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May 27, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
25:17
WHY COMMUNISM MUST FAIL!
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Let's get straight on to the belly of the beast, shall we?
I want to talk to you about morality.
So why are various isms so violent?
Why are fascism, communism, socialism, why are they so violent?
And why does violence tend to escalate and increase in the world as ideology takes over?
And I'll tell you why. Bitcoin is going up again, Steph was right.
Yeah, generally. There are worse bets in the world than assuming I'm correct.
So, yeah, now apparently it's okay to look into the China virus coming out of the Wuhan lab.
Apparently that's a thing again.
I did the case against China, oh gosh, well over 13, 14 months ago.
So... So morality, what I really want to get across at this point very, very clearly to you, is really, really important.
Morality is violence.
Morality is violence.
And what I mean by that, not that all violence is moral, but all morality justifies the use of force.
All morality justifies the use of force.
If you're a woman and you have the moral right to not be raped, very good, then of course you are perfectly legitimate in using force to prevent from being raped.
If you have the moral right to not be assaulted, then you have the right to use force to prevent yourself from being assaulted.
If you have the right to not be murdered, to not be stolen from, you have the right to use force to prevent that.
So, whatever we define as the moral...
Is what we give permission to use violence in the pursuit of or defense of that principle.
Morality is violence.
And again, that's not to say that the two are completely synonymous, because you can have just self-defense, which is the use of violence to defend your moral rights, and that's perfectly fine.
But, but, but...
When people talk about morality, they're talking about justified violence.
So, what is the morality that reduces the amount of violence in the world?
What is the morality that reduces the amount of violence in the world?
Well, clearly it has to be reactionary morality, and it has to be case-limited morality.
So if you were to say, it's immoral for it to be raining, I guess you shoot the clouds or something like that.
Let's start with a very sort of limited specific example.
So the non-aggression principle is reactive.
It's not proactive, it's reactive.
It's the non-aggression principle.
Thou shalt not initiate the use of force against others.
But, but...
If force is initiated against you, then you have the right to use force to defend your persons, your property, and so on.
And you can do this ex parte or third party as well.
You're somebody else, right? It's a universal principle.
So, once we understand that morality is that which is used to justify violence, then we have to be very sparing, tiny, case-controlled, and tight in our society.
Justifications for morality, because whenever we justify morality, whatever we apply morality to, there do we also justify violence.
And if we want to keep violence down in the world, we have to keep morality reactive, case-specific, very, very, very tightly defined.
So if we say morality is the non-aggression principle that bans rape, theft, assault and murder, We have a very powerful and very limited justification for violence, and it's reactive.
Let's look at another example of something that is often considered a moral right or a moral rule.
Let's say that you say it's immoral to pay women less than men for work of equal value or equal standing.
It's immoral.
To pay women less than men.
Okay, so if you say that, what have you now justified?
You have now justified the use of force in raising women's wages.
You've now justified the use of force.
You say, oh, well, no, but I think it's moral, but I don't want force involved.
Then it's not morality! Then it's aesthetics or politeness or social convention or something.
It's not morality. Morality is that which takes the safety off the revolver and lets you point it at someone.
That's what morality is, foundationally.
Takes the safety off and lets you point your gun at someone.
Someone's coming to rape you, take the safety off, point your gun at them, and shoot them if they continue, right?
If you say it's immoral, it's evil, it's wrong, to pay women less than men, what happens?
Well, you run to the government. And you say, there's this injustice going on.
There's this inequality, this exploitation, this sexism going on.
So the government says, oh, okay, well, that's wrong.
And what do we got to do?
We got to ban. We've got to ban women being paid less than men for work of equal value, whatever that is defined as.
So you get, and this is back in the early 1960s, Equal pay for work of equal value.
The equal pay legislation went through in America.
A lot of other Western countries in the 60s were said it's now illegal to pay a woman less than a man.
Now, there's an example of something that is defined as immoral and Therefore, the safety is off.
Guns are pointed at people. And if you're found to be paying women less than men, they can sue you.
And you won't get government contracts.
And if you lose the lawsuit, you have to pay.
And if you don't pay, they'll take the money from you by force.
It's the domino. You flick that little domino called this is now immoral.
And the big last domino is the safety coming off guns and guns being pointed at people.
If you say racism is immoral, if you say hate speech is immoral, then you are saying to people you can take the safety off and you can use weapons and you can use force to keep things moral.
Murder is immoral, you could use force to defend yourself from being murdered.
Racism, sexism, various phobias, you name it.
The moment you define these things as immoral.
Now, you can define them as impolite, you can define them as gauche, as coarse, as unrefined, as socially unacceptable.
These are not moral judgments.
Like, that's evil.
The moment you say evil, safety comes off the revolver, right?
And yes, there are revolvers for safety, right?
So if you want to know why something like communism is so violent, and I'm going to say it's not just violence by tendency.
I'm not just going to say that it's violent by historical example.
I'm not just going to say it's violent because power corrupts.
I want to prove to you that something like communism is violent by definition, that it can't ever be anything else.
Because, you know, we've got to pinch off that escape avenue of real communism has never been tried, which you never hear about National Socialism, but that's, of course, for reasons that are pretty obvious.
And I have this definition in my book, free book, Universally Preferable Behavior.
Three kinds of moral categories.
So, there's good and there's evil.
And good you can use force to defend, and evil you can use force to oppose.
And that's violations of rape, theft, assault, and murder.
And fraud being a subspecies of theft.
Then there's aesthetically preferable actions.
Now, these can be universalized but are not enforceable.
Things like politeness, being on time, wearing appropriate clothing, you know, that kind of stuff.
Where it's nice to have, but you can't shoot someone for being late.
And the reason you can't shoot someone for being late is they're not forcing you to be in that position.
Somebody who's got a gun to your head who's going to shoot you is forcing you into that position so you can use force to push back.
And then there's morally neutral actions, you know, taking a dump, running for the bus that don't have any, you know, don't have any moral quality or characteristic.
They can't be universalized.
You can universalize everyone being on time.
You can universalize everybody not raping, stealing, assaulting and murdering and so on.
But you can't normalize.
So things which you can't universalize are not part of any moral continuum.
Things which you can universalize but are not imposed upon you, I call aesthetically preferable actions.
It's nicer if you do it, but you can't shoot people for not doing it.
And then there's universally preferable behavior, which is respect for persons and property that you can use force to defend yourself for violations of, right?
So I want to prove to you how and why, forget all historical examples, forget the, well, communism causes power to accrue at the hands of a few people and power corrupts, which is kind of like a loosey-goosey, foggy domino argument.
You know, it's like the slippery slope argument.
What I want to do is I want to show you, prove to you, establish beyond the shadow of a doubt that communism will always lead to infinite violence.
And the reason is this.
Communism says that economic and political inequality is evil.
People who make more, people who make less, people who don't have enough access to political power, that this is immoral.
Let's just deal with the economic side first.
So they're saying people who make more money than other people are stealing from them.
The capitalist is stealing from the workers, the highly productive workers are stealing from the less productive workers, and everything has to be equal in order for morality to be achieved.
For a moral good to be achieved, for a morally good society to be achieved, everyone has to end up equal.
Now, of course, it's functionally impossible for that to do so.
You cannot universalize that.
And we've talked about Price's Law, Pareto Principles, a bunch of different names for it, which is that the square root of any group of productive people in a meritocracy, the square root produces half the value.
So you've got nine people working...
In sales or on a factory floor, a third of them, the square root, right?
Three of them are going to produce half the value.
If you've got a hundred people, ten of them are going to produce half the value.
If you've got a thousand people, right, you understand how it works.
A hundred of them are going to be producing a square root.
Sorry. If you've got ten thousand people, a hundred of them are going to be producing half the value.
And you only get that value if they get an equal amount of reward for producing half the value.
So that's just the way it works.
It works in all spheres. It works in sports.
It works in medicine, in physics, the business world, the music world.
It's everywhere, always identical.
The square root of people produce half the value.
Yeah, 100 of 10,000.
That's right. Sorry. What is it for 1,000?
33.333.
Anyway, so... So that's a fact.
You've got a company of 10,000 people, 100 of them producing half the value, and 10 of those are producing half that value, which means out of 10,000 people, 10 of them are producing 25% of the value.
It's just the way it is. It's magic to those on the outside.
It's like, how do you write a hit song?
Well, if everybody knew that, we'd all be singers, or at least songwriters.
So when you say, when you apply a standard of universal equality to a system wherein inevitably, absolutely, universally, some people are going to be disproportionately more valuable, You will never be able to achieve what you want.
Now, when you create a morality which is unattainable and unachievable, you are simply giving license to infinite violence.
You are giving license to infinite violence.
Because if you say, look, I have the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and property and so on, then I'm a peaceful guy until someone tries to take my life, my liberty, my property.
And then, morally, you can use, and even legally now, you can use force to defend yourself, right?
So it's passive, it's reactionary, it's limited, and it's instantaneous.
It's a moment, right? This is not chasing some Pegasus-style fantasy of infinite and perfect egalitarianism.
This is simply...
If you're aggressed against, you have a moment of self-defense, it's done, and it's over.
And you have restored your liberties which were threatened, your life which was threatened, your property which was threatened.
And it's done. It's not a license for infinite violence.
It's very specific.
It's laser-like, it's precise, it starts, it stops, it's done.
But if you say violence is legitimate until economic and political equality is achieved, Which it never will be.
That's a license for infinite violence.
Now, people, I believe, whether that's conscious or deep down doesn't really matter, but people create these unattainable standards because they want to be violent.
If you've ever been in an abusive relationship, standards get manufactured in accordance to the ill temper of the abuser.
If the abuser's in a good mood, it doesn't matter what you do.
Everything's fine. If the abuser's in a bad mood, it doesn't matter what you do.
You're going to get abused. They'll find something.
Go around sniffing, looking for things.
They'll find something. Find something.
And then you'll get nervous and tense, and then they'll say, well, why are you nervous and tense?
It's annoying, right? So the rules, the standards, the standards are invented To vent the abuse, to vent the sadism, to vent the cruelty, to vent the violence.
In other words, you don't say, well, I have as an abstract moral standard that everyone should achieve political and economic equality, and I'm just going to regretfully use violence in pursuit of that, because once you define something as moral, you've taken the safety off the revolver.
No, no, no. What happens is people say, God, I love using violence.
Oh! Says the sadist, says the psychopath, the violent.
I love using violence, he says.
Boy, how can I get that going?
How can I get that going? I know, I'll create a standard which can never be achieved.
And I'll say, well, I'll use violence until the standard is achieved.
The standard cannot be achieved.
And therefore, the license for violence is infinite and eternal.
And that's how they roll, and that's why the heads roll.
Now, are you ready for the escape routes to be pinched off?
Well, I hope so, because they're going to be.
Why is it impossible to achieve these standards?
It is impossible to achieve these standards for this simple reason.
And you could say, oh yes, but men and women won't ever be totally equal because of childbirth and because of slightly different brain sizes and because of less testosterone and because of blah.
You could take all of these variables away in some scenario.
Here's the issue.
Let's go back to women getting paid less than men.
If you want women to be paid the same as men because you're saying, well, all groups must have equal income, then what you need to do is you need to have one group called the government forcibly take property from another group, accumulate massive amounts of property and power to themselves in order to solve the problem of political and economic inequality.
In other words, you have to exacerbate political and economic inequality In order to try and solve political and economic inequality.
Which is why it can never functionally be achieved.
You can't ever...
It's by definition.
Everybody's got to end up with five units of political and economic power.
And in order to do that, we have to grant a thousand units of political and economic power to this group.
The states, the czars of equality or whatever you want to call them.
So the goal is everyone gets five units of political and economic power.
In order to get that, we've got to give a thousand units of political and economic power to this group.
Well, you've just blown the whole egalitarian scenario out of the water.
Because now one group in the government has to have a lot more money.
You've got to give them a budget of 5 billion or 10 billion or 50 billion dollars.
Oh, look at that! Now we have economic inequality.
Because some people get that money in the government and other people don't.
And you've got to give them a lot more political power so that they can impose these rules on everyone else.
And therefore, to try and deal with relatively minor political and economic inequality, you've created a massive bulge of political and economic inequality.
Can't work.
It can't work like, oh, well, let's try it again.
It can't work, oh, well, if we could only fix this in human nature.
It can't work. Praxeologically, it can't work in its essence.
If I said to you, I have a plan to create perfect equality by creating massive, violent inequality, you would look at me and say, I think you need to zip on back to that old drawing board staff and start from scratch.
No, no, no, but you see, the way that we're going to make everyone perfectly the same height is we're going to make a whole bunch of people 30 feet tall.
The way that we're going to make everyone equal weight is we're going to feed some people to 700 pounds.
That's how we're going to do it.
The way that we're going to end up with the quality of property is we're going to forcibly transfer billions and billions of dollars to this particular group.
The way that we're going to end up with everyone having an equal say in society is we're going to give massive, coercive political power and control to this group of people.
So that's why it can't work.
It's a logical contradiction.
It's a logical contradiction.
So the fact that it's an obvious logical contradiction tells you that this goal has everything to do with sadism and nothing to do with equality.
That you set up, if you want to have legal scope for your sadistic impulses, you set up a system that justifies infinite violence for a goal that can never be attained.
ever be attained.
It's a very powerful way of looking at morality, So when you're engaged in a moral argument, you are engaged in an argument of who gets to point the gun at whom and when it gets to be fired.
That's all morality boils down to.
Morality is that which you can defend through force or inflict or impose through force.
Now, if you have a reactionary morality, it's very limited in scope.
It's very specific. It's very short-term or instantaneous, right?
You fire the gun in self-defense.
If you're justified, it's done and dusted.
If you have a proactive morality that seeks the impossible, you literally open the doorway to hell.
And the demons that pour through will never stop.
Morality is violence.
Morality justifies.
Safety off. Gun pointed.
Trigger. Figure attention.
And so when people say the good is equality, what they're saying is...
Boy, I'd really love to do evil, but I don't want to get caught.
The best way to avoid being caught and punished for doing evil is to define evil as the good.
to define a goal which requires the initiation of the use of force.
And then you can go around pointing guns at everyone and consider yourself, oh, such a good person.
So I hope that helps.
I hope that makes some sense in the moral discussions that we're having today.
Ask someone what he or she defines as the good, I will tell you where they're happy to have the guns pointed.
Ask someone what he or she defines as the good, I will tell you exactly where they're very happy to have the guns pointed because it's all embedded in the definition of the good, in the definition of morality.
The current debates about morality The racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, all of the hate speech, all of these are debates about which unattainable goal should we go in hot pursuit of in order to vent our sadistic impulses on a usually legally disarmed population.
It's very powerful stuff.
You understand this essence of morality, that morality is coercion.
And that when there's a moral goal that requires its own violation in order to be achieved, in order to claim to approach economic and political inequality, you have to impose through force massive political and economic inequality.
If your very goal is utterly violated by your proposed remedy, It's like having a do-no-harm Hippocratic Oath that requires an atomic bomb on a population center.
You have automatically invalidated your entire approach.
If you want equality, but in order to pursue equality you have to create massive inequality, you've failed in the very basis of the definition.
Can't possibly work, will never work, and it's not designed to work.
It's not designed to work. Any more than, you know, you have some abusive parent and they come home in a bad mood, they're going to find something to get mad at you about and you think it's got something to do with the rules.
No! The rules are simply an excuse to vent the abuse.
Just an excuse to vent the abuse.
That's all it's about. So, I wanted to mention that up front.
Thank you so much for dropping by.
We're not done. Happy to take...
We can take some calls.
You can type some questions.
I'm happy to set the StephBot chatterbrain on whatever it is that's going on for you in a moment.
There we go. All right.
And, yeah, I did a...
You can find it at freedomain.locals.com.
Oh, and by the way, if you sign up for...
Ten months, you get two months free there.
FreeDemand.locals.com.
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