand why it's worse for...
The wholesale extermination and destruction of entire civilizations and histories and peoples versus the suppression of counter-revolutionaries.
You don't see a material distinction.
I would basically claim that they're both immoral, would you?
No.
No.
And that's the distinction between Christianity and you Islamic communists.
No, it's not.
Every Christian state in history ruthlessly persecuted all opposition.
Ruthlessly.
There's not a single Christian state in history that wasn't chasing the heretics violently and destroying them and crushing them.
Not a single one.
Name one.
Well, what do you consider a heretic?
People who had contrary belief systems that weren't even necessarily engaging in violence at all were ruthlessly suppressed and uprooted and killed on a mass scale.
That's fair.
Now what do you consider a Christian state to be?
The Byzantine Empire.
So that's it?
Well, I understand you're an Orthodox Christian, so I'm going off of what you would regard probably as a Christian state.
I would agree that the Byzantine Empire definitely had a synergy.
What other Christian states can you name?
The Tsardom of Muscovy, under Ivan the Terrible.
And what made that Christian?
You tell me.
You don't believe it was Christian?
I'm asking if it's your claim.
You ask me, name a Christian state, I'm giving you examples of Christian states.
What made it a Christian state?
What is the thing that makes it a Christian state?
According to the meaning of what we agree Christianity is, like the historically accepted conventional meaning, those were Christian states where the Orthodox Church was placed at the center of political supremacy and power.
So what makes it a Christian state?
It got its legitimacy from the church itself.
That's where its mandate came from.
Real quick, guys, real quick, because we're going into Christianity here.
This is a whole other conversation.
I guess we're not going to continue on with the communism versus capitalism morality?
You guys are done with that topic?
Yeah, we can move on from there.
That's fine.
Because I think he's not saying that there isn't violence on both ends.
He's saying the violence that's perpetuated on the capitalistic side has a more nefarious intention.
Is that what you would say?
Yeah, I would say it's based in wickedness.
You haven't demonstrated it.
Yeah, you're saying it's all violence regardless is immoral, which is your counter to that.
And also that it just was not ever demonstrated that under capitalism is somehow worse, or what the criteria for what worse even would be.
The problem with debating you is that I'm not allowed to actually refer to the real world.
I just have to dwell in this hypothetical fairytale kingdom.
And I struggle doing that because I don't have the same understanding of what...
Maybe you could tell me the reason why.
Because you demonstrated that you're uprooting an entire civilization to push this capitalistic ideal world.
Profit is the main thing.
Maybe you could tell them why that is more immoral than, let's say, a communist who kills a million people because we need to push communism.
His stance is, well, communists kill people too.
I would like, okay, okay, I'll tell you this.
How about this?
You think about it?
That's what I'm interpreting from listening to both of you.
Let me real quick read these chats while you think of it.
I think that's Andrew's main contention.
He's not debating the violence part.
He's saying, like, why is one party's violence more nefarious than the others?
Yeah, I could definitely.
Perfect.
I think that's the distinction.
What else did we get here?
Hey guys, we're going to be moving over to Castle Club.
And then we're going to finish up over there and then also have a Zoom call with some of you guys as well.
Let's drop the link in there now.
By the way, over at the Crucible, who is watching right now live, join the Castle Club.
How do they do that, Myron?
CastleClub.tv.
And then they get in with a subscription, and that's, you know, it's a monthly thing, and then we do Zoom calls, and we answer questions, et cetera, have people interact with the, you know, creators that we have in, or we do Zoom calls on how to make money, how to get girls, how to improve yourself, or special guests that we have in that have certain skill sets.
But go ahead, Mo.
Mo got something, and then we'll, yeah, we're from a sponsor, and then...
Yes, we do.
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So guys, come on over to Castle Club, guys.
We're going to finish off the debate there and then answer questions, have a Q&A with you guys.
As you guys can see, the debate's winding down, so we're going to start interacting with some of you guys over there.
You guys will be able to talk to Haas, talk to Andrew, ask questions, whatever it may be.
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