Christopher Hitchens Debates Objectivists --- Capitalism VS Socialism (1986)

hello my name is Phil Gallio and I'm president of the George Washington University Objectivist Club I'd like to welcome you all here this evening and thank you for coming to witness our debate capitalism versus socialism which is a moral system before I introduce our four participants in tonight's debate I'd like to let everyone know that the George Washington University Objectivist Club and the program board are the proud sponsors of this event the Objectivist Club is an on-campus student organization whose goal is to provide the opportunity for all students to become acquainted with ideas which are pro reason pro reality and pro individual rights members will be able will be available at the table in the foyer during the break and for a brief period after the debate to provide information about objectivism and the club our next meeting is November 20th a week from this Thursday next door at the Marvin Center dr. ed Locke professor at the University of Maryland will conduct a question and answer period on objectivism entitled why does man need a philosophy why objectivism the public is invited to attend this free meeting for all those who are interested there will be a reception for tonight's participants immediately following the debate this should give you the opportunity to speak with our four guests on a more personal level it will be held next door in the Marvin Center room 501 now without further delay I'd like to introduce tonight's participants for safor debaters on your left arguing for the socialist position will be Christopher Hitchens and John Judas mr. Hitchens receives his graduate degree in philosophy politics and economics from Balliol College in Oxford England he currently writes a column called the Minority Report for the Nation magazine he is also the current American columnist for the New Statesman the primary publication of the social-democratic political left in London England mr. Hitchens has edited and written several books including his recently published Cyprus he frequently debates conservatives on radio television campus forums and has appeared on William Buckley's television program firing line mr. Judas received his MA in philosophy from the University of California at Berkeley he is a founding editor of the socialist review and is currently senior editor of in these times he is on the editorial board of the progressive and writes political articles for the New Republic mr. Judas has just completed a biography of William F Buckley which will be published by Simon & Schuster in about a year and you're right advocating the capitalist position will be Harry Binswanger and John Ridpath dr. Binswanger received his PhD from Columbia University he taught philosophy for many years at Hunter College in New York City in 1979 he left the academic world to launch the Objectivist forum a magazine devoted to Iran's philosophy and its application to cultural issues dr. Binswanger dr. Binswanger is just published book the iran lexicon is a philosophical dictionary of Objectivism dr. benswanger has written and lectured extensively in support of the philosophy of Objectivism dr. Ridpath received his master's degree in business administration from the University of Toronto and as a PhD in economics from the University of Virginia he is currently an associate professor of economics and social science at York University in Toronto where he has been a recipient of the prestigious award given by the Ontario Council of university faculty associations dr. Ridpath has been an advisor to the National Foundation for public policy development a Canadian think-tank and has spoken at the national policy conferences sponsored by the Canadian Progressive Conservative Party professor Steven Keller director of debate here at the George Washington University has graciously agreed to moderate tonight's intellectual combat professor Keller is with the Department of Communications and theatre and teaches a variety of public address courses here at GW I'm sure you all join me in thanking tonight's participants for taking the time to present their views on this important question and professor Keller for his assistance in planning and executing this confrontation and the GW program board for its sponsorship under debate this evening will be the morality of each posing system socialism versus capitalism the participants are expected to defend each system by presenting the underlying ethical principles upon which it rests they have been selected because they represent extreme polar opposite positions I'm stressing that the issue here is morality not economics alone we are here to debate the fundamental moral alternatives to focus on the essential conflict between two absolutely opposed systems socialism and laissez-faire capitalism thank you [Applause] my guess is as the evening progresses there will be very little question in your mind as to who is seated on the left and who is seated on the right the intellectual enlightenment that will be served to us this evening will probably be very freewheeling at the same time it will have a time and a structure to it the participants have agreed to the following speech sequence and time lengths each speaker alternating back and forth between sides will make an 8 minute opening statement these opening statements will then be followed by each speaker making a 5 minute reply after the opening statements and the reply we very much encourage your participation there will be a microphone set up at which you'll are welcome to ask questions of the participants those questions can be directed to a particular participant or merely to a side following the questioning period there will be a four minute per side closing statement those four minutes can be divided among the participants on that side however they choose starting us off this evening will be mr. Harry Vince winger mr. benswanger [Applause] thank you the opposition between capitalism and socialism is a moral opposition each side must state and defend the moral basis of its political views we champion capitalism as the only moral political system what is morality morality is a code of values to guide man's choices there is only one fundamental choice to live or not to be or not to be if one chooses to live then one must act in a certain way one must achieve certain goals certain values one must satisfy one's needs if one does not choose to live then no action and no values are possible or necessary one simply sits and waits to die life in other words is the ultimate goal at the root of all values life is a self justifying primary this is why you need a morality you need a moral code in order to know how to live and that means that the standard of morality the abstract principle by which we judge good and evil is man's life every species has a specific means of survival set by its nature this is a simple biological fact unlike the lower animals man has the power of choice but he doesn't have a choice over his basic nature and his basic needs what is man's means of survival how does man get his food his shelter is safety his health and so forth well obviously not by any great strength of muscle or by claw or Fang not by instinct but by thinking by reason reason the conceptual Faculty is man's basic means of survival now this is a key to our whole position so I want to stress this reason thinking the use of man's intelligence is his means of survival man survives not by appropriating pre-existing values the way the animals do but by creating new values the means of doing this is productive work and by production I mean the application of reason to reshaping matter to serve human ends it is not true in other words that wealth exists in some static quantity like a natural resource so that when one person gets more another automatically gets less life is not a zero-sum game wealth is created it isn't found and the creation of wealth takes knowledge knowledge is available only through rational thinking thus reason is man's only means of knowledge and therefore his basic means of survival look around us right now we're in a man-made world or in a man-made environment electric lights plastic seats clothes from artificial and natural fibers from all parts of the world a microphone system where did all these things come from they came from the minds of the scientists who discovered the physical laws involved from the engineers who found out how to translate that abstract knowledge into working instruments from the entrepreneurs who risk their capital to bring these things to a market to serve human need and in addition the physical labor under the direction of the intelligence of the entrepreneur to produce them the moving cause here the basic source of all these things is not then the physical labor as such it's not muscle power it is not that we expend more calories of energy per minute than the caveman and that's why we are here in an auditorium lit by electricity and he is in the cave in fact we put forth much less muscular labor today than in any time in human history we even go out of our way to create exercise because we find ourselves doing so little in our work the actual source of wealth then is man's mind man's rational thinking capacity now it is true that some men can attempt to live without using their minds but they can do so only by parasitizing the wealth created by those who did choose to think and work it is still true that man's life depends upon thinking even though some people mooch or steal the products of the thinking of others those others had to think now a morality who standard is man's life then man's life as a rational productive being cannot permit such parents parasitism a rational morality such as we are advocating does not advocate the master/slave relationship or the robber victim relationship but independence men must deal with each other as independent equals each man being an end in himself not the means to the ends of others each man must stand on his own achieve his own values live his own life earn his own happiness he does get it of course a value from the association with others he's not a hermit but let's there be no mistake about what we're advocating we are advocating selfishness rational egoistic selfishness as the proper code for men to deal with each other the reason is that selfishness is required by life as such the opposite of selfishness which means the achievement of your own values is a surrender of your values the sacrifice of a higher value to a lower value or the sacrifice of a value to a zero to nothing now that is obviously the antithesis of life life is a process of value achievement full surrender of all values would mean death anytime you eat a mouthful of food for yourself rather than giving it to some starving Indian beggar you're doing that on the principle not of altruism or self-sacrifice but of egoism now I want to be clear rational selfishness does not mean sacrificing others to yourself that would be inconsistent each man must be selfish each man must live his own life and men must trade value for value when they deal with the other so we hold that man is born free not only politically but morally you are not born in debt to others you have no duties to others you have you are not obligated to seek their happiness you are the owner of your own life your life is not the means to any higher end it is the ultimate end as I said it's your basic choice to live or not man is not a sacrificial animal now in particular we emphatically reject the idea that need is a claim you know the slogan in the advertisement firm each according to his ability to each according to his needs we reject that because it's incompatible with human survival a morality that sacrifices ability to need is a morality that holds suffering lack disease impotence failure as that which entitles one to receive values the needs that must be considered are the needs of the producers if you want to use that language what social conditions are required for man to produce wealth well since the production of wealth I argued is through reason there is only one basic thing required you must respect man's sovereign reason this means one must oppose the use of physical force one must deal with other men by persuasion not by force so a basic principle of capitalism is all interactions must be voluntary because the forest is the anti mind and the anti mind is the anti life thank you thank you very much mr. bin swinger mr. Judas will join the debate I was happy to learn that we would be having a debate between socialism and lace a fair capitalism because I'm uncomfortable debating capitalism rather than lace a fair capitalism since I stand for a fleeting not ideal myself I prefer to have to a contend with another fleeting ideal I should warn you that my views as a socialist are not necessarily representative all socialists in one sense I'm a radical in another sense I'm a conservative I'm radical I suppose in the sense that I don't think that the now what is it now the the German Democratic Republic the East Germany is either democratic or socialist and I'm conservative in the sense that I think that socialism itself will evolve out of capitalism and share many of the features of modern democratic capitalism not only the parliamentary system and civil liberties but also the rudiments of the market and small and medium scale private property as well now what is the moral basis of socialism as I describe it well I'm gonna say something that might seem paradoxical here and that is that the moral basis of socialism is really no different than that of lace a fair capitalism socialism comes out of the failure of lace affair capitalism to realize its own ideals those ideals are basically three one which Harry benswanger discussed is an ideal of man himself of human beings themselves having a higher capability and a an of society itself being structured in such a way is to fulfill that higher capability it's an ideal that comes from the Greeks goes through Hegel the Enlightenment thinkers the other ideals are those of liberty and equality and those were born out the struggle to wrest capitalism out of feudalism Liberty as as the right to be free of inherited obligation to be born not on a manner in which one one's life was laid before him but to have a possibility of doing different things with one's life equality again as being born neither in a particular caste or class a rough equality but an equality based on the absence of an aristocracy now these three ideals of what one might call self creativity equality and Liberty were the ideals that inform Jefferson Jackson Lincoln what we might call the democratic tradition and American thought and the way that they conceived them being fulfilled was in terms of society of equal small producers in which each person or family would be roughly equal would be free and would have the power to control their own destiny in society unfortunately these dreams were not realized instead of a society of small producers we had a society of large producers a society of classes of society in which poverty existed alongside great wealth in other words the society that we know as modern capitalism today and socialism as an idea of the 19th century was born precisely out of the understanding that that Society of lazy fair capitalism could never be and that in order to realize it you would have to have a somewhat different kind of society one in which human beings themselves owned the means of production in which there were no classes now here's the difficult part because as I said at the beginning I'm a radical in the sense that I don't think that that what we have today in the name of socialism is socialism and I think we'll get to talk about that a little more in the debate but but let me just briefly explain what I'm talking about marks in the early socialists always assumed that socialism would arise only in highly industrialized societies with a democratic tradition highly industrialized because only in those societies would people have the time with the productivity exists in other words where people would have the time to rule themselves democratic because only in those societies would people be educated both in trade unions and Parliament to rule themselves but socialist movements first took power not in highly industrialized societies but in a semi industrialized nation with a very scant democratic tradition the Soviet Union Russia and socialism itself as it evolved came to be not so much a specific social system after the name of Marx but rather a means of vindicating or legitimizing a movement that stood for something quite different for socialism most of the societies that call themselves socialism are no more socialist than most of the right-wing movements that call themselves democratic I'm sure you know there there are those now the question is is socialism itself as I'm describing it possible is it possible to fulfill this dream of liberty equality and self creativity there's a problem not only with existing socialist societies and the pawl that they've cast over our notion of what it is to be socialist but there's a problem in fact with Marx himself and the Socialists of the 19th century in my opinion there's a fundamental error in Marx's thought and that is what Marx understood and the heart of what's valuable of Marx is that's that one society evolves out of the other it both absorbs part of another society and it negates part of another society that's going to be true of the of an economy of a socialist society that is we cannot conceive of a what Marx conceived of as a socialist economy was simply the negation of a cap the economy in which no markets existed and in which economic power would be concentrated in the collectivity what happened as a result of that is that the collectivity became the state the state itself was became ruled by a political elite and as Hayek and von Mises and various other thinkers warned one laid the basis on behalf of Marxism one laid the basis for a totalitarianism so what I'm describing as Marxism would have to be in fact a mix of lace a fair capitalism and Marxism what what is called in the world today marked market socialism but market socialism founded upon democracy thank you the debate this evening is in essence about two issues the first issue is why the initiation of physical force is immoral and the second issue is which social system employs the initiation of physical force and which social system rejects it professor benswanger has addressed himself to the question of what are the standards of moral value that we employ and arguing for capitalism I'm going to apply what he has said to the question of capitalism as a social system I'd like to start by observing that a society is nothing more than a collection of individuals who are interrelating with each other according to rules laws customs which pertain in that culture if one asked what is it the basis of these rules and these laws one would discover that at the basis of these things lie certain philosophical principles such as we have been discussing principles with regards to nature of reality the nature of man what man social needs are that is why philosophical principles are at the heart of a social system a social system capitalism socialism whatever you like the essence of these social systems is philosophical principles which underlie them the fundamental identifying characteristic of any social system is the set of moral and philosophical principles which it embodies and this debate really is about the differing principles underlying socialism and capitalism now before discussing capitalism as a social system I want to remark on the state on government as the central social institution it is the enforcer of the laws of the principles which are in place in the culture it is the central social institution it is the if you like dominating social institution in a culture if we would ask ourself what is the government what is the state as a social institution what is its essential fight defining characteristic we would see that the central essential defining characteristic of government is that it is that social institution that has a legal monopoly over the use of force in society that is what government is the central question with regards to any social system therefore is what are the principles dictating the way that the state relates to its individual citizens now what would a moral social system be a moral social system would be one which was based on pro-life principles one which was based on the values that human life requires one that serves man's life rather than destroys man's life one in which the government is limited in its functions to the social requirements of human life in other words the moral social system would be one which acknowledged and protected man's fundamental social need which is for freedom from the initiation of physical force in a social context now it is the concept of man's Rights which captures hands need to be left free from the initiation of physical force and the part of his neighbors when he deals with them in society it is man's right to life liberty private property in the pursuit of happiness which morally sanctions his need for freedom the individual is a sovereign entity his life belongs to him it does not belong to anybody else and it is immoral of anybody else or any social institution to attack him to violate his rights and force him to live for the needs of others man needs freedom to act he cannot be physically barred from acting once he has decided through the irrational use of his mind on the goals he wishes to pursue and if he should succeed in his actions in gaining values he needs the right to own those values and to retain them for his own use he needs the right to private property without property rights no human life is possible the principle of man's rights is the bridge from morality to the question of the moral social system the only moral social system therefore is the system which is based on the recognition of man's rights on the recognition of man's need to be free from physical force the only moral social system is that social system where the government is limited to dysfunction where it never initiates force in order to violate the rights of its own citizens where it supplies the police the Armed Forces and the courts for dealing with rights violations and in which it has no economic functions whatsoever just as state should be separated from church state should also be properly totally separated from economics now the proper definition of capitalism as a social system is to identify the fundamental principle underlying capitalism the fundamental moral principle underlying capitalism is the sovereign individual and his right to his own life and his own property therefore the proper definition of capitalism is it is the social system based on the uncompromising recognition and protection of individuals rights this is a definition in terms of fundamentals now the socialists defined capitalism as a social system where there wage-labour and where there is private property in the means of production these are derivatives it is true that there is private property in the means of production it is true that there is wage markets a market for wage labor but these are expressions of every individual's right to act on his own in his own interest and trade accordingly and voluntarily with his fellow man so to identify capitalism as a social system exhibiting wage labor and private ownership of the means of production is superficial the fundamental and proper definition of capitalism is that it protects every man's right to his own life now the implications of properly defining capitalism are first of all that there is in a true capitalist society no connection between economics and politics economic power which is earned by producers by virtue of their ability to prove Saval use which other people will buy is a positive it is a benefit to everybody to have a present in our society people who are capable of earning economic power political power and the other hand is based on the power of a gun on the power of the government to actually violate men's rights coerce them expropriate their property and it is a negative and there is no connection in a capitalist social system if it's properly understood between business and government secondly there is no ad vacations in capitalism of the right to goods per se people only have the right to act freely they do not have the right to the goods of others there is no such thing as a right to a job in other words to force another person to give you a job a right to an education in other words to force another person to give you an education or a right to any such possessions at all now given this is obvious that capitalism has never yet fully existed in human history it lies ahead rather than behind the 19th century in Britain in the United States or the closest approximation of it and we see great productivity and benevolence the moral is the practical but today we have no examples of capitalism in the world we only have mixed systems which in fact our systems of incompatible principles principles of statism such as the socialist put forward and some vestiges of freedom now it is my view that they haven't having completed our comments that the we as a capitalists have done what is required of us which is to make a case for capitalism that is our case for capitalism is the only moral system system available to man thank you [Applause] Thank You mr. Redpath mr. Hitchens we'll be making the final eight minute statement Thank You professor I think that the organizers of this meeting has to be congratulated on the Brio and also I think on their timing we are met today as witnesses of the decomposition of a political regime in this capital city which uses the language of capitalism and a free enterprise employs the ideology of selfishness and self-interest and stresses the rhetoric of less a fair while bloating and expanding the role of the stage debauching the Treasury in the currency and relying upon a state within a state for the secret conduct of Merson policy there may and I think there will not be any convergence of ideas between socialist and capitalist schools this evening but this need not prevent us I think from seeing that a regime may combine the basest features of statism and collectivism with the basest elements of utilitarianism and libertarianism - and I think if we recognize that we may have ground for debate what is it I better get on with it to be a socialist necessary conditions in my submission rather than sufficient ones must include the following it is necessary to hold firstly that all divisions of class nation race and sex are in the last resort man-made and can be man unmade are in no sense part of a divine or natural ordinance and that we are members like it or know of one race the human race that civilization is in fact second a cooperative enterprise whether the cooperation is coerced as it was in most of recorded history or voluntary as has been occasionally found and can still be found in our century but that it is a cooperative enterprise cannot be denied there is no other means that's to say of civilization that the third that the limits of creative are set by the limits of nature and the very few human actions can therefore be said in the last instance to be entirely private the earth is in point of fact a common Treasury as the English Levellers used to say in the Puritan revolution hoping that it was so it is in fact the case and again whether we like it or not whether we care to treat it as such or not for that there is no God and no supernatural that this recognition obliges obliges us morally to maximize the felicity of the one life that we are permitted and fifth that the principle of from each according to his ability or her ability and to each according to his or her need is an easily realizable one prefigured already in human society by the working principles of the bourgeois family that unique engine of thrift enterprise the transmission of morality operates precisely on the principle of from each according to his or her ability and to each according to his or her need there is in fact no other way that a family could decently all possibly be run I make no moral judgment as between the decency and the possibility such a such a distinction would be OTS Marxists ascribed freedom as the recognition of necessity and only then proceeded to say that the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all a stipulation that obviously implies its corollary that the education must be educated that's why I stress the above as necessary conditions rather than sufficient ones we do not ask for these things to be true we might even prefer them not to be but we must recognize them as given and as such sufficient conditions I think Center on the question of class Marxists recognized that history is indeed the contest of competing social forces and that so is the present such a competition all attempts to describe society as merely organic and harmonious or as a free competition or race between individuals with differing attainments and endowments fail because they ignore this simple and obvious fact which again we do not preach we simply recognize insist upon and make as a point of departure let me if I may quote you from Marx and Engels preface to the German ideology in 1845 where they say that they and their supporters and I'm quoting now we do not preach morality at all they do not put to people a moral demand love one another do not be eager to set cetera on the contrary they are very well aware that egoism just as much as selflessness is indefinite circumstances a necessary form of the self assertion of individuals I think this shows clearly enough that Marxists understand what Randy ins term as if they discovered it the virtue of selfishness but as Marx and Engels also wrote in the same period in their Holy Family they saw the need for selfishness to be transcended I'm quoting again directly from the Holy Family 1845 also if enlightened self-interest is the principle of all morality man's private interest must be made to coincide with the interest of humanity if man is shaped by environment his environment must be made human it is on this apparent paradox that we take stand and against the neo-kantian the early marxist argued that morality could not be derived from abstract first principles of read or write but had to correspond to the real conditions of society nowadays I think this argument seems quaint in in its intensity and fervor because evolution itself and specifically the evolution of modern capitalism into a new symbiosis with the state has borne in upon the dullest line the recognition that if humanity does not yet think in terms of a common destiny it has at least had to think in terms of a common fate to put it at its most vulgar materialist level we are all collectivized by the same ozone layer the thermonuclear world is a great leveler and just as there can be no purely moral conscientious objection in a thermonuclear conflict nor can there be any merely ethical or self-interested collaboration with it everybody after all in this auditorium is a uniformed conscript you cannot conscientiously object to the nuclear conscription that has made of each of you our soldiers and put you in the frontline while the real soldiers are in the bank this this this is this recognition of reality enforces a sense of of collective humanity upon us to gain we do not preach this we recognize it socialism said Oscar Wilde would free us from the distressing necessity of living for others the feelings of compassion and solidarity and responsibility after all are no less instinct in our species than those of self-interest it's precisely because these instincts of solidarity and compassion represent a human need a need to be of help to others point very well made by Professor Richard Kipnis in his famous book the gift relationship because they are a need there is no need to make the sentimental presumption of altruism or to wrestle with the tautology that altruism represents Marx and Engels I'll close on this in the preface to their 1848 manifesto made capitalism a series of almost lirikl compliments and in fact few proponents of the capitalist system have ever summarised its virtues theirs of creativity innovation the bursting of feudal and antique tribal fetters as well as Marx did but Marx and Engels also saw what since become obvious the capitalism is not the last word that in freeing mankind from ancient obligations it made him a prisoner of market forces which also developed their own mythology and ideology their own mystification and their own bondage like the comrade Judas I also believe that capitalism is the harbinger of socialism that it's necessary not merely to contest or negate its ethical claims but to transcend them to build upon them and from this if I may coin a phrase dialectic I think we might get a truly human and unny lusion morality that was free from superstition or religion on that realizable aspiration I rest my case thank you [Applause] Thank You mr. Hitchens the next four rejoinders will be five minutes in length and they will follow the same sequence of the first four it will be after these speeches that the audience will begin its questioning period I'm a little bit at a loss since both of my opponents or our opponents seemed to be presenting themselves as the Republicans used to to the Democrats me too we're for freedom to where for some form of lazy fair integrated with socialism we are for liberty and we both share a dislike of Ronald Reagan well we all four agree on that one point that Ronald Reagan is a disgrace probably for different reasons probably for different reasons I didn't vote for him either in either election because I thought he was a phony and I agree with mr. Hitchens that he preaches the rhetoric of lazy fair or at least of half fair capitalism but then his actions seem to be dictated by the New York Times so I view him as Reagan Carter in Reagan's clothing in effect that's for concrete application but there seems to be so much rushing to agree with us that I wonder are we doing better than I thought people used to be absolutely knocked off their chairs by someone advocating laissez faire and maybe we've become a little bit too successful so let's bring this down from the clouds a little bit we advocate the immediate abolition of the anti trust loss we advocate the immediate removal of the welfare system as fast as Kent as possible perhaps over four or five years to the total elimination of all welfare we advocate the immediate abolition of the Federal Trade Commission the Zurich Securities and Exchange Commission the federal depository insurance company the ccc icc just about any alphabet agency you can bring up when we're talking about something very different from socialism we're talking about untrammeled complete free trade where people can buy and sell as they choose as long as they do not initiate physical force against others now I wanted to just respond to a few implications of ideas in the socialist side that I want to disavow we do not hold equality as a value or virtue or ideal if by equality you mean anything other than equal rights before the law that term is use very ambiguously equal rights before the law so that there is one system of justice in the law courts for rich and for poor is exactly what I've been arguing for today all the rights are on the side of the poor and the workers and all the suffering is on the side of those big capitalist businessmen they are considered guilty in any confrontation without the need for proof or evidence they're considered guilty because they're greedy capitalists so equality before the law yes but equality of income equality of life equality in any other sense absolutely no people have different abilities people work with different degrees of intensity and effort and success and to some extent just plain luck and those qualities have no moral significance are those inequalities have no moral significance whatsoever I have never in all my years and philosophy come across any argument as to why there is any moral issue involved in one man having a thousand times the wealth of his neighbor I would like to know on what basis is there something wrong with that and on what basis is it better if the incomes or Wealth's are equalized because there is no such argument as to the family being altruistic I don't belong to a family we are not Reagan conservatives we do not stand up here in champion family we champion the individual I would like to find someone I can marry I don't plan to have children and if I have someone that I love whom I marry it won't be someone who joins with me on the basis of from each according to his ability to each according to his needs it will be trading value for value both economically and in terms of spiritual values finally the idea of class and collectivism we totally disavow there is no such thing as a class there are just individuals and I would claim if I had time that that's based on the denial of free will their view is based on determinism the idea that if you're born in such and such a situation you have to have the ideas and values of your parents we uphold free will that a man makes himself thank you [Applause] well I wonder whether you found it as difficult to understand Christopher and I as I sometimes found find it difficult to understand the Objectivists I think that we both have to a certain extent a a metaphysics that we understand and that may not be comprehensible to people outside at least I found I found myself at a loss at times trying to understand the meaning of such words as life and selfishness as I listen to my fellow debaters discuss capitalism let me try to restate if I will some of my argument and while I do that I'll refer to what points that have been made first I I see capitalism as a social system as a historical system not as an ideal that has not yet been realized as a social system that he that evolved out of feudalism and that has a certain history and it's a history that we can learn from in in the United States the the crucial part of that history is the one that really is at stake here it's the history of the early republic because in those days were born the ideals by which we still live by which were governed as Christopher mentioned hypocritically so that so that the crucial question for us is how can those lace a fair ideals be realized and what happened in America what happened during the Civil War why was it that we fought a war based on the idea of all men are created equal and out of that let's say 60 years later we had a society in which there was gross inequality now are there classes our people do people have free will i-i think here that there's a confusion of normative and description and and descriptive terms whether we're talking about how life ought to be and/or how life is whether in fact the society is organized a certain way and whether it ought to be organized a certain way and what i'm trying to say is that out of this attempt in our Jeffersonian Jacksonian period the period of the civil war to create a society that was free and equal much different society got created one in which there were great not only differences in income but differences in income that were related to differences in the relationship that people had to private property and particularly to large-scale private property and that's what we talk about when we talk about classes and that helps us understand certain things about the society now the state our governments necessary something that that again was an issue for Tom Paine and is an issue for us today there are certain there are certain reasons I think why we have to have a government today and why it does have to play a certain role in the economy and I don't mean just antitrust laws I mean the experience of the great depression of depressions that that that began in the early 19th century panics leading up through the depression of the 1890s the depression of the 1930s depressions which were caused by the anarchy of the capitalist system the the only solution for which was some form of government regulation whether we like it or not and today I would suggest that that in many to a great extent our own problems as an economy our declining balance of trade if I can use such a mundane and dirty expression you know no time when we're talking about much more high-level thing it is partly related to the fact that that our economy is structured so differently than the Japanese and that we haven't sufficiently used our government in a creative economic way to increase our own productivity but rather under the name of lace a fair have only used it to to protect certain forms of greed and largesse so I hope we're not speaking entirely past each other and that we can have this a rueful discussion of what is at stake in this issue between capitalism and socialism [Applause] mm-hmm well these I've debated socialism missus my tenth time these are definitely the nicest socialists I ever debated however I think I'll take off the gloves a little bit here because in fact there is fundamental difference on the stage and I want to make it explicit what it is before I do that I would like to say that the socialists been putting forward the values that they say socialism embraces I don't really think they have made an argument for those values it's one thing to state your values it's another thing to try and show why those values serve man's life and I really don't believe that they did that I thought that the idea of Liberty that they put forward which meant that we were to be born free of inherited duties and obligations as a very small component of what it really means to a man to be free so that I really am not convinced that the Socialists have got into the ethics of the case for socialism let alone the view of man that might underlie the ethics that they would have had to have argued for the principle to each from each according to his ability to each according to his need is really an endorsement of the morality of altruism the morality that some people to live the virtuous life should voluntarily give up some of their wealth so that others who have less can benefit it is morality of self-sacrifice and they should argue for that morality that is the morality that socialism attempts to institutionalize in society they have not acknowledged the role of force in a socialist culture they have said a few things which hint on that professor Hitchens for example I guess it isn't professor is it referred to civilization throughout history was a matter of cooperation and he said as an aside coerced or otherwise it's a big difference he also quoted Marx where he said that Marx had said that private interest was alright but it must be made to mesh with the general interest now what does this mean this means that the Socialists in fact are advocates of what we can properly call a statist society a society where the state has a big function to play in essence where the state is going to take over by expropriation the private property of the producers of a country and run that private property according to what they think is in the best interests of everyone socialism rests on an enormous act of expropriation of property which is a violent act and so consequently the Socialists have really not addressed the questions to the role of the state in their ideal society it is no accident that every society in history whether there has been yet achieved a perfect social Society or not every attempt has ended up of course with a very very large role for the state to play which is a denial of the rights of men and if man's need for freedom in a social context and is exactly the opposite of what we are talking about it turns out as mr. Judith said that we notice he claims that the anarchy of capitalism caused depressions which set up a stage for the need for government well in fact there is a very good debate which I think is conclusive that in fact it was not the market that caused depressions was interference with the market that caused depressions and it was early statism which then turned and used the depressions excuse for more statism but the fact that matter is they are advocates of statism they in essence say you know it turns out that if we leave people free there are unfortunately problems which develop and so consequently we have to bring the state to bear in order to create the beautiful world so the essence of what the Socialists are talking about in my judgment is give me the power of government give me the gun because I want to build a beautiful world according to my blueprint and I have plans through which I will course everybody who would not voluntarily cooperate with these plans into living into the in the beautiful future which they apparently do not understand now we're opposed to that we are standing up for freedom in a serious way we are standing up for the principles this country was founded on we are standing up for the principle of man's and alienable rights and we are taking them seriously and not willing to compromise them that's all now I want to conclude by saying that mr. Judith started and he said that he referred to laissez-faire capitalism as a fleeting ideal it is not a fleeting ideal despite their claims that capitalism has already existed it has not for the reasons I presented but it can't exist ideas determine human history and that's what this debate is about about ideas for the future of this culture and hopefully if the ideas we're putting forward eventually hold sway in this culture we will be half fortunate enough to see a true less a fairer deal it will be not a fleeting ideal by any means at all thank you Thank You mr. Redpath the last speaker at this stage of the debate will be mr. Hitchens following mr. Hitchens presentation the audience questioning will commence mr. Hitchens I regret that what I say will be a little more fragmentary than my opening presentation because there are a number of challenges that have been offered to our side which I mustn't let pass but could only deal with one at a time first I specifically did not state that the principle of from each etc I think we can agree to call it as embodied in the bourgeois family was a principle of altruism it was simply a principle of necessity there is no other way that the family could be run and therefore this principle prefigures the extension of such a principle to the society itself and we can see it as it were in the womb of the old as angles would have said and was in fact over fond of saying now this there's a very great and unrecognized I think in their own minds confusion in our two opponents here about capitalism liberty and private property in the relationship between them the history of capitalism and even more so this should be said of the history of capitalism in its imperialist phase it's heroic period is the history of expropriation it is the history of the robbery of private property from millions and millions of people Marx observing this process in the Communist Manifesto remarks on the tremendous advances in productivity and technique and innovation that were thereby enabled but he does point to the fact that many many people who hitherto had owned land properties or were were were expropriated collectivized and made into the modern products he thought he thought the price was worth paying he thought capitalism was an advance over what had gone before but let nobody tell you that capitalism cannot coexist with the expropriation of private property it can and does this I think would be would assist us to answer an even more intriguing question which is why it is that capitalism has only ever evolved successfully in a very few countries I think this is very probably because I have to be condensed here because it's evolution Benicio was based on the robbery of other countries wealth and productivity let me again remind you of what Marx said about India a tremendous expropriation by British imperialism of of the resources of capital accumulation from India an enormous an enormous input to the British industrial revolution still the heartland of the evolution of capitalism but a fantastic desolation of private property in India again Marx thought it was probably in the long run justifiable because India would in the end succeed in coming together as a state and overcoming the feudal ties imposed by the Mughal emperors that had been sundered by the imperialist invasion but don't let anybody suggest you for instant that capitalism does not regard people as means probably more than any other system in history it has made a virtue of that ability of the ability to conscripted spur create and to dis possess in order to become an engine of wealth and that is why finally the responsibility for the overweening power of certain states is that historically speaking of capitalism because in the countries where capitalism either did not or because of imperialism could not take root capital accumulation had to be done another way you can't not have capital after all though you can not have capitalism and capital can be accumulated one where can be accumulated the other and in the oriental despotisms of the of the east and the modern versions of those capitalism had to be substituted for by the state but that is because of the failure capitalism it's intimately related to it let me say I can't blame them for everything the sits perfectly simplistic to say the capitalism represents freedom from state power because both in the countries of its success and in the countries of its failure the relationship with the modern state the giant state the state that can regard the citizen as its property for large numbers of practical purposes is very close indeed and I think this what I've said should be enough in itself to rebut the ridiculous accusation that only socialists are interested in violence I could start all need it for the for the vindication of their program I could really could stand here all night and read the list of names of people who've been murdered by capitalist regimes when they are in the interest of illicit private property and governments based on it is felt to be threatened there is no length to which capital will not go in those contingencies fascism was capitalism the structure of the capitalist state in Germany survived and coexisted to survive at and in Italy and in Spain survived survived and coexisted with the fascist period throughout I don't mean to say that capitalism is fascism but it's but capitalism can coexist with any system and its attitude to Liberty is as instrumental and contingent as its attitude to equality I see I have no more time but I'm prepared to defend anything I've said a greater length in the subsequent period thank you [Applause] at this point in our debate we would very much like to encourage your participation where Marshall McLuhan in this audience II would however smile because we would request a view so that this whole enterprise if I might use that word is memorialized on tape that you excuse those around you and pop up and go to the microphone to ask questions as you will and if we could take over the next minute or so and give that to people who know that they would indeed like to ask some questions would you please then wind your way to the mic and form some kind of a Oh haphazard line behind it and we will begin the questioning process shortly yes we are will be going straight into it my charge if I might make one to the questioners is that they make their questions brief that they indeed be questions and that they of course allow the participants in adequate time to respond after each brief question the side or the person that it is directed to will have an opportunity of course to respond at which time after which I will turn to the other participants and ask them if they would like to comment on the question as well with your assistance will be able to have as many questions as you are motivated to ask and will be able to move the program along crisply with the first gentlemen like to ask a question yes one for each side if I may for the capitalists I'm curious to know why in modern society you view physical force as the exclusive or even the most insidious form of coercion in a society in which you may build a home and find a toxic waste dump built next to it if there's no such thing as zoning laws do you think that you can legitimately restrict your analysis to physical force and which side is most guilty of its imposition for the socialist side one question at a time please thank you I'd like to answer your real question which is the first part your example does not illustrate if there is a toxic waste dump if someone dumps toxic waste next to your home that is physical force that is the infusion of deadly chemicals into your property and perhaps into your body and if you can go into court and prove that you can have the government in a capitalist society make him compensate for you make him remove it and make him compensate you for any damage what I think you want to contrast it with is so-called economic power why do I consider physical force the only form of coercion versus economic power where a big business General Motors supposedly can make you buy their cars IBM can make you buy an IBM computer I have to leave it to the Socialists in the audience or on the stage to give better more convincing examples because I can't hold it in my mind the reason I make such a distinction well advertising supposed to be brainwashing is there's another example of economic power the reason why I make a distinction is that physical force is the only thing that can cause you to that can cause your reason to be inoperative it nullifies your reason remember my whole case was life as an ultimate value reason is the major means of achieving it and therefore no force because the force is the anti mind if somebody comes up you have a fantastic commercial to try and get you to buy some product that is not anywhere in the same universe from someone coming up pointing a gun at your head and saying give me your wallet one leaves your mind free to function and it's up to you to judge the validity of the computer the advertisement or whatever the other deprives you of the ability to act on your thinking and that is the the very nature of coercion I mean that's the meaning of coercion making you act against your will well your will is the ability to act according to your minds decision so that's why there's a life-and-death difference between force and any other kind of social influence I have to give one other example it's considered force in some quarters if you're not given help when you need it well that is completely wrong if a woman that I want to sleep with won't sleep with me that is not force if I break my leg through my own carelessness or through lightning striking it and someone else won't heal it that is not imposing force upon me force means force it means physical contact with another's person or property against his will without his consent and that's the only thing that can negate a mind and therefore destroy a life thank you mr. benswanger socialist response I would like to at least initially limit the questioners to one question of peace you're welcome to move to the end of the line and get ready to ask your next question thank you so much your single question sir yes I'd like to pick up on a claim that mr. if I can call him mr. Redpath said that the socialists were just stating values and didn't get into their ethics i'd like to advance a thesis and have both sides comment on this and that is that there is a very basic metaphysical difference between the Objectivists and the Socialists the Socialists seem to be saying that a socialist system is a historical inevitability and talk about morality is superfluous the Socialists are just pointing out a trend that must lead to socialism the Objectivists are claiming that man is historically autonomous there's no historical context that necessitates the evolution towards any political system social ethics are needed to help us decide which political and economic system we should adopt my thesis then is that there is a basic metaphysical difference between the Socialists and capitalists in this debate a much more cleverly asked double question with the socialists like to respond first well I suppose the the different let me put the difference in another way our our capitalist opponents or I can call them that I think that don't have a conception of history upon which they base individual possibilities and values whereas what I would say of our view is that it is framed in terms of what is historically possible and the ideals that socialists believe in are themselves ideals that have arisen through various historical struggles so that I think that's the difference I think it's a difference between if I may put it a kind of a timeless metaphysics of man and a historical philosophy thank you I think that in some respects you're right I don't know that all socialists take the deterministic view that Marx took but I think you have hit on a point that the Socialists certainly the ones that are historical determinists may not find it necessary to make arguments for the pursuit of different human values because their view is that these things are innocents historically conditioned whereas the Objectivists are certainly advocating a view of man which regards men's free will is the crux to all of his moral choices and regards man is in control of his destiny at every moment in history so in that sense we don't have what was just referred to as a historical perspective if you like human beings are human beings the question is what is the nature of a human being how does a human being live what does he require what are NEADS of human life and our argument is that this has been true of human beings through history and it's not a historically relative thing that men have required freedom all through history and the fact that they have had freedom so infrequently through history is a sad commentary on human history up until this time but it does not prove the historical Lee determined set of values that some socialist determines determinists believe is the case thank you next question please let me first of all say that I think that the most promising thing we've heard tonight for the future of our social system is that mr. benswanger has agreed not to have children my question to you mr. Binswanger my question to you tonight the question tonight is one of moral justification I'd like to ask you how you can morally justify and you attempted to a system which admits to to the justification of inequality economic inequality where the accumulation of wealth the ownership of property does not necessarily as you said need to be equal perhaps if all things were equal to start with if everyone was starting out on the same starting line the the sir mr. benswanger has informed me that he objects to the ad hominem common and will not be answering your question and I would hope and I would hope that we could keep the level of the debate not only clever but on the point of the issues involved next question please listen to the know sir you've asked your question thank you I'm going asking those hurry and John the capitalist system I think it's I believe the anglo-saxon society mostly time thinking exploitation historically with tell us comparing with the theory of the Greek or Roman society I'm talking about this modern capitalism where is this monopolize exploit are not only early Apollo's this practice practice too much exploitation to people however the capitalism is is almost 10 percent up in class so I like to ask you a question please the capitalist is our moral because Jesus was king of the earth also was sympathize with the socialism true on earth I if the question is true or not that Jesus was a socialist I've I would think you have a good case to make the case that we are making for capitalism is a case for a social system as I said in my remarks that hasn't yet existed all that you hear about the alleged evils of capitalism with regards to exploitation in regards to monopolies and all of this it's quite frankly a complete misrepresentation of what capitalism is it is not relate to what we are talking about at all but I will say in regards to you know bringing in Jesus that the fact of the matter is that the case we are making is a radical attack on the ethics of judeo-christianity we are rejecting the cross we are rejecting sacrifice we are in rejecting state and forced sacrifice we are standing up for man's mind for reason for this earth and for freedom so you're right Jesus and we are on opposite sides a rejoinder yes those is my microphone life yeah yeah there's a trite school of thought that does try and maintain that you can derive socialism from Christianity and I hope I've said enough to make play that I think that's that's nonsense Christianity is historically the ideology of feudalism and of slavery and with this it's been very strongly compatible and I think remains as to whether Jesus was or was not I don't know because I have no view of whether he existed or said any of the things that are attributed to him some of the more popular remarks attributed to Jesus I would say uncontroversial remarks tending towards a view of the brotherhood of man are of course pre-christian wholly admirable points about the interdependence of the human race and the need the need to help others for one's own sake these are uncontroversial pre-christian and obviously easily a similar ball to socialist morality thank you next question there are around 40 countries in the world that call themselves socialists today cluding and some of those who have been perpetually the most appalling deeds of violence and against and human beings in our century and the the amount of violence seems be an adverse proportion the end non socialists and elements mixed into the particular society even if then the argument socialists are true should we risk a system that can obviously go so easily off the rails off the rails metaphor just a just to show how complicated things are here let me first make a remark about this last controversy which is that I have to dissent from my comrade Hitchens view of Christianity and religion even though I am on the Judeo rather than the Christian side of the controversy you have to remember Christianity is also the the the religion of the early Puritans I mean there's a lot of you can make it you can make a case for socialism coming out of a certain strain of Christianity though to equate one with the other would be silly and trite now socialist societies today both sides are in kind of a peculiar position which is whenever we accused the capitalist of doing something terrible they just say well we're not talking about that we're talking about our capitalism and we're in the same problem here and let me try to make that point though analytically rather than normatively or morally Hegel had it as a concept of the cunning of Reason do you know that that idea it's a the idea that what people intend to do that history isn't the sum of individuals intentions and that you cannot so that you cannot you cannot understand a society necessarily by by its name the fact that there's so many societies call themselves socialism doesn't mean that the that the historical movement that began in the 19th century has come to fruition in the 20th century instead we have a kind of example of the of the cunning of reason where a name has been appropriated just as the Nazis appropriated the name socialism it was at the time the name of a popular philosophy in a popular politics you have to remember things were not as they are today an American to be called a socialist in the Europe was something desirable it was a way of winning working-class support so the Nazis called themselves in that national-socialist there are social democratic parties around the world that have very little in common I think in South America there's several that are that are you like on almost national capitalist in nature so a terminology doesn't necessarily make a doesn't necessarily make history and that you have to explain the term and understand how it came to be rejoinder just a quick comment at while you're I gather your question is what are the socials have to say about the fact that approximations of their ideas seem to have resulted in so much destruction in this 20th century and have so many figure nodes built in and the way to achieving whatever yeah and their answer is well their ideals have been misappropriated in the 20th century well I can that may or may not be the case depending on what particular version of socialism one is putting forward but the fact of the matter is that Karl Marx for example is not unrelated to what has happened in the 20th century Hegel is not unrelated to what has having a major influence on the Nazis and I must say that even though I would never I am not familiar with the writings of my opponents but they haven't said anything to me to suggest that they personally endorsed the bloodshed of the 20th century but I will say this the prints some of the principles that they share are shared by the two tyrants of the 20th century that have caused that bloodshed they are status socialism of any kind is a statist philosophy and what has caused the bloodshed in the 20th century is different versions of statism so rather than have to say well we're a different version of this Creed which has in fact caused so much destruction as we at least we can sit here and say we reject the whole creed all together thank you mr. chairman mr. cammeron if I could crave your indulgence if I was allowed to speak at this point I think I could I could economize on later questions tending to the same point and clear up an earlier misrepresentation of our position all at once may I try yes you male it is the single most vulgar misrepresentation of Marxism to say that it's determinist the person who says that of it that convicts himself at once if not never having opened a book by Marx or by Marxists most it was before its time and remains the most determinedly and a validly anti determinist mode of thought in philosophy most famously and you'll see why I'm stressing this in a second but Marx began his his most famous account of history and revolution the eighties Romero flew a Napoleon by saying men make history but they do not make it under circumstances of their own choosing they make it but under circumstances directly transmitted and engaged from the past the traditions of all the dead generation see them famously added way like a nightmare on the brain of the living that's not determinism self-evidently not determinism no let me say why I think this bears on the question of violence men make history but they can't choose when and how they're going to make it if it was up to me and I think I would carry john judas with me here the the russian revolution would have happened in 1905 when there was a large democratic revolution led by socialists that was put down by the tsar and which with tremendous bloodshed in repression and which paved the way for a ghastly imperialist war in which millions of russians were killed under the leadership of the system of hereditary god-given monarchy which was the system with which capitalism in Russia was at that time coexisting now it is not therefore by the socialist choice that revolution took place in Russia at the close of that gigantic war and bloodletting and gigantic tearing a part of the fabric of Russian society to the point where cannibalism had reemerged in the countryside an emergence in my submission that is not unrelated to the later course of events in the Soviet Union it's quite simply on historical to say that well revolutions devour their children you said you then surrender the need to analyze three and you can simply look at history as the working out of that proposition very good means of economizing on thought and one that I think should be repudiated very thoughtful Objectivist thank you a brief rejoinder and then we're going to return to the questioning all right let's look at this in principle let's not try and say well maybe because it was raining in South Yemen when they took over it was a bad time for them to take over and that's why socialism failed and maybe because Afghanistan went this way and because the Cuba's dependent on one crop and because you know there's always an explanation ad hoc as to why every single socialist nation it takes socialism seriously ends up with concentration camps and mass slaughter let's look at it in principle in principle what else can you expect if the government owns all the property in the country if there is no right to private property if you cannot own your own printing press for example from which you can criticize the government if the state owns all the printing presses all the radios if the means of making a living is in the hands of one group which maintains it by force the government so that he who does not work shall not eat becomes a government edict what else can you expect if you make it a crime to train on the black market in other words to engage in capitalist acts yet people have to engage in these black market activities in order to feed themselves what else can you expect but more and more black market and more and more repression to keep it down there's no escape from a system of any state as kind leading to disaster if it gives all that power to the government now the capitalist system says the most dangerous thing in the world is a government let's restrain it let's keep it down let's give it only one function the function of protecting your freedom from criminals and foreign aggressors let's not let it mess in any other area of your of your life let's just have the lise in the law-courts and let's not have it be also your employer and the owner of everything so in other words we believe in very very drastically restricted limited government now since government's the culprit here doesn't that point to the answer to your question thank you next question yeah since there is a need for brevity I'll make my question as short as possible if one does an historical analysis of the situation as exists in the world of present there's an increasing tendency in the part of third-world countries to gravitate towards the socialist ideal why of it maybe and I'd like both sides of the fence to address the question as to why this is so is it's an ineptness and a part of radicals and intellectuals or is it clear analysis of historical perspectives capitalist I'd like to start yeah I've observed that myself I of course would put a different coloration on it than the other side I think the more advanced and intellectual countries have learned that socialism just does not work so the only place that socialism can be sold now is in very backward countries that interact still following the fashions of the 1930s but it's you notice in Italy for example they came to the brink of euro communism and backed off in France they had a socialist government and backed away from it I don't think you can fool the people anymore the way you could in the 30s in an industrial civilised society say by saying you know we want socialism because we don't want to promise you pie in the sky we want to make you rich here on earth and socialism is the way to make you rich that was the original promise of socialism money food shelter work but you know a good job and rewarding income now that's just you know been completely disproved by quote historical analysis by fact and the only place you can get away with it now is with people who aren't that well educated now I hope that's not taken as an ad hominem that's my hypothesis as to you know why it is that is not possible to spread true socialism in an advanced society rejoinder that reminds me of one of William Buckley's comments in an interview in 1961 when somebody asked him why whether he thought that what was at the time that Belgian Congo they were fighting for their independence whether they whether they could ready for democracy and he said well they'd be ready for democracy when they stopped eating each other then not to be so much to be funny as to signal my disagreement with a perspective of mr. benswanger the my own view is that the reason that the third-world countries have that socialism has been popular is that you have to concede of the world economy as a gigantic division of labor in which most of those countries economies have been pretty much at the behest of the core economies in the world the advanced capitalist countries in which and in which they've been structured in such a way as to benefit those core economies but not not to benefit themselves so you have sort of single crop agriculture primarily for export you have you you have no internal market in those countries and the the ruling elites that go away to school and come back and get it into their heads that in order to change that around they have to have some form of a command economy where they take control of their own society and their economy now when they've done that and when they've experimented with the wall sometimes they found that they do need elements of a market and then foreign capital is attractive but that's the reason that that element of the socialist idea appeals in those countries thank you next another questioner please ask a question thank you my question is directed to mr. Hitchens in reference to the comments he made the last part of the formal debate you gave the argument that because capitalism in practice requires expropriation and robbery that there are so few developed capitalist States and gave the example of the alleged British expropriation of India this leads me to wonder from what of India did the British expropriate the steam engine and the many intellectual developments which sparked the Industrial Revolution in that country if material goods were the Fundamental prime cause of the Industrial Revolution why didn't the Indians have their own Industrial Revolution centuries before the British came along in summary I asked didn't the Industrial Revolution require reason and intellect as its prime cause rather than expropriation would that the question was as clever as it sounds have you served or was anyone else here read Edmund Burke's speech on the impeachment of Warren Hastings you might care to turn it up it's a it's a kind of a classic conservative text in there you will find laid out in some detail the description of the enormous transfer of wealth from India to the islands in the North Sea known as Great Britain or an island today but was in fact so alarmed by this process it wasn't out of compassion for India that he mentioned it he was alarmed that the process was was in fact enriching a whole new class that would corrupt Parliament in Britain and not without reason and that's why Hastings had to be impeached that is how some of the capital that led to the Industrial Revolution was accumulated that's what I said now it's also true that India got the steam engine as a result probably rather earlier than it would have otherwise which is why Marx said as I said that the British were probably justified in putting down the Indian mutiny of 1857 because that mutiny was not a struggle for independence it was an attempt to restore the Mogul Imperial authorities who were a relatively less advanced mode of production now isn't that clear if I didn't make it clear before let me take the opportunity to make it clear now that is the complement Marxism pays to the origins of capitalism I haven't yet though had an answer to my question about why capitalism did not emerge in such very large and theoretically prosperous and productive areas of the globe and I do think that it is a question that deserves an answer from the capitalists side rejoinder I'm having somewhat of trouble hearing every word descending in the sound system the acoustics we have some trouble hearing you over here but I heard a couple of things that I will respond to colonialism is the best thing that ever happened to the colonies we view the colonialization of India and the rest of the world by England primarily and then later by other countries including ourselves as the extending of wealth and civilization to backward reason regions all the interactions in essence I mean I can't say that you know every single one of them but the essence the thrust of those interaction was free trade voluntary employment for people who were otherwise start as one other aside concrete from this the Arabs have no right to that oil the same principle oil under the feet of people who don't know what property is who don't have a civilized society who are nomads or dictatorships is not the property of their little king it is the property of any body who comes in and produces it and it was the American and Western oil companies that produce that oil even they even went made contracts with those little petty dictators even though you know they morally had no claim to that oil and the same principle goes to any other natural resources natural resources belong to those people who make use of them and there was the civilized countries that took things that were just junk and garbage to the rest of the world and paid them for them the transfer of wealth was both ways and much more to the benefit of the backward people as sure common sense would tell you than it was to England India needed England a thousand times more than the other way around now the challenge which I hadn't actually hadn't heard before was why didn't capitalism develop in large areas of the world like India where it didn't develop because we believe that capitalism does not develop out of historical necessity but out of people's ideas capitalism reached its apex in the United States and 1776 because the ideas of the people were those of John Locke every one of the founding fathers read john locke they read Aristotle they read Cicero this is known fact the language of John Locke's Second Treatise of government is in the independence of the Declaration of Independence the political philosophy of England at that time is what caused capitalism to exist here now needless to say the opposite political philosophies in place and in areas like India they are mystics they don't believe in reason they don't believe in nature they don't believe in the natural rights so the answer is where there is a pro capitalist philosophy their capitalism will flourish where there isn't it won't thank you next question I'd like to ask this question of mr. Hitchens and it's a question that seems to be purely practical but really it does have a theoretical underpinning as well it applies a theoretical question and that is I have a question about how you would see how we ought to best make the transition to socialism and in particular what I'm worried what I'm wondering about is how far you take what you took as your first principle of socialism and that was the divisions of class sex and race ought to be ignored in the establishment of it and what I'm wondering in particular is how would you look upon for example affirmative action quotas and hiring and the reason I ask that question is it seems to me that socialist ideology Marxist ideology has a tendency and perhaps this is not fair to accuse anyone on the stage of this but other theorists to view man as an economic entity as filling the way to look at man in order to understand his place in society is to look at the way he interacts with other people on a material basis and and so that this is my question how would you look at that particular way of establishing social justice yes I think I think it's a certainly a two part may be a tripartite question on the on the matter of transition you asked me to deal with an enormous subject I would say this sketchily and ask to be forgiven there are it is it is the stated position of many conservatives ideologues in Western capitalist Europe that the the economies of Western Europe have in a sort of vegetable evolution already become social-democratic and though I don't think that claim is wholly true there is a great deal of truth in it there are countries are the one most often cited cell cited for convenience is Sweden where though the vast majority of the economy remains in private hands and in fact in the hands of the same families as controlled Swedish capitalism in the 19th century same names rather like German capitalism before and after Nazism and during of course the there is not more than a welfarist conception of society in Sweden a very nearly a social democratic coexistence so that's one case where in one word almost caused an evolution in other cases my theory is the ones I've cited the Soviet Union and I would add these two these China and Cuba where capitalism simply broke down and there was no force or agency ready to take over the running of the countries but the communist and socialist movements but capitalism abandoned and evacuated and failed in those countries leaving no alternative that you could say that was a revolution or you could simply say it was a collapse calling a transition would certainly be weak I have a feeling I'll be taken up on some of this but that's my broad-brush transition statement on the apparent paradox in what I say about over looking or transcending differences among the broad family of the human race my own view is that that is compatible with making a stand for affirmative action because it is a willed compensation for past wrongs and one has to be able to identify and compensate a given group that isn't to discriminate in the pejorative sense actually it is the racialist who cannot discriminate I've never understood by race lists are accused of discrimination it's the one Faculty of which they're not capable they think that all members of a certain race have the same characteristics and don't share the ability to discriminate among them as humans as to the economic man no look we don't believe that you are what you eat it can be shown that you you aren't what you don't eat and if and if you don't you are not the corollary wouldn't and and pray there's a lot too much of that a lot of it in the capitalist world but no we realized that there are other needs are many of them non-material let me suggest an example to you the case of the person who gives blood and does so voluntarily and without a reward there's no sacrifice involved in that you don't lose a pint of blood by giving one but you do help another person and you don't have to pause it altruism you have fulfilled your own need to help and be of service without giving up anything and without a cash transaction and you've increased the general welfare I regard that is as a socialist attitude to one's fellow creatures and perfectly unsentimental thank you a briefly joinder I agree with much of what you said in the middle that racism is the failure to discriminate I think that racism is a form of collectivism which says that the collective that counts as a racial one as opposed to Marx for instance who thinks the collective that counts is an economic one but we reject all those and say that collectives don't exist individuals exist and they are to be judged on the basis of their own attributes their own choices and their own actions so I would maintain that only individualism is an antidote to racism as in in relation to the giving blood example well sure there are I don't personally find the giving blood to be that easy I tend to faint but if you take an action where the cost to the individual is so minimal that he in fact won't miss it and someone else is benefited by it fine there's no argument against that whatsoever it's very nice a lot of things in human life for that way like when you smile and say hello to somebody or a good morning how are you doesn't cost you anything that expresses benevolence and respect for human life but that has nothing to do with the question of people are dying right now in hospitals in many the world including nine states where certain people could save them but it would require them giving a lot of their blood maybe one person if we took these got a rare blood type here's the question I posed one person as the Rh negative Type O or something if we took all his blood we could save five other people's lives now that's not far-fetched is that do you have the right to take all his blood do you have the right to take one drop of his blood if he doesn't consent capitalism says no so remember when you say well capital have repeatedly we've heard the theory capitalism historically didn't work out there was nothing to replace it capitalism came gave rise to problems as if capitalism were some independent entity remember when we're talking about capitalism we're talking about freedom we're talking about free trade we're talking about non interference so what they're really saying is well we tried leaving people free but it just didn't work out so we had to come in with a different system thank you thank you in deference to the line of questioners and the late hour and at least the heat on this stage if the subsequent questioners could please state the question very briefly and if the respondents to the questions could as Edwin Newman might ask on Meet the Press please give the briefest of answers something around the category of one minute each we could then work our way through many of the questioners who are still in line next question please dr. bender you gave a brief response regarding how the two each according to his need related to the family I was not really as satisfied with your answer I am and what I have read of objective is rice nicely to your question sir my question is what does objectivism have to offer to children to people who do not have a fighting chance as adults what does it have to offer to quadriplegics to people who are weak and cannot help themselves thanks what to socialism have to offer to those who are able to help themselves and how do the quadriplegic and the weak hope to survive if the producers are throttled so that they can't produce there's really two questions there one is the issue of parents and children and from each according to his ability and so forth the parent-child relation is not the relationship of adult citizens to each other which politics is primarily concerned with certainly a parent owes the care to its child and the child owes gratitude for that care if it's if it's provided properly but the point is that you are not a child and the government should not treat you as a child there is such a thing as reaching the age of reason but under some forms of government that age is never reached in other words they never believe that you reach adulthood and have rights it is not altruism but love that the parent-child relationship exhibits it is not of - each according to his need so you wanted me to cut out okay thank you response place wasn't really to us I think mine is well personally wonderful next question please I have a question for mr. Hitchens you've spoken on the subject but I'm still not sure of your opinion on the most basic level of this debate it seems to me has address the question do the ends justify the means in your opinion do they I don't find it possible to say no to that question I think there's more absurdity and more contradiction and less interest in the study of history revealed in someone who simply says no to that than there is to someone who says yes but someone who says yes clearly invites about eight further questions which you haven't asked I mean I don't mean to be either evasive or elusive next question please thank you very briefly vague I could say yes the ends justify the means if the ends are rational then the means will be rational to it it's a rather vague question which i think is what mr. Hitchens was saying next question thank you Thanks both sides seemed to address themselves to the rights and responsibilities of humans to each other but there's very little said about the rights and responsibilities of humans to the environment they live in and I think the poor record of both 18th century rather 19th century capitalism and modern socialism as far as the environment demonstrates that neither side has very little to offer in that area and I'm wondering what both sides feel that their policies have to offer to those of us who are who are concerned about the environment ok modern capitalism has more to offer than 19th century capitalism and at some extent more than than modern socialism so I would say as I the I tried to lay out in that my eight minutes that some modern socialism as I was trying to describe it will will itself evolve and emerge out of modern capitalism and therefore will incorporate such of the environmental movement today as we see so I you know I I accept your point response if if in essence is the survival human survival the living of human life requires to go out into the world and produce values for the sustenance of life in a certain sense in essence life involves attacking the environment that's what so that's what we're doing so that capitalism in essence is a system which on a leash people's energies to go out and try to make what they can from the world the values of human life requires the record of productive activities such as you were mentioning earlier the dumping poisonous weights next door to you etcetera examples of pollution that actually do attack individuals right to their own life their own health etc are examples of the fact that the principle of human rights has not been fully understood it was not even fully understood in 1776 and it has not been consistently applied in legal philosophy at to this day so there are a lot of problems to be dealt with but when we first need in order to deal with those problems as an understanding of what the principle of man's rights means thank you my friend are you here with your second question yes all right I would like all right the all right the gentlemen we're going to go for two more questions my deepest apologies to those others in line my fear is there would be people in line for a very long time and in an effort to bring the program in at approximately two hours unless either of the two gentlemen would like to defer they'll be the last two questioners yes my question for the socialists do you in your opinion was Stalin more an aberration or a product of socialist history that preceded him it would be true to say that you couldn't have had Stalin without Lenin those who make that accusation are I would say you know in an almost banal and self-evident sense correct it is also true that for the consolidation of his power Stalin find it necessary to physically exterminate and liquidate what had been Lenin's Bolshevik Party thus I think there's no one-sided answer to that question I think that with the exception of the People's Republic of China which is now about it seems on its own interpretation of the capitalist Road there is no other socialist community where the name of Joseph Stalin is regarded with anything but execration whether or not this is an irony I leave it to you to decide thank you final question my question is for the capitalist what kind of political system would you would get away with welfare since he would take the altruism of the recipients I mean the recipients would have to vote against cutting their own benefits right so how would you change the Constitution in what way could you sir clarify the question well it seems to me that the if the new system would have to get away with some civil liberties in order such so that the recipients of well given that the population now votes half-and-half between getting away with the welfare or not then the deciding factor is obviously the people that actually have welfare now what kind of constitutional amendments would you suggest such that the welfare recipients would not have the similarity of choosing for this boat or no boat okay I think the assumption of your question is that you could not get rid of the welfare system unless you took the vote away from those who are its beneficiaries I don't agree with that I don't think that people vote their pocketbook I think that if you convince people that they're better off in a different system they'll vote for it and as a matter of actual fact welfare recipients are not a happy lot and as a matter of actual fact they would be far better off under a capitalist society and if we could convince a majority of the electorate including both welfare recipients and non welfare recipients of that simple point then welfarism will fade away and it I don't believe that economic interest determined ideology the other way around this man will have to be altruistic to give away their benefits no no more selfishness in India I'm saying I'm saying it is not in your self-interest to be a welfare recipient and it's pretty obvious all you have to do is just look at them in the main they're a pretty mangy lot and if you had a child would you tell it and it suppose it could live in one of two societies in one society half the people on welfare and it could qualify for welfare the other society no one can qualify for welfare but the standard of living is ten times that of the other of the welfare society and growing daily which one would you tell your child to enter so we believe that self-interest is the interest of life and that life is not life as a passive vegetable but the life of productive activity so we don't think the mere fact that someone writes you a check means that that's to your self-interest thank you so much [Applause] [Music] in this final section of the debate each side will have four minutes to summarize its ideas however it so chooses and however it wants to divide up that time mr. judas and mr. Hitchens will begin this process and they will both speak for a combined total of four minutes well I'm still trying to figure out what the difference between us is that is precisely and and I think I keep coming back to this point about metaphysics versus a historical view of human beings and I think that that what I find in the in the philosophy that I've heard tonight is what what I'd call a kind of reification of capitalist man where the traits that we associate with early capitalism of exchange self-interested exchange pursuit of profit are understood in such a way as to encompass all of human nature itself so that you get a kind of philosophy extolling selfishness but I think that that's such an understanding both slights human nature and tramples upon language as it continues to say language takes a holiday when you talk that way and what we mean ordinarily by such terms as selfishness and altruism and taking care of people and loving each other and being worried about about the others besides ourselves become lost point number two I don't think that the that the the objective is if I could call you that I have much to offer society today it is hard for me to find even grounds for debate between you since your proposals as far as I can see would in effect take us if they were successful take us back to the early 19th century and I said don't simply don't think it's possible I think that I think that your philosophy is hopelessly utopian I think I'll just close by insisting on a point we've both made in different ways we regard capitalism as a system not as an idea and therefore something that is a proper study of analysis of history and of economics as well as of that of political competing ideology that is I think that is the insight that the Objectivists deny themselves and end up with the I would have thought superfluous injunction to humans to be self-interested an injunction that does not seem as one looks around to be very much needed an idea that doesn't appear to require an enormous amount of reinforcement though it might is something require more justification that it's had this evening capitalism as a system has coexisted with and in on occasion sponsored feudalism monarchy fascism slavery apartheid and on a development it has also been the great engine of progress development and innovation in a certain few Heartland countries this means that it must be a system studied as a system and not as an idea its claims to be the sponsor of freedom are purely contingent it's good propaganda but it's not very good political science in the same way those of us who take and hold to the socialist view in this century a perfectly well aware of the appalling crimes and failures as well as of the defeats that our movement is associated with my final submission I think would be that no one bothers to counterfeit a bad currency and that the claim of so many people who don't deserve it to the socialist title gives one hope for a more enlightened application of the idea in the non capitalist future I just want to briefly remark on the the level we're getting down to is now a metaphysical epistemological which is very good it's a good sign the earlier statement now reiterated by mr. Hitchens that he's not a determinist seems to fly in the face of what he just said which I take his strict determinism it's it does not cease to be determinism if you say man makes history and then add to it of course what he makes of history he had to make of history determinism is precisely that view that human actions certainly have effects but determinism claims that the causes are necessary so that in a certain situation only one result is possible if you're here tonight determinism says you had to be we assert free will we start that you have particularly the free will to use your mind to think for yourself or not and that that's why we reject the entire methodology of the socialist side in this debate the idea of historical analysis that capitalism is not an AI an idea and so forth it's basically an issue of freewill versus determinism my concluding remarks I'd like to address two things said by mr. Judas the first was that objectivism hasn't much to offer society today it's hopelessly utopian literal meaning of utopian means no place is not of this reality well in in fact we have been arguing that as the socialist ideas that are not of this reality we are trying to argue that capitalism is a social system that requires required by the actual real nature of man and hardly hopelessly utopian it is in fact of tremendously practical importance that men come to understand their social requirements I would also like to say that I hope objectivism has a lot to offer society today because in the absence of that I have a very bleak view of what you will be I also want to address the question of still trying to figure out what is the difference between us well I'll tell you what the difference is between us in essence the difference between us is the difference between the Enlightenment and the 19th century German Romanticism ideas matter ideas determine the course of human affairs this country is the product of a certain set of ideas it is the product of the eighth and century enlightenment ideas I love this country I'm not from this country I'm a Canadian but I love this country and I love the values that it stands for I love the Statue of Liberty and the Declaration of Rights and Disneyland and the Constitution and everything that's unique about America which is actually the product of the best attempt so far to adopt a philosophical outlook which the Enlightenment stands for the philosophy of Aristotle of Locke of Cicero the philosophy of man's natural rights and that's where we stand where they stand is with the philosophy of Rousseau Kant Hegel Marx the British Fabian socialists it's a completely different tradition it's a European tradition of thought now the fact the matter is that these two philosophical traditions are at opposite ends to each other their direct odds with each other and one of these systems at least is false so I'd like to conclude by saying that the benefit to man of discovering true ideas and following them is legion and this country and its greatness is an example of what can happen if you just approximately discover some true ideas but the damage and destruction to man of discovering false ideas is also legion and you have two sets of ideas up before you tonight and it's now up to you to decide which set of ideas deserve your allegiance thank you [Applause] [Music] I am certain I'm certain your applause or on behalf of all the participants the participants and and most particularly the Objectivist club would like to thank you for your forbearance and your patience and your enthusiasm this evening I think a fair plate of intellectual nourishment has been served up to complement that plate and perhaps soothe your thirsts if you would please join us in room 501 of the Marvin Center we would look forward to engaging you in discussion thank you so much [Applause] well Jeff will check I must have repeat wouldn't he if I where's mother well I'll be back in two seconds like I guess we'll see you out here [Music] but she got this

Channel: Rand Stuff

Views: 111,600

Keywords: ayn rand, objectivism

Id: u2MMFaz9Gyg

Length: 125min 36sec (7536 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 06 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/SteadfastAgroEcology]

Submission Statement:

Not only is it always a delight to find some unseen Hitchens material, but it's also a rare pleasure to find myself in disagreement with him because I know I'm going to hear some arguments worth my consideration.

If you haven't seen this event, I'm sure you'll enjoy it. And, if you hear something notable, drop a comment with a timestamp or hyperlink so we can share in its analysis.

[u/tkyjonathan]

Epic talk.. Obvs the objectivists won.

[u/reydn2]

Sex is not 'man-made', as Hitchens posits, it is 'nature-made'. 'Comrade' Judis, huh?

A concentration of power will always lead to corruption, sadly.

I am of the opinion that democracy is the worst form of government, but that it's the best form we've implemented so far. I don't think our current systems are sustainable and that fundamental changes are required, but socialism isn't it. Hopefully the Game B thinkers can cook up a prototype soon, because we need it.

[u/desipis]

I found it ironic that Ridpath argued that those on the socialism side failed to posit argument for the morality of their cause, given the lack of argument on the objectivists side. I didn't hear any argument to support the morality of property rights.

This is a common flaw in objectivist positions. They just assume the morality of property rights. I never see them examine the justifications for property rights, the limitations of those justifications, and hence the implied limitations that ought to exist on property rights.

They also argue that their system doesn't involve the use of force, that everything is voluntary, yet they ignore the necessity of using force to enforce property rights against those who don't voluntarily accept the property rights of others.

[u/zombiegojaejin]

Randians representing the importance of capitalism is like Mormons representing alcohol being bad for you: correct on the point at hand, but backed up by a whole lotta irrationality.

[u/Slow_Industry]

Mediocre arguments from both sides.