WEBVTT NOTE III. Economics and the Revolt Against Reason 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 CHAPTER III. ECONOMICS AND THE REVOLT AGAINST REASON 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:10.000 1. THE REVOLT AGAINST REASON 3 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:16.000 It is true that some philosophers were ready to overrate the power of human reason. 4 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:22.000 They believed that man can discover by ratiocination the final causes of cosmic events, 5 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:29.000 the inherent ends the prime mover aims at in creating the universe and determining the course of its evolution. 6 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:30.200 Education. 7 00:00:30.200 --> 00:00:35.100 They expatiated on the absolute as if it were their pocket watch. 8 00:00:35.100 --> 00:00:40.640 They did not shrink from announcing eternal absolute values and from establishing moral 9 00:00:40.640 --> 00:00:45.420 codes unconditionally binding on all men. 10 00:00:45.420 --> 00:00:48.880 Then there was the long line of utopian authors. 11 00:00:48.880 --> 00:00:55.220 They drafted schemes for an earthly paradise in which pure reason alone should rule. 12 00:00:55.220 --> 00:01:00.960 They failed to realize that what they called absolute reason and manifest truth was the 13 00:01:00.960 --> 00:01:03.740 fancy of their own minds. 14 00:01:03.740 --> 00:01:10.040 They blithely arrogated to themselves infallibility and often advocated intolerance, the violent 15 00:01:10.040 --> 00:01:13.560 oppression of all dissenters and heretics. 16 00:01:13.560 --> 00:01:18.720 They aimed at dictatorship either for themselves or for men who would accurately put their 17 00:01:18.720 --> 00:01:21.400 plans into execution. 18 00:01:21.400 --> 00:01:27.440 There was, in their opinion, no other salvation for suffering mankind. 19 00:01:27.440 --> 00:01:28.880 There was Hegel. 20 00:01:28.880 --> 00:01:34.200 He was a profound thinker, and his writings are a treasury of stimulating ideas. 21 00:01:34.200 --> 00:01:39.720 But he was laboring under the delusion that Geist, the Absolute, revealed itself through 22 00:01:39.720 --> 00:01:41.480 his words. 23 00:01:41.480 --> 00:01:45.500 There was nothing in the universe that was hidden to Hegel. 24 00:01:45.500 --> 00:01:51.000 It was a pity that his language was so ambiguous that it could be interpreted in various ways. 25 00:01:51.000 --> 00:02:00.000 The right-wing Hegelians interpreted it as an endorsement of the Prussian system of autocratic government and of the dogmas of the Prussian Church. 26 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:09.000 The left-wing Hegelians read out of it atheism, intransigent revolutionary radicalism and anarchistic doctrines. 27 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:15.000 There was Auguste Comte. He knew precisely what the future had in store for mankind. 28 00:02:15.000 --> 00:02:20.000 And, of course, he considered himself as the supreme legislator. 29 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:26.400 For example, he regarded astronomical studies as useless and wanted to prohibit them. 30 00:02:26.400 --> 00:02:31.940 He planned to substitute a new religion for Christianity and selected a lady who, in this 31 00:02:31.940 --> 00:02:36.360 new church, was destined to replace the Virgin. 32 00:02:36.360 --> 00:02:41.680 Comte can be exculpated as he was insane in the full sense which pathology attaches to 33 00:02:41.680 --> 00:02:46.040 this term, but what about his followers? 34 00:02:46.040 --> 00:02:52.720 Many more facts of this kind could be mentioned, but they are no argument against reason, rationalism 35 00:02:52.720 --> 00:02:54.880 and rationality. 36 00:02:54.880 --> 00:03:00.080 These dreams have nothing at all to do with the question of whether or not reason is the 37 00:03:00.080 --> 00:03:05.920 right and only instrument available for man in his endeavors to attain as much knowledge 38 00:03:05.920 --> 00:03:08.760 as is accessible to him. 39 00:03:08.760 --> 00:03:13.920 The honest and conscientious truth-seekers have never pretended that reason and scientific 40 00:03:13.920 --> 00:03:17.160 Research can answer all questions. 41 00:03:17.160 --> 00:03:21.800 They were fully aware of the limitations imposed upon the human mind. 42 00:03:21.800 --> 00:03:27.160 They cannot be taxed with responsibility for the crudities of the philosophy of Hickel 43 00:03:27.160 --> 00:03:31.680 and the simplism of the various materialist schools. 44 00:03:31.680 --> 00:03:37.160 The rationalist philosophers themselves were always intent upon showing the boundaries 45 00:03:37.160 --> 00:03:42.000 both of aprioristic theory and of empirical research. 46 00:03:42.000 --> 00:03:47.920 The first representative of the British political economy, David Hume, the utilitarians and 47 00:03:47.920 --> 00:03:53.160 the American pragmatists, are certainly not guilty of having exaggerated the power of 48 00:03:53.160 --> 00:03:55.880 man to attain truth. 49 00:03:55.880 --> 00:04:01.200 It would be more justifiable to blame the philosophy of the last 200 years for too much 50 00:04:01.200 --> 00:04:08.840 agnosticism and skepticism than for overconfidence in what could be achieved by the human mind. 51 00:04:08.840 --> 00:04:14.600 The revolt against reason, the characteristic mental attitude of our age, was not caused 52 00:04:14.600 --> 00:04:20.600 by a lack of modesty, caution and self-examination on the part of the philosophers. 53 00:04:20.600 --> 00:04:25.600 Neither was it due to failures in the evolution of modern natural science. 54 00:04:25.600 --> 00:04:30.600 The amazing achievements of technology and therapeutics speak a language which nobody 55 00:04:30.600 --> 00:04:32.280 can ignore. 56 00:04:32.280 --> 00:04:38.360 It is hopeless to attack modern science, whether from the angle of intuitionism and mysticism, 57 00:04:38.360 --> 00:04:40.880 or from any other point of view. 58 00:04:40.880 --> 00:04:44.960 The revolt against reason was directed against another target. 59 00:04:44.960 --> 00:04:49.720 It did not aim at the natural sciences, but at economics. 60 00:04:49.720 --> 00:04:54.840 The attack against the natural sciences was only the logically necessary outcome of the 61 00:04:54.840 --> 00:04:57.640 attack against economics. 62 00:04:57.640 --> 00:05:03.680 It was impermissible to dethrone reason in one field only and not to question it in other 63 00:05:03.680 --> 00:05:06.880 branches of knowledge also. 64 00:05:06.880 --> 00:05:12.800 The great upheaval was born out of the historical situation existing in the middle of the 19th 65 00:05:12.800 --> 00:05:13.800 century. 66 00:05:13.800 --> 00:05:20.120 The economists had entirely demolished the fantastic delusions of the socialist utopians. 67 00:05:20.120 --> 00:05:25.600 The deficiencies of the classical system prevented them from comprehending why every socialist 68 00:05:25.600 --> 00:05:32.160 plan must be unrealizable, but they knew enough to demonstrate the futility of all socialist 69 00:05:32.160 --> 00:05:35.400 schemes produced up to their time. 70 00:05:35.400 --> 00:05:38.440 The Communist ideas were done for. 71 00:05:38.440 --> 00:05:44.200 The socialists were absolutely unable to raise any objection to the devastating criticism 72 00:05:44.200 --> 00:05:48.920 of their schemes and to advance any argument in their favor. 73 00:05:48.920 --> 00:05:53.360 It seemed as if socialism was dead forever. 74 00:05:53.360 --> 00:05:57.340 Only one way could lead the socialists out of this impasse. 75 00:05:57.340 --> 00:06:04.320 They could attack logic and reason and substitute mystical intuition for ratiocination. 76 00:06:04.320 --> 00:06:09.720 It was the historical role of Karl Marx to propose this solution. 77 00:06:09.720 --> 00:06:15.680 Based on Hegel's dialectic mysticism, he blithely arrogated to himself the ability to predict 78 00:06:15.680 --> 00:06:17.680 the future. 79 00:06:17.680 --> 00:06:23.340 Hegel pretended to know that Geist, in creating the universe, wanted to bring about the Prussian 80 00:06:23.340 --> 00:06:26.520 monarchy of Frederick William III. 81 00:06:26.520 --> 00:06:30.160 But Marx was better informed about Geist's plans. 82 00:06:30.160 --> 00:06:35.360 He knew that the final cause of historical evolution was the establishment of the socialist 83 00:06:35.360 --> 00:06:37.600 millennium. 84 00:06:37.600 --> 00:06:42.440 Socialism is bound to come with the inexorability of a law of nature. 85 00:06:42.440 --> 00:06:48.680 And as, according to Hegel, every later stage of history is a higher and better stage, there 86 00:06:48.680 --> 00:06:55.120 cannot be any doubt that socialism, the final and ultimate stage of mankind's evolution, 87 00:06:55.120 --> 00:06:58.320 will be perfect from any point of view. 88 00:06:58.320 --> 00:07:05.120 It is consequently useless to discuss the details of the operation of a socialist commonwealth. 89 00:07:05.120 --> 00:07:08.960 History in due time will arrange everything for the best. 90 00:07:08.960 --> 00:07:12.760 It does not need the advice of mortal men. 91 00:07:12.760 --> 00:07:19.360 There was still the main obstacle to overcome, the devastating criticism of the economists. 92 00:07:19.360 --> 00:07:21.720 Marx had a solution at hand. 93 00:07:21.720 --> 00:07:27.440 Human reason, he asserted, is constitutionally unfitted to find truth. 94 00:07:27.440 --> 00:07:32.600 The logical structure of mind is different with various social classes. 95 00:07:32.600 --> 00:07:36.840 There is no such thing as a universally valid logic. 96 00:07:36.840 --> 00:07:41.460 What mind produces can never be anything but ideology. 97 00:07:41.460 --> 00:07:46.920 That is, in the Marxian terminology, a set of ideas disguising the selfish interests 98 00:07:46.920 --> 00:07:50.080 of the thinker's own social class. 99 00:07:50.080 --> 00:07:55.400 Hence the bourgeois mind of the economists is utterly incapable of producing more than 100 00:07:55.400 --> 00:08:01.720 and an apology for capitalism. The teachings of bourgeois science, an offshoot of bourgeois 101 00:08:01.720 --> 00:08:08.800 logic, are of no avail for the proletarians, the rising class destined to abolish all classes 102 00:08:08.800 --> 00:08:12.840 and to convert the earth into a garden of Eden. 103 00:08:12.840 --> 00:08:19.080 But of course the logic of the proletarians is not merely a class logic. The ideas of 104 00:08:19.080 --> 00:08:25.760 of proletarian logic are not party ideas, but emanations of logic pure and simple. 105 00:08:25.760 --> 00:08:32.200 Moreover, by virtue of a special privilege, the logic of certain elect bourgeois is not 106 00:08:32.200 --> 00:08:36.480 tainted with the original sin of being bourgeois. 107 00:08:36.480 --> 00:08:41.720 Karl Marx, the son of a well-to-do lawyer, married to the daughter of a Prussian junker, 108 00:08:41.720 --> 00:08:46.960 and his collaborator, Frederick Engels, a wealthy textile manufacturer, never doubted 109 00:08:46.960 --> 00:09:03.180 It is the task of history to describe the historical conditions which made such a crude 110 00:09:03.180 --> 00:09:06.000 doctrine popular. 111 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:07.720 Economics has another task. 112 00:09:07.720 --> 00:09:13.800 It must analyze both Marxian polylogism and the other brands of polylogism formed after 113 00:09:13.800 --> 00:09:25.960 2. THE LOGICAL ASPECT OF POLYLOGISM 114 00:09:25.960 --> 00:09:31.100 Marxian polylogism asserts that the logical structure of mind is different with the members 115 00:09:31.100 --> 00:09:38.280 of various social classes. Racial polylogism differs from Marxian polylogism only in so 116 00:09:38.280 --> 00:09:44.620 So far as it describes to each race a peculiar logical structure of mind, and maintains that 117 00:09:44.620 --> 00:09:50.560 all members of a definite race, no matter what their class affiliation may be, are endowed 118 00:09:50.560 --> 00:09:54.320 with this peculiar logical structure. 119 00:09:54.320 --> 00:10:01.100 There is no need to enter here into a critique of the concepts social class and race as applied 120 00:10:01.100 --> 00:10:02.920 by these doctrines. 121 00:10:02.920 --> 00:10:08.880 It is not necessary to ask the Marxians when and how a proletarian who succeeds in joining 122 00:10:08.880 --> 00:10:15.680 the ranks of the bourgeoisie changes his proletarian mind into a bourgeois mind. 123 00:10:15.680 --> 00:10:21.680 It is superfluous to ask the racists to explain what kind of logic is peculiar to people who 124 00:10:21.680 --> 00:10:24.760 are not of pure racial stock. 125 00:10:24.760 --> 00:10:28.720 There are much more serious objections to be raised. 126 00:10:28.720 --> 00:10:34.160 Neither the Marxians nor the racists nor the supporters of any other brand of polylogism 127 00:10:34.160 --> 00:10:39.540 ever went further than to declare that the logical structure of mind is different with 128 00:10:39.540 --> 00:10:43.320 various classes, races or nations. 129 00:10:43.320 --> 00:10:48.760 They never ventured to demonstrate precisely in what the logic of the proletarians differs 130 00:10:48.760 --> 00:10:54.400 from the logic of the bourgeois, or in what the logic of the Aryans differs from the logic 131 00:10:54.400 --> 00:11:00.520 of the Non-Aryans, or the logic of the Germans from the logic of the French or the British. 132 00:11:00.520 --> 00:11:06.080 In the eyes of the Marxians, the Ricardian theory of comparative cost is spurious because 133 00:11:06.080 --> 00:11:12.060 Ricardo was a bourgeois. The German racists condemned the same theory because Ricardo 134 00:11:12.060 --> 00:11:18.480 was a Jew, and the German nationalists because he was an Englishman. Some German professors 135 00:11:18.480 --> 00:11:24.360 has advanced all these three arguments together against the validity of Ricardo's teachings. 136 00:11:24.360 --> 00:11:30.640 However, it is not enough to reject a theory wholesale by unmasking the background of its 137 00:11:30.640 --> 00:11:31.720 author. 138 00:11:31.720 --> 00:11:37.240 What is wanted is first to expound a system of logic different from that applied by the 139 00:11:37.240 --> 00:11:39.560 criticized author. 140 00:11:39.560 --> 00:11:44.920 Then it would be necessary to examine the contested theory point by point and to show 141 00:11:44.920 --> 00:11:51.920 where, in its reasoning, inferences are made which, although correct from the point of view of its author's logic, 142 00:11:51.920 --> 00:11:57.920 are invalid from the point of view of the proletarian, Aryan or German logic. 143 00:11:57.920 --> 00:12:04.920 And finally, it should be explained what kind of conclusions the replacement of the author's vicious inferences 144 00:12:04.920 --> 00:12:09.920 by the correct inferences of the critic's own logic must lead to. 145 00:12:09.920 --> 00:12:25.920 Then there is the fact that there is disagreement concerning essential problems among people belonging to the same class, race or nation. 146 00:12:25.920 --> 00:12:32.920 Unfortunately, there are, say the Nazis, Germans who do not think in a correct German way. 147 00:12:32.920 --> 00:12:47.920 But if a German does not always necessarily think as he should, but may think in the manner of a man equipped with a non-German logic, who is to decide which German's ideas are truly German and which un-German? 148 00:12:47.920 --> 00:12:57.920 Says the late Professor Franz Oppenheimer, the individual errs often in looking after his interests. A class never errs in the long run. 149 00:12:57.920 --> 00:12:59.640 Long Run. 150 00:12:59.640 --> 00:13:03.520 This would suggest the infallibility of a majority vote. 151 00:13:03.520 --> 00:13:10.560 However, the Nazis rejected decision by majority vote as manifestly un-German. 152 00:13:10.560 --> 00:13:16.020 The Marxians pay lip service to the democratic principle of majority vote, but whenever it 153 00:13:16.020 --> 00:13:23.160 comes to a test, they favor minority rule, provided it is the rule of their own party. 154 00:13:23.160 --> 00:13:28.520 Let us remember how Lenin dispersed by force the Constituent Assembly elected under the 155 00:13:28.520 --> 00:13:34.920 auspices of his own government by universal franchise for men and women, because only 156 00:13:34.920 --> 00:13:38.840 about one-fifth of its members were Bolshevik. 157 00:13:38.840 --> 00:13:44.800 A consistent supporter of polylogism would have to maintain that ideas are correct because 158 00:13:44.800 --> 00:13:49.860 their author is a member of the right class, nation or race. 159 00:13:49.860 --> 00:13:53.340 But consistency is not one of their virtues. 160 00:13:53.340 --> 00:13:58.960 Thus the Marxians are prepared to assign the epithet proletarian thinker to everybody whose 161 00:13:58.960 --> 00:14:01.260 doctrines they approve. 162 00:14:01.260 --> 00:14:07.800 All the others they disparage, either as foes of their class or as social traitors. 163 00:14:07.800 --> 00:14:12.380 Hitler was even frank enough to admit that the only method available for him to sift 164 00:14:12.380 --> 00:14:18.080 the true Germans from the mongrels and the aliens was to enunciate a genuinely German 165 00:14:18.080 --> 00:14:22.160 Program and to see who were ready to support it. 166 00:14:22.160 --> 00:14:27.920 A dark-haired man whose bodily features by no means fitted the prototype of the fair-haired 167 00:14:27.920 --> 00:14:35.260 Aryan master race, arrogated to himself the gift of discovering the only doctrine adequate 168 00:14:35.260 --> 00:14:40.480 to the German mind, and of expelling from the ranks of the Germans all those who did 169 00:14:40.480 --> 00:14:45.820 not accept this doctrine whatever their bodily characteristics might be. 170 00:14:45.820 --> 00:14:51.380 No further proof is needed of the insincerity of the whole doctrine. 171 00:14:51.380 --> 00:14:53.440 3. 172 00:14:53.440 --> 00:14:57.980 The Praxeological Aspect of Polylogism. 173 00:14:57.980 --> 00:15:03.580 An ideology in the Marxian sense of this term is a doctrine which, although erroneous from 174 00:15:03.580 --> 00:15:09.020 the point of view of the correct logic of the proletarians, is beneficial to the selfish 175 00:15:09.020 --> 00:15:12.540 interests of the class which has developed it. 176 00:15:12.540 --> 00:15:18.340 An ideology is objectively vicious, but it furthers the interests of the thinker's class 177 00:15:18.340 --> 00:15:22.340 precisely on account of its viciousness. 178 00:15:22.340 --> 00:15:27.080 Many Marxians believe that they have proved this tenet by stressing the point that people 179 00:15:27.080 --> 00:15:31.420 do not thirst for knowledge only for its own sake. 180 00:15:31.420 --> 00:15:36.460 The aim of the scientist is to pave the way for successful action. 181 00:15:36.460 --> 00:15:40.620 Theories are always developed with a view to practical application. 182 00:15:40.620 --> 00:15:47.020 There are no such things as pure science and the disinterested search for truth. 183 00:15:47.020 --> 00:15:51.980 For the sake of argument, we may admit that every effort to attain truth is motivated 184 00:15:51.980 --> 00:15:57.700 by considerations of its practical utilization for the attainment of some end. 185 00:15:57.700 --> 00:16:04.020 But this does not answer the question why an ideological, that is, a false, theory should 186 00:16:04.020 --> 00:16:07.180 render better service than a correct one. 187 00:16:07.180 --> 00:16:12.140 The fact that the practical application of a theory results in the outcome predicted 188 00:16:12.140 --> 00:16:18.320 on the basis of this theory is universally considered a confirmation of its correctness. 189 00:16:18.320 --> 00:16:24.420 It is paradoxical to assert that a vicious theory is, from any point of view, more useful 190 00:16:24.420 --> 00:16:27.120 than a correct one. 191 00:16:27.120 --> 00:16:29.000 Men use firearms. 192 00:16:29.000 --> 00:16:33.800 In order to improve these weapons, they developed the science of ballistics. 193 00:16:33.800 --> 00:16:39.120 And of course, precisely because they were eager to hunt a game and to kill one another, 194 00:16:39.120 --> 00:16:46.740 a correct ballistics. A merely ideological ballistics would not have been of any use. 195 00:16:46.740 --> 00:16:51.900 For the Marxians, the view that scientists labor for knowledge alone is nothing but an 196 00:16:51.900 --> 00:16:58.060 arrogant pretense of the scientists. Thus they declare that Maxwell was led to his theory 197 00:16:58.060 --> 00:17:04.220 of Electromagnetic Waves by the Craving of Business for Wireless Telegraphs. 198 00:17:04.220 --> 00:17:09.760 It is of no relevance for the problem of ideology whether this is true or not. 199 00:17:09.760 --> 00:17:15.860 The question is whether the alleged fact that 19th century industrialism considered telegraphy 200 00:17:15.860 --> 00:17:22.780 without wires, the philosopher's stone and the elixir of youth, impelled Maxwell to formulate 201 00:17:22.780 --> 00:17:31.500 a correct theory or an ideological superstructure of the selfish class interests of the bourgeoisie. 202 00:17:31.500 --> 00:17:37.740 There is no doubt that bacteriological research was instigated not only by the desire to fight 203 00:17:37.740 --> 00:17:43.800 contagious diseases, but also by the desire of the producers of wine and of cheese to 204 00:17:43.800 --> 00:17:46.680 improve their methods of production. 205 00:17:46.680 --> 00:17:53.360 But the result obtained was certainly not ideological in the Marxian sense. 206 00:17:53.360 --> 00:18:01.080 What induced Marx to invent his ideology doctrine was the wish to sap the prestige of economics. 207 00:18:01.080 --> 00:18:06.280 He was fully aware of his impotence to refute the objections raised by the economists to 208 00:18:06.280 --> 00:18:09.560 the practicability of the socialist schemes. 209 00:18:09.560 --> 00:18:15.280 In fact, he was so fascinated by the theoretical system of British classical economics that 210 00:18:15.280 --> 00:18:21.020 And he firmly believed in its impregnability. He either never learned about the doubts that 211 00:18:21.020 --> 00:18:26.760 the classical theory of value raised in the minds of judicious scholars, or, if he ever 212 00:18:26.760 --> 00:18:32.360 heard of them, he did not comprehend their weight. His own economic ideas are hardly 213 00:18:32.360 --> 00:18:38.280 more than a garbled version of Ricardianism. When Jevons and Menger inaugurated a new 214 00:18:38.280 --> 00:18:43.840 era of economic thought, his career as an author of economic writings had already come 215 00:18:43.840 --> 00:18:45.400 come to an end. 216 00:18:45.400 --> 00:18:51.740 The first volume of Das Kapital had already been published several years previously. 217 00:18:51.740 --> 00:18:57.260 Marx's only reaction to the marginal theory of value was that he postponed the publication 218 00:18:57.260 --> 00:19:00.420 of the later volumes of his main treatise. 219 00:19:00.420 --> 00:19:05.080 They were made accessible to the public only after his death. 220 00:19:05.080 --> 00:19:11.160 In developing the ideology doctrine, Marx exclusively aims at economics and the social 221 00:19:11.160 --> 00:19:14.260 and Social Philosophy of Utilitarianism. 222 00:19:14.260 --> 00:19:20.260 His only intention was to destroy the reputation of economic teachings which he was unable 223 00:19:20.260 --> 00:19:24.880 to refute by means of logic and ratiocination. 224 00:19:24.880 --> 00:19:31.040 He gave to his doctrine the form of a universal law valid for the whole historical age of 225 00:19:31.040 --> 00:19:36.880 social classes, because a statement which is applicable only to one individual historical 226 00:19:36.880 --> 00:19:40.520 event could not be considered as a law. 227 00:19:40.520 --> 00:19:46.200 For the same reasons, he did not restrict its validity to economic thought only, but included 228 00:19:46.200 --> 00:19:49.340 every branch of knowledge. 229 00:19:49.340 --> 00:19:56.780 The service which bourgeois economics rendered to the bourgeoisie was in Marx's eyes twofold. 230 00:19:56.780 --> 00:20:02.440 It aided them first in their fight against feudalism and royal despotism, and then later 231 00:20:02.440 --> 00:20:07.060 again in their fight against the rising proletarian class. 232 00:20:07.060 --> 00:20:12.960 It provided a rational and moral justification for capitalist exploitation. 233 00:20:12.960 --> 00:20:18.820 It was, if we want to use a notion developed after Marx's death, a rationalization of the 234 00:20:18.820 --> 00:20:21.580 claims of the capitalists. 235 00:20:21.580 --> 00:20:26.980 The capitalists, in their subconsciousness, ashamed of the mean greed motivating their 236 00:20:26.980 --> 00:20:34.060 own conduct and anxious to avoid social disapproval, encouraged their sycophants, the economists, 237 00:20:34.060 --> 00:20:39.500 To Proclaim Doctrines Which Could Rehabilitate Them in Public Opinion 238 00:20:39.500 --> 00:20:44.980 Now recourse to the notion of rationalization provides a psychological description of the 239 00:20:44.980 --> 00:20:52.060 incentives which impelled a man or a group of men to formulate a theorem or a whole theory. 240 00:20:52.060 --> 00:20:58.680 But it does not predicate anything about the validity or invalidity of the theory advanced. 241 00:20:58.680 --> 00:21:04.020 If it is proved that the theory concerned is untenable, the notion of rationalization 242 00:21:04.020 --> 00:21:10.720 is a psychological interpretation of the causes which made their authors liable to error. 243 00:21:10.720 --> 00:21:16.560 But if we are not in a position to find any fault in the theory advanced, no appeal to 244 00:21:16.560 --> 00:21:21.960 the concept of rationalization can possibly explode its validity. 245 00:21:21.960 --> 00:21:27.640 If it were true that the economists had in their subconsciousness no design other than 246 00:21:27.640 --> 00:21:33.820 and that of justifying the unfair claims of the capitalists, their theories could nevertheless 247 00:21:33.820 --> 00:21:36.020 be quite correct. 248 00:21:36.020 --> 00:21:42.560 There is no means to expose a faulty theory other than to refute it by discursive reasoning 249 00:21:42.560 --> 00:21:46.180 and to substitute a better theory for it. 250 00:21:46.180 --> 00:21:51.440 In dealing with the theorem of Pythagoras or with the theory of comparative costs, we 251 00:21:51.440 --> 00:21:57.560 are not interested in the psychological factors that impelled Pythagoras and Ricardo to construct 252 00:21:57.560 --> 00:22:23.240 It is a fact that people in the pursuit of their selfish interests try to use doctrines 253 00:22:23.240 --> 00:22:27.160 is more or less universally accepted by public opinion. 254 00:22:27.160 --> 00:22:33.160 Moreover, they are eager to invent and to propagate doctrines which they could possibly 255 00:22:33.160 --> 00:22:36.380 use for furthering their own interests. 256 00:22:36.380 --> 00:22:42.960 But this does not explain why such doctrines, favoring the interests of a minority and contrary 257 00:22:42.960 --> 00:22:48.960 to the interests of the rest of the people, are endorsed by public opinion. 258 00:22:48.960 --> 00:22:54.980 No matter whether such ideological doctrines are the product of a false consciousness forcing 259 00:22:54.980 --> 00:23:00.600 a man to think unwittingly in a manner that serves the interests of his class, or whether 260 00:23:00.600 --> 00:23:06.560 they are the product of a purposeful distortion of truth, they must encounter the ideologies 261 00:23:06.560 --> 00:23:10.520 of other classes and try to supplant them. 262 00:23:10.520 --> 00:23:15.800 Then a rivalry between antagonistic ideologies emerges. 263 00:23:15.800 --> 00:23:21.720 The Marxians explain victory and defeat in such conflicts as an outcome of the interference 264 00:23:21.720 --> 00:23:23.680 of historical providence. 265 00:23:23.680 --> 00:23:29.680 Geist, the mythical prime mover, operates according to a definite plan. 266 00:23:29.680 --> 00:23:36.040 He leads mankind through various preliminary stages to the final bliss of socialism. 267 00:23:36.040 --> 00:23:40.160 Every stage is the product of a certain state of technology. 268 00:23:40.160 --> 00:23:45.720 All its other characteristics are the necessary ideological superstructure of this technological 269 00:23:45.720 --> 00:23:52.520 and Social State. Geist causes man to bring about in due time the technological ideas 270 00:23:52.520 --> 00:23:58.720 adequate to the stage in which he lives and to realize them. All the rest is an outgrowth 271 00:23:58.720 --> 00:24:07.720 of the state of technology. The hand mill made feudal society, the steam mill made capitalism. 272 00:24:07.720 --> 00:24:14.360 Human will and reason play only an ancillary role in these changes. The inexorable law 273 00:24:14.360 --> 00:24:20.640 The law of historical development forces men, independently of their wills, to think and 274 00:24:20.640 --> 00:24:27.640 to behave according to the patterns corresponding to the material basis of their age. 275 00:24:27.640 --> 00:24:33.280 Men fool themselves in believing that they are free to choose between various ideas and 276 00:24:33.280 --> 00:24:36.880 between what they call truth and error. 277 00:24:36.880 --> 00:24:39.160 They themselves do not think. 278 00:24:39.160 --> 00:24:45.040 It is historical providence that manifests itself in their thoughts. 279 00:24:45.040 --> 00:24:47.920 This is a purely mystical doctrine. 280 00:24:47.920 --> 00:24:54.120 The only proof given in its support is the recourse to Hegelian dialectics. 281 00:24:54.120 --> 00:24:59.240 Capitalist private property is the first negation of individual private property. 282 00:24:59.240 --> 00:25:05.760 It begets, with the inexorability of a law of nature, its own negation, namely, common 283 00:25:05.760 --> 00:25:08.280 ownership of the means of production. 284 00:25:08.280 --> 00:25:14.840 However, a mystical doctrine based on intuition does not lose its mysticism by referring to 285 00:25:14.840 --> 00:25:18.500 another no less mystical doctrine. 286 00:25:18.500 --> 00:25:25.280 This makeshift by no means answers the question why a thinker must necessarily develop an 287 00:25:25.280 --> 00:25:29.980 ideology in accordance with the interests of his class. 288 00:25:29.980 --> 00:25:35.080 For the sake of argument, we may admit that man's thoughts must result in doctrines beneficial 289 00:25:35.080 --> 00:25:36.780 to his interests. 290 00:25:36.780 --> 00:25:42.780 But are a man's interests necessarily identical with those of his whole class? 291 00:25:42.780 --> 00:25:48.700 Marx himself had to admit that the organization of the proletarians into a class, and consequently 292 00:25:48.700 --> 00:25:54.880 into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the 293 00:25:54.880 --> 00:25:57.340 workers themselves. 294 00:25:57.340 --> 00:26:03.660 It is an undeniable fact that there prevails an irreconcilable conflict of interests between 295 00:26:03.660 --> 00:26:09.340 and those workers who are employed at union wage rates and those who remain unemployed 296 00:26:09.340 --> 00:26:15.560 because the enforcement of union rates prevents the demand for and the supply of labor from 297 00:26:15.560 --> 00:26:19.060 finding the appropriate price for meeting. 298 00:26:19.060 --> 00:26:24.160 It is no less true that the interests of the workers of the comparatively overpopulated 299 00:26:24.160 --> 00:26:30.560 countries and those of the comparatively underpopulated countries are antagonistic with regard to 300 00:26:30.560 --> 00:26:32.940 migration barriers. 301 00:26:32.940 --> 00:26:39.420 The statement that the interests of all proletarians uniformly require the substitution of socialism 302 00:26:39.420 --> 00:26:45.540 for capitalism is an arbitrary postulate of Marx and the other socialists. 303 00:26:45.540 --> 00:26:51.260 It cannot be proved by the mere assertion that the socialist idea is the emanation of 304 00:26:51.260 --> 00:26:57.060 proletarian thought, and therefore certainly beneficial to the interests of the proletariat 305 00:26:57.060 --> 00:26:59.100 as such. 306 00:26:59.100 --> 00:27:04.860 A popular interpretation of the vicissitudes of British foreign trade policies, based on 307 00:27:04.860 --> 00:27:11.100 the ideas of Sismondi, Frederick List, Marx and the German Historical School, runs this 308 00:27:11.100 --> 00:27:12.560 way. 309 00:27:12.560 --> 00:27:17.700 In the second part of the 18th century and in the greater part of the 19th century, the 310 00:27:17.700 --> 00:27:23.260 class interests of the British bourgeoisie required a free trade policy. 311 00:27:23.260 --> 00:27:30.180 Therefore, British political economy elaborated a free trade doctrine, and the British manufacturers 312 00:27:30.180 --> 00:27:35.980 organized a popular movement which finally succeeded in abolishing protective tariffs. 313 00:27:35.980 --> 00:27:39.420 Then, later, conditions changed. 314 00:27:39.420 --> 00:27:44.860 The British bourgeoisie could no longer stand the competition of foreign manufacturing and 315 00:27:44.860 --> 00:27:47.540 badly needed protective tariffs. 316 00:27:47.540 --> 00:27:58.540 Consequently, the economists substituted a theory of protection for the antiquated free trade ideology, and Great Britain returned to protectionism. 317 00:27:58.540 --> 00:28:09.540 The first error in this interpretation is that it considers the bourgeoisie as a homogeneous class composed of members whose interests are identical. 318 00:28:09.540 --> 00:28:14.980 A businessman is always under the necessity of adjusting the conduct of his business to 319 00:28:14.980 --> 00:28:18.420 the institutional conditions of his country. 320 00:28:18.420 --> 00:28:24.260 In the long run, he is, in his capacity as entrepreneur and capitalist, neither favored 321 00:28:24.260 --> 00:28:28.600 nor injured by tariffs or the absence of tariffs. 322 00:28:28.600 --> 00:28:33.860 He will turn to the production of those commodities which, under the given state of affairs, he 323 00:28:33.860 --> 00:28:36.780 can most profitably produce. 324 00:28:36.780 --> 00:28:44.140 What may hurt or further his short-run interests are only changes in the institutional setting. 325 00:28:44.140 --> 00:28:49.780 But such changes do not affect the various branches of business and the various enterprises 326 00:28:49.780 --> 00:28:53.140 in the same way and to the same extent. 327 00:28:53.140 --> 00:29:00.300 A measure that benefits one branch or enterprise may be detrimental to other branches or enterprises. 328 00:29:00.300 --> 00:29:06.140 What counts for a businessman is only a limited number of customs items, and with regard to 329 00:29:06.140 --> 00:29:13.220 To these items, the interests of various branches and firms are mostly antagonistic. 330 00:29:13.220 --> 00:29:18.980 It is not true that in the years of the supremacy of free trade ideas, the interests of all 331 00:29:18.980 --> 00:29:25.540 branches of British manufacturing were homogeneous and could be uniformly favored by the abandonment 332 00:29:25.540 --> 00:29:27.740 of protectionism. 333 00:29:27.740 --> 00:29:32.620 Nor did the fact that the British plants were then technologically far ahead of the plants 334 00:29:32.620 --> 00:29:37.620 The interests of the rest of the world render foreign competition innocuous for them. 335 00:29:37.620 --> 00:29:42.620 Today, the American plants enjoy a similar superiority. 336 00:29:42.620 --> 00:29:52.620 Nevertheless, a great part of American manufacturing believes that they badly need protection against the backward industries of other countries. 337 00:29:52.620 --> 00:30:00.620 The interests of every branch or firm can be favored by all kinds of privileges granted to it by the government. 338 00:30:00.620 --> 00:30:21.620 But if privileges are granted to the same extent to the other branches and firms, every businessman loses, not only in his capacity as consumer, but also in his capacity as buyer of raw materials, half-finished products, machines and other equipment, on the one hand, as much as he profits on the other. 339 00:30:21.620 --> 00:30:29.120 Selfish group interests may impel a man to ask for protection for his own branch or firm. 340 00:30:29.120 --> 00:30:35.300 They can never motivate him to ask for universal protection for all branches or firms if he 341 00:30:35.300 --> 00:30:42.340 is not sure to be protected to a greater extent than the other industries or enterprises. 342 00:30:42.340 --> 00:30:47.540 Neither were the British manufacturers, from the point of view of their class concerns, 343 00:30:47.540 --> 00:30:52.740 more interested in the abolition of the corn laws than other British citizens. 344 00:30:52.740 --> 00:30:58.060 The landowners were opposed to the repeal of these laws because a lowering of the prices 345 00:30:58.060 --> 00:31:02.360 for agricultural products reduced the rent of land. 346 00:31:02.360 --> 00:31:07.820 A special class interest of the manufacturers can only be construed on the basis of the 347 00:31:07.820 --> 00:31:14.580 long-since-discarded iron law of wages and the no less untenable doctrine that profits 348 00:31:14.580 --> 00:31:18.660 are an outcome of the exploitation of the workers. 349 00:31:18.660 --> 00:31:24.360 Within a world organized on the basis of the division of labor, every change must in one 350 00:31:24.360 --> 00:31:29.400 way or another affect the short-run interests of many groups. 351 00:31:29.400 --> 00:31:35.420 It is therefore always easy to expose every doctrine supporting an alteration of existing 352 00:31:35.420 --> 00:31:42.780 conditions as an ideological disguise of the selfish interests of a special group of people. 353 00:31:42.780 --> 00:31:48.060 The main occupation of many present-day authors is such unmasking. 354 00:31:48.060 --> 00:31:50.440 Marx did not invent this procedure. 355 00:31:50.440 --> 00:31:52.840 It was known long before him. 356 00:31:52.840 --> 00:31:59.000 Its most curious manifestation was the attempts of some 18th century writers to explain religious 357 00:31:59.000 --> 00:32:05.160 creeds as a fraudulent deception on the part of the priests eager to gain power and wealth 358 00:32:05.160 --> 00:32:09.860 both for themselves and for their allies, the exploiters. 359 00:32:09.860 --> 00:32:16.100 The Marxians endorsed this statement in labeling religion opium for the masses. 360 00:32:16.100 --> 00:32:21.100 It never occurred to the supporters of such teachings that where there are selfish interests 361 00:32:21.100 --> 00:32:26.780 pro, there must necessarily be selfish interests contra, too. 362 00:32:26.780 --> 00:32:33.720 It is by no means a satisfactory explanation of any event that it favored a special class. 363 00:32:33.720 --> 00:32:39.460 The question to be answered is why the rest of the population, whose interests it injured, 364 00:32:39.460 --> 00:32:45.400 did not succeed in frustrating the endeavors of those favored by it. 365 00:32:45.400 --> 00:32:51.040 Every firm and every branch of business is in the short run interested in increased sales 366 00:32:51.040 --> 00:32:52.940 of its products. 367 00:32:52.940 --> 00:32:58.140 In the long run, however, there prevails a tendency toward an equalization of returns 368 00:32:58.140 --> 00:33:01.240 in the various branches of production. 369 00:33:01.240 --> 00:33:07.500 If demand for the products of a branch increases and raises profits, more capital flows into 370 00:33:07.500 --> 00:33:13.200 do it, and the competition of the new enterprises cuts down the profits. 371 00:33:13.200 --> 00:33:18.180 Profits are by no means higher in the sale of socially detrimental articles than in the 372 00:33:18.180 --> 00:33:21.180 sale of socially beneficial articles. 373 00:33:21.180 --> 00:33:26.740 If a certain branch of business is outlawed and those engaged in it risk prosecution, 374 00:33:26.740 --> 00:33:32.100 penalties and imprisonment, gross profits must be high enough to compensate for the 375 00:33:32.100 --> 00:33:33.940 risks involved. 376 00:33:33.940 --> 00:33:38.920 But this does not interfere with the height of net returns. 377 00:33:38.920 --> 00:33:44.720 The rich, the owners of the already operating plants, have no particular class interest 378 00:33:44.720 --> 00:33:47.400 in the maintenance of free competition. 379 00:33:47.400 --> 00:33:53.120 They are opposed to confiscation and expropriation of their fortunes, but their vested interests 380 00:33:53.120 --> 00:33:59.540 are rather in favor of measures preventing newcomers from challenging their position. 381 00:33:59.540 --> 00:34:04.600 Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of 382 00:34:04.600 --> 00:34:06.600 those rich today. 383 00:34:06.600 --> 00:34:12.400 They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow 384 00:34:12.400 --> 00:34:17.880 and whose ingenuity will make the life of coming generations more agreeable. 385 00:34:17.880 --> 00:34:22.480 They want the way left open to further economic improvements. 386 00:34:22.480 --> 00:34:26.180 They are the spokesmen of progress. 387 00:34:26.180 --> 00:34:33.420 The 19th century success of free trade ideas was affected by the theories of classical economics. 388 00:34:33.420 --> 00:34:39.500 The prestige of these ideas was so great that those whose selfish class interests they hurt 389 00:34:39.500 --> 00:34:45.060 could not hinder their endorsement by public opinion and their realization by legislative 390 00:34:45.060 --> 00:34:46.060 measures. 391 00:34:46.060 --> 00:34:52.940 It is ideas that make history and not history that makes ideas. 392 00:34:52.940 --> 00:34:59.300 It is useless to argue with mystics and seers. They base their assertions on intuition and 393 00:34:59.300 --> 00:35:05.340 are not prepared to submit them to rational examination. The Marxians pretend that what 394 00:35:05.340 --> 00:35:12.580 their inner voice proclaims is history's self-revelation. If other people do not hear this voice, it 395 00:35:12.580 --> 00:35:18.660 is only a proof that they are not chosen. It is insolence that those groping and darkness 396 00:35:18.660 --> 00:35:22.540 Science dare to contradict the inspired ones. 397 00:35:22.540 --> 00:35:26.660 Decency should impel them to creep into a corner and keep silent. 398 00:35:26.660 --> 00:35:32.100 However, science cannot abstain from thinking, although it is obvious that it will never 399 00:35:32.100 --> 00:35:37.600 succeed in convincing those who dispute the supremacy of reason. 400 00:35:37.600 --> 00:35:43.240 Science must emphasize that the appeal to intuition cannot settle the question which 401 00:35:43.240 --> 00:35:48.800 Which of several antagonistic doctrines is the right one and which are wrong? 402 00:35:48.800 --> 00:35:54.880 It is an undeniable fact that Marxism is not the only doctrine advanced in our time. 403 00:35:54.880 --> 00:35:58.740 There are other ideologies besides Marxism. 404 00:35:58.740 --> 00:36:03.460 The Marxians assert that the application of these other doctrines would hurt the interests 405 00:36:03.460 --> 00:36:10.820 of the many, but the supporters of these doctrines say precisely the same with regard to Marxism. 406 00:36:10.820 --> 00:36:15.700 Of course, the Marxians consider a doctrine vicious if their author's background is not 407 00:36:15.700 --> 00:36:17.140 proletarian. 408 00:36:17.140 --> 00:36:18.700 But who is proletarian? 409 00:36:18.700 --> 00:36:26.160 Dr. Marx, the manufacturer and exploiter Engels, and Lenin, the scion of the Russian gentry, 410 00:36:26.160 --> 00:36:29.740 were certainly not of proletarian background. 411 00:36:29.740 --> 00:36:35.680 But Hitler and Mussolini were genuine proletarians, and spent their youth in poverty. 412 00:36:35.680 --> 00:36:41.160 The conflict of the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, or that between Stalin and Trotsky, cannot 413 00:36:41.160 --> 00:36:44.260 be presented as class conflicts. 414 00:36:44.260 --> 00:36:51.000 They were conflicts between various sects of fanatics who called one another traitors. 415 00:36:51.000 --> 00:36:54.680 The essence of Marxian philosophy is this. 416 00:36:54.680 --> 00:37:00.740 We are right because we are the spokesmen of the rising proletarian class. 417 00:37:00.740 --> 00:37:06.300 of Reasoning cannot invalidate our teachings, for they are inspired by the supreme power 418 00:37:06.300 --> 00:37:09.940 that determines the destiny of mankind. 419 00:37:09.940 --> 00:37:15.800 Our adversaries are wrong because they lack the intuition that guides our minds. 420 00:37:15.800 --> 00:37:21.140 It is of course not their fault that on account of their class affiliation they are not equipped 421 00:37:21.140 --> 00:37:26.540 with the genuine proletarian logic and are blinded by ideologies. 422 00:37:26.540 --> 00:37:32.980 The unfathomable decrees of history that have elected us have doomed them. 423 00:37:32.980 --> 00:37:35.980 The future is ours. 424 00:37:35.980 --> 00:37:37.860 4. 425 00:37:37.860 --> 00:37:41.100 Racial Polylogism 426 00:37:41.100 --> 00:37:47.820 Marxian polylogism is an abortive makeshift to salvage the untenable doctrines of socialism. 427 00:37:47.820 --> 00:37:55.060 Its attempt to substitute intuition for ratiocination appeals to popular superstitions. 428 00:37:55.060 --> 00:38:02.100 But it is precisely this attitude that places Marxian polylogism and its offshoot, the so-called 429 00:38:02.100 --> 00:38:09.260 sociology of knowledge, in irreconcilable antagonism to science and reason. 430 00:38:09.260 --> 00:38:12.820 It is different with the polylogism of the racists. 431 00:38:12.820 --> 00:38:17.940 This brand of polylogism is in agreement with fashionable, although mistaken, tendencies 432 00:38:17.940 --> 00:38:20.680 in present-day empiricism. 433 00:38:20.680 --> 00:38:26.120 It is an established fact that mankind is divided into various races. The races differ 434 00:38:26.120 --> 00:38:32.200 in bodily features. Materialist philosophers assert that thoughts are a secretion of the 435 00:38:32.200 --> 00:38:38.600 brain, as bile is a secretion of the gallbladder. It would be inconsistent for them to reject 436 00:38:38.600 --> 00:38:44.380 beforehand the hypothesis that the thought secretion of the various races may differ 437 00:38:44.380 --> 00:38:46.820 are in essential qualities. 438 00:38:46.820 --> 00:38:52.220 The fact that anatomy has not succeeded up to now in discovering anatomical differences 439 00:38:52.220 --> 00:38:58.320 in the brain cells of various races cannot invalidate the doctrine that the logical structure 440 00:38:58.320 --> 00:39:02.000 of mind is different with different races. 441 00:39:02.000 --> 00:39:09.420 It does not exclude the assumption that later research may discover such anatomical peculiarities. 442 00:39:09.420 --> 00:39:15.140 Some ethnologists tell us that it is a mistake to speak of higher and lower civilizations 443 00:39:15.140 --> 00:39:19.180 and of an alleged backwardness of alien races. 444 00:39:19.180 --> 00:39:23.860 The civilization of various races are different from the Western civilization of the peoples 445 00:39:23.860 --> 00:39:28.160 of Caucasian stock, but they are not inferior. 446 00:39:28.160 --> 00:39:31.500 Every race has its peculiar mentality. 447 00:39:31.500 --> 00:39:36.740 It is faulty to apply to the civilization of any of them yardsticks abstracted from 448 00:39:36.740 --> 00:39:39.980 and the Achievements of Other Races. 449 00:39:39.980 --> 00:39:45.260 Westerners call the civilization of China an arrested civilization, and that of the inhabitants 450 00:39:45.260 --> 00:39:48.380 of New Guinea, primitive barbarism. 451 00:39:48.380 --> 00:39:54.500 But the Chinese, and the natives of New Guinea, despise our civilization no less than we despise 452 00:39:54.500 --> 00:39:55.820 theirs. 453 00:39:55.820 --> 00:40:00.300 Such estimates are judgments of value, and hence arbitrary. 454 00:40:00.300 --> 00:40:03.740 Those other races have a different structure of mind. 455 00:40:03.740 --> 00:40:10.080 Our civilizations are adequate to their mind as our civilization is adequate to our mind. 456 00:40:10.080 --> 00:40:15.460 We are incapable of comprehending that what we call backwardness does not appear such 457 00:40:15.460 --> 00:40:17.120 to them. 458 00:40:17.120 --> 00:40:21.960 It is, from the point of view of their logic, a better method of coming to a satisfactory 459 00:40:21.960 --> 00:40:27.760 arrangement with given natural conditions of life than is our progressivism. 460 00:40:27.760 --> 00:40:33.040 These ethnologists are right in emphasizing that it is not the task of a historian, and 461 00:40:33.040 --> 00:40:39.800 The Ethnologist, too, is a historian, to express value judgments, but they are utterly mistaken 462 00:40:39.800 --> 00:40:44.920 in contending that these other races have been guided in their activities by motives 463 00:40:44.920 --> 00:40:48.740 other than those which have actuated the white race. 464 00:40:48.740 --> 00:40:53.660 The Asiatics and the Africans, no less than the peoples of European descent, have been 465 00:40:53.660 --> 00:40:59.280 eager to struggle successfully for survival and to use reason as the foremost weapon in 466 00:40:59.280 --> 00:41:01.080 these endeavors. 467 00:41:01.080 --> 00:41:06.220 They have sought to get rid of the beasts of prey and of disease, to prevent famines 468 00:41:06.220 --> 00:41:09.320 and to raise the productivity of labor. 469 00:41:09.320 --> 00:41:14.000 There can be no doubt that in the pursuit of these aims they have been less successful 470 00:41:14.000 --> 00:41:15.720 than the whites. 471 00:41:15.720 --> 00:41:21.000 The proof is that they are eager to profit from all achievements of the West. 472 00:41:21.000 --> 00:41:26.840 Those ethnologists would be right if Mongols or Africans tormented by a painful disease 473 00:41:26.840 --> 00:41:33.200 were to renounce the aid of a European doctor because their mentality or their worldview 474 00:41:33.200 --> 00:41:38.440 led them to believe that it is better to suffer than to be relieved of pain. 475 00:41:38.440 --> 00:41:44.240 Mahatma Gandhi disavowed his whole philosophy when he entered a modern hospital to be treated 476 00:41:44.240 --> 00:41:47.060 for appendicitis. 477 00:41:47.060 --> 00:41:51.660 The North American Indians lacked the ingenuity to invent the wheel. 478 00:41:51.660 --> 00:41:56.160 The inhabitants of the Alps were not keen enough to construct skis which would have 479 00:41:56.160 --> 00:41:59.960 have rendered their hard life much more agreeable. 480 00:41:59.960 --> 00:42:05.160 Such shortcomings were not due to a mentality different from those of the races which had 481 00:42:05.160 --> 00:42:08.180 long since used wheels and skis. 482 00:42:08.180 --> 00:42:13.340 They were failures, even when judged from the point of view of the Indians and the Alpine 483 00:42:13.340 --> 00:42:14.840 Mountaineers. 484 00:42:14.840 --> 00:42:21.920 However, these considerations refer only to the motives determining concrete actions, 485 00:42:21.920 --> 00:42:27.920 Back to the only relevant problem of whether or not there exists between various races 486 00:42:27.920 --> 00:42:31.760 a difference in the logical structure of mind. 487 00:42:31.760 --> 00:42:36.080 It is precisely this that the racists assert. 488 00:42:36.080 --> 00:42:40.880 We may refer to what has been said in the preceding chapters about the fundamental issues 489 00:42:40.880 --> 00:42:47.200 of the logical structure of mind and the categorical principles of thought and action. 490 00:42:47.200 --> 00:42:52.700 Some additional observations will suffice to give the finishing stroke to racial polylogism 491 00:42:52.700 --> 00:42:56.580 and to any other brand of polylogism. 492 00:42:56.580 --> 00:43:01.260 The categories of human thought and action are neither arbitrary products of the human 493 00:43:01.260 --> 00:43:04.040 mind nor conventions. 494 00:43:04.040 --> 00:43:08.780 They are not outside of the universe and of the course of cosmic events. 495 00:43:08.780 --> 00:43:14.380 They are biological facts and have a definite function in life and reality. 496 00:43:14.380 --> 00:43:19.080 They are instruments in man's struggle for existence, and in his endeavors to adjust 497 00:43:19.080 --> 00:43:24.760 himself as much as possible to the real state of the universe, and to remove uneasiness 498 00:43:24.760 --> 00:43:28.320 as much as it is in his power to do so. 499 00:43:28.320 --> 00:43:33.340 They are therefore appropriate to the structure of the external world and reflect properties 500 00:43:33.340 --> 00:43:36.040 of the world and of reality. 501 00:43:36.040 --> 00:43:40.940 They work, and are, in this sense, true and valid. 502 00:43:40.940 --> 00:43:47.120 It is consequently incorrect to assert that aprioristic insight and pure reasoning do 503 00:43:47.120 --> 00:43:52.860 not convey any information about reality and the structure of the universe. 504 00:43:52.860 --> 00:43:58.220 The fundamental logical relations and the categories of thought and action are the ultimate 505 00:43:58.220 --> 00:44:01.200 source of all human knowledge. 506 00:44:01.200 --> 00:44:04.480 They are adequate to the structure of reality. 507 00:44:04.480 --> 00:44:10.420 They reveal this structure to the human mind, and in this sense they are, for man, basic 508 00:44:10.420 --> 00:44:13.020 Make Ontological Facts 509 00:44:13.020 --> 00:44:18.380 We do not know what a superhuman intellect may think and comprehend. 510 00:44:18.380 --> 00:44:24.540 For man, every cognition is conditioned by the logical structure of his mind and implied 511 00:44:24.540 --> 00:44:26.580 in this structure. 512 00:44:26.580 --> 00:44:31.860 It is precisely the satisfactory results of the empirical sciences and their practical 513 00:44:31.860 --> 00:44:35.540 application that evidence this truth. 514 00:44:35.540 --> 00:44:41.140 In the orbit in which human action is able to attain ends aimed at, there is no room 515 00:44:41.140 --> 00:44:44.040 left for agnosticism. 516 00:44:44.040 --> 00:44:49.100 If there had been races which had developed a different logical structure of mind, they 517 00:44:49.100 --> 00:44:54.120 would have failed in the use of reason as an aid in the struggle for existence. 518 00:44:54.120 --> 00:44:59.280 The only means for survival that could have protected them against extermination would 519 00:44:59.280 --> 00:45:02.700 have been their instinctive reactions. 520 00:45:02.700 --> 00:45:07.180 Individual selection would have eliminated those specimens of such races that tried to 521 00:45:07.180 --> 00:45:10.780 employ their reasoning for the direction of behavior. 522 00:45:10.780 --> 00:45:17.540 Alone, those individuals would have survived that relied upon instincts only. 523 00:45:17.540 --> 00:45:22.540 This means that only those would have had a chance to survive that did not rise above 524 00:45:22.540 --> 00:45:25.740 the mental level of animals. 525 00:45:25.740 --> 00:45:31.440 The scholars of the West have amassed an enormous amount of material concerning the high civilizations 526 00:45:31.440 --> 00:45:38.400 of China and India and the primitive civilizations of the Asiatic, American, Australian and African 527 00:45:38.400 --> 00:45:40.280 Aborigines. 528 00:45:40.280 --> 00:45:45.920 It is safe to say that all that is worth knowing about these races is known. 529 00:45:45.920 --> 00:45:51.520 But never has any supporter of polylogism tried to use these data for a description 530 00:45:51.520 --> 00:45:57.760 of the allegedly different logic of these peoples and civilizations. 531 00:45:57.760 --> 00:46:03.640 5. Polylogism and Understanding 532 00:46:03.640 --> 00:46:09.040 Some supporters of the tenets of Marxism and racism interpret the epistemological teachings 533 00:46:09.040 --> 00:46:14.520 of their parties in a peculiar way. They are ready to admit that the logical structure 534 00:46:14.520 --> 00:46:22.640 of mind is uniform for all races, nations and classes. Marxism or racism, they assert, 535 00:46:22.640 --> 00:46:26.680 never intended to deny this undeniable fact. 536 00:46:26.680 --> 00:46:32.640 What they really wanted to say was that historical understanding, aesthetic empathy and value 537 00:46:32.640 --> 00:46:36.360 judgments are conditioned by a man's background. 538 00:46:36.360 --> 00:46:40.920 It is obvious that this interpretation cannot be supported on the basis of the writings 539 00:46:40.920 --> 00:46:43.200 of the champions of polylogism. 540 00:46:43.200 --> 00:46:48.300 However, it must be analyzed as a doctrine of its own. 541 00:46:48.300 --> 00:46:53.740 There is no need to emphasize again that a man's value judgments and his choice of ends 542 00:46:53.740 --> 00:46:59.700 reflect his inborn bodily features and all the vicissitudes of his life. 543 00:46:59.700 --> 00:47:05.460 But it is a far cry from acknowledgement of this fact to the belief that racial inheritance 544 00:47:05.460 --> 00:47:12.220 or class affiliation ultimately determines judgments of value and the choice of ends. 545 00:47:12.220 --> 00:47:17.940 The fundamental discrepancies in world view and patterns of behavior do not correspond 546 00:47:17.940 --> 00:47:23.340 to Differences in Race, Nationality or Class Affiliation. 547 00:47:23.340 --> 00:47:28.780 There is hardly any greater divergence in value judgments than that between the ascetics 548 00:47:28.780 --> 00:47:32.740 and those eager to enjoy life lightheartedly. 549 00:47:32.740 --> 00:47:39.300 An unbridgeable gulf separates devout monks and nuns from the rest of mankind. 550 00:47:39.300 --> 00:47:45.500 But there have been people dedicated to the monkish ideals among all races, nations, classes 551 00:47:45.500 --> 00:47:47.320 and castes. 552 00:47:47.320 --> 00:47:52.440 Some of them were sons and daughters of kings and wealthy noblemen, others were beggars. 553 00:47:52.440 --> 00:47:58.240 St. Francis, Santa Clara and their ardent followers were natives of Italy, whose other 554 00:47:58.240 --> 00:48:03.000 inhabitants cannot be described as weary of temporal things. 555 00:48:03.000 --> 00:48:09.240 Puritanism was Anglo-Saxon, but so was the lasciviousness of the British under the Tudors, 556 00:48:09.240 --> 00:48:12.340 the Stuarts and the Hanoverians. 557 00:48:12.340 --> 00:48:18.460 The 19th century's outstanding champion of asceticism was Count Leo Tolstoy, a wealthy 558 00:48:18.460 --> 00:48:22.300 member of the profligate Russian aristocracy. 559 00:48:22.300 --> 00:48:28.220 Tolstoy saw the pith of the philosophy he attacked embodied in Beethoven's Kreuzer Sonata, 560 00:48:28.220 --> 00:48:33.060 a masterpiece of the son of extremely poor parents. 561 00:48:33.060 --> 00:48:35.820 It is the same with aesthetic values. 562 00:48:35.820 --> 00:48:40.680 All races and nations have had both classic and romantic art. 563 00:48:40.680 --> 00:48:46.240 With all their ardent propaganda, the Marxians have not succeeded in bringing about a specifically 564 00:48:46.240 --> 00:48:49.400 proletarian art or literature. 565 00:48:49.400 --> 00:48:55.680 The proletarian writers, painters and musicians have not created new styles and have not established 566 00:48:55.680 --> 00:48:58.160 new aesthetic values. 567 00:48:58.160 --> 00:49:04.200 What characterizes them is solely their tendency to call everything they detest bourgeois and 568 00:49:04.200 --> 00:49:08.440 everything they like proletarian. 569 00:49:08.440 --> 00:49:14.720 All understanding, both of the historian and of the acting man, always reflects the personality 570 00:49:14.720 --> 00:49:16.480 of its author. 571 00:49:16.480 --> 00:49:21.620 But if the historian and the politician are imbued with the desire for truth, they will 572 00:49:21.620 --> 00:49:28.860 never let themselves be deluded by party bias, provided they are efficient and not inept. 573 00:49:28.860 --> 00:49:33.600 It is immaterial whether a historian or a politician considers the interference of a 574 00:49:33.600 --> 00:49:37.140 certain factor beneficial or detrimental. 575 00:49:37.140 --> 00:49:43.100 We cannot derive any advantage from underrating or overrating the relevance of one of the 576 00:49:43.100 --> 00:49:45.700 operating factors. 577 00:49:45.700 --> 00:49:52.100 Only clumsy would-be historians believe that they can serve their cause by distortion. 578 00:49:52.100 --> 00:49:58.740 The biographies of Napoleon I and III, of Bismarck, Marx, Gladstone and Disraeli, the 579 00:49:58.740 --> 00:50:05.900 most disputed personalities of the past century, widely disagree with regard to value judgments. 580 00:50:05.900 --> 00:50:12.080 But they hardly disagree in their understanding of the role played by these men. 581 00:50:12.080 --> 00:50:15.620 This is no less true of the statesman's understanding. 582 00:50:15.620 --> 00:50:20.540 What use could a champion of Protestantism derive from misunderstanding the tremendous 583 00:50:20.540 --> 00:50:23.980 power and prestige of Catholicism? 584 00:50:23.980 --> 00:50:28.940 Or a liberal, from misunderstanding the relevance of socialist ideas? 585 00:50:28.940 --> 00:50:35.140 In order to succeed, a politician must see things as they are, whoever indulges in wishful 586 00:50:35.140 --> 00:50:38.560 Judgmental thinking will certainly fail. 587 00:50:38.560 --> 00:50:43.220 Judgments of relevance differ from judgments of value in that they aim at the appraisal 588 00:50:43.220 --> 00:50:48.140 of a state of affairs not dependent on the author's arbitrariness. 589 00:50:48.140 --> 00:50:53.580 They are colored by their author's personality and can therefore never be unanimously agreed 590 00:50:53.580 --> 00:50:55.880 upon by all people. 591 00:50:55.880 --> 00:51:02.220 But here again we must raise the question, what advantage could a race or class derive 592 00:51:02.220 --> 00:51:07.360 from an Ideological Distortion of Understanding. 593 00:51:07.360 --> 00:51:12.980 As has already been pointed out, the serious discrepancies to be found in historical studies 594 00:51:12.980 --> 00:51:18.500 are an outcome of differences in the field of the non-historical sciences, and not in 595 00:51:18.500 --> 00:51:21.180 various modes of understanding. 596 00:51:21.180 --> 00:51:27.600 Today, many historians and writers are imbued with the Marxian dogma that the realization 597 00:51:27.600 --> 00:51:33.880 One of the socialist plans is both unavoidable and the supreme good, and that the labor movement 598 00:51:33.880 --> 00:51:39.440 is entrusted with the historical mission of accomplishing this task by a violent overthrow 599 00:51:39.440 --> 00:51:42.600 of the capitalist system. 600 00:51:42.600 --> 00:51:46.640 Starting from this tenet, they take it as a matter of course that the parties of the 601 00:51:46.640 --> 00:51:53.960 left, the elect, in the pursuit of their policies, should resort to acts of violence and to murder. 602 00:51:53.960 --> 00:51:58.040 A revolution cannot be consummated by peaceful methods. 603 00:51:58.040 --> 00:52:03.000 It is not worthwhile to dwell upon such trifles as the butchering of the four daughters of 604 00:52:03.000 --> 00:52:10.220 the last Tsar, of Leon Trotsky, of tens of thousands of Russian bourgeois, and so on. 605 00:52:10.220 --> 00:52:13.520 You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. 606 00:52:13.520 --> 00:52:17.100 Why explicitly mention the eggs broken? 607 00:52:17.100 --> 00:52:22.300 But of course it is different if one of those assailed ventures to defend himself or even 608 00:52:22.300 --> 00:52:24.300 to Strike Back. 609 00:52:24.300 --> 00:52:30.620 Few only mention the acts of sabotage, destruction and violence committed by strikers. 610 00:52:30.620 --> 00:52:35.980 But all authors enlarge upon the attempts of railroad companies to protect their property 611 00:52:35.980 --> 00:52:41.700 and the lives of their officers and their customers against such onslaughts. 612 00:52:41.700 --> 00:52:47.940 Such discrepancies are due neither to judgments of value nor to differences in understanding. 613 00:52:47.940 --> 00:52:53.940 They are the outcome of antagonistic theories of economic and historical evolution. 614 00:52:53.940 --> 00:53:00.940 If the coming of socialism is unavoidable and can be achieved only by revolutionary methods, 615 00:53:00.940 --> 00:53:06.220 murders committed by the progressives are minor incidents of no significance. 616 00:53:06.220 --> 00:53:11.460 But the self-defense and counter-attacks of the reactionaries, which can possibly delay 617 00:53:11.460 --> 00:53:16.120 the final victory of socialism, are of the greatest importance. 618 00:53:16.120 --> 00:53:22.680 They are remarkable events, while the revolutionary acts are simply routine. 619 00:53:22.680 --> 00:53:24.560 6. 620 00:53:24.560 --> 00:53:27.880 The Case for Reason. 621 00:53:27.880 --> 00:53:33.780 Judicious rationalists do not pretend that human reason can ever make man omniscient. 622 00:53:33.780 --> 00:53:38.720 They are fully aware of the fact that however knowledge may increase, there will always 623 00:53:38.720 --> 00:53:44.280 remain things ultimately given and not liable to any further elucidation. 624 00:53:44.280 --> 00:53:52.340 But, they say, as far as man is able to attain cognition, he must rely upon reason. 625 00:53:52.340 --> 00:53:55.620 The ultimate given is the irrational. 626 00:53:55.620 --> 00:54:01.440 The knowable is, as far as it is known already, necessarily rational. 627 00:54:01.440 --> 00:54:08.260 There is neither an irrational mode of cognition nor a science of irrationality. 628 00:54:08.260 --> 00:54:13.580 With regard to unsolved problems, various hypotheses are permissible, provided they 629 00:54:13.580 --> 00:54:18.680 They do not contradict logic and the uncontested data of experience. 630 00:54:18.680 --> 00:54:22.180 But these are hypotheses only. 631 00:54:22.180 --> 00:54:27.480 We do not know what causes the inborn differences in human abilities. 632 00:54:27.480 --> 00:54:33.180 Science is at a loss to explain why Newton and Mozart were full of creative genius and 633 00:54:33.180 --> 00:54:35.620 why most people are not. 634 00:54:35.620 --> 00:54:41.380 But it is by all means an unsatisfactory answer to say that a genius owes his greatness 635 00:54:41.380 --> 00:54:44.740 is to his ancestry or to his race. 636 00:54:44.740 --> 00:54:50.580 The question is precisely why such a man differs from his brothers and from the other members 637 00:54:50.580 --> 00:54:52.700 of his race. 638 00:54:52.700 --> 00:54:57.240 It is a little bit less faulty to attribute the great achievements of the white race to 639 00:54:57.240 --> 00:55:03.700 racial superiority, yet this is no more than a vague hypothesis which is at variance with 640 00:55:03.700 --> 00:55:09.940 the fact that the foundations of modern civilization were laid by peoples of other races. 641 00:55:09.940 --> 00:55:16.900 We cannot know whether or not, at a later date, other races will supplant Western civilization. 642 00:55:16.900 --> 00:55:22.460 However, such a hypothesis must be appraised on its own merits. 643 00:55:22.460 --> 00:55:28.260 It must not be condemned beforehand, because the racists base on it their postulate that 644 00:55:28.260 --> 00:55:34.220 there is an irreconcilable conflict between various racial groups, and that the superior 645 00:55:34.220 --> 00:55:38.940 races must enslave the inferior ones. 646 00:55:38.940 --> 00:55:45.060 Mises' Law of Association has long since discarded this mistaken interpretation of the inequality 647 00:55:45.060 --> 00:55:46.660 of men. 648 00:55:46.660 --> 00:55:52.620 It is nonsensical to fight the racial hypothesis by negating obvious facts. 649 00:55:52.620 --> 00:55:58.140 It is vain to deny that up to now certain races have contributed nothing or very little 650 00:55:58.140 --> 00:56:04.140 to the development of civilization, and can, in this sense, be called inferior. 651 00:56:04.140 --> 00:56:10.600 If somebody were eager to distill at any cost a grain of truth out of the Marxian teachings, 652 00:56:10.600 --> 00:56:15.660 he could say that emotions influence a man's reasoning very much. 653 00:56:15.660 --> 00:56:21.160 Nobody ever ventured to deny this obvious fact, and Marxism cannot be credited with 654 00:56:21.160 --> 00:56:22.980 its discovery. 655 00:56:22.980 --> 00:56:27.100 But it is without any significance for epistemology. 656 00:56:27.100 --> 00:56:31.100 There are many sources, both of success and of error. 657 00:56:31.100 --> 00:56:36.940 It is the task of psychology to enumerate and to classify them. 658 00:56:36.940 --> 00:56:39.760 Envy is a widespread frailty. 659 00:56:39.760 --> 00:56:45.180 It is certain that many intellectuals envy the higher income of prosperous businessmen 660 00:56:45.180 --> 00:56:48.660 and that these feelings drive them toward socialism. 661 00:56:48.660 --> 00:56:53.900 They believe that the authorities of a socialist commonwealth would pay them higher salaries 662 00:56:53.900 --> 00:56:57.240 than those that they earn under capitalism. 663 00:56:57.240 --> 00:57:02.620 But to prove the existence of this envy does not relieve science of the duty of making 664 00:57:02.620 --> 00:57:07.740 the most careful examination of the socialist doctrines. 665 00:57:07.740 --> 00:57:12.980 Scientists are bound to deal with every doctrine as if its supporters were inspired by nothing 666 00:57:12.980 --> 00:57:16.100 else than the thirst for knowledge. 667 00:57:16.100 --> 00:57:23.060 The various brands of polylogism substitute for a purely theoretical examination of opposite 668 00:57:23.060 --> 00:57:28.340 Relations, the unmasking of the background and the motives of their authors. 669 00:57:28.340 --> 00:57:34.220 Such a procedure is incompatible with the first principles of ratiocination. 670 00:57:34.220 --> 00:57:39.980 It is a poor makeshift to dispose of a theory by referring to its historical background, 671 00:57:39.980 --> 00:57:45.620 to the spirit of its time, to the material conditions of the country of its origin, and 672 00:57:45.620 --> 00:57:48.940 to any personal qualities of its authors. 673 00:57:48.940 --> 00:57:53.700 A theory is subject to the tribunal of reason only. 674 00:57:53.700 --> 00:57:58.340 The yardstick to be applied is always the yardstick of reason. 675 00:57:58.340 --> 00:58:01.820 A theory is either correct or incorrect. 676 00:58:01.820 --> 00:58:06.660 It may happen that the present state of our knowledge does not allow a decision with regard 677 00:58:06.660 --> 00:58:09.780 to its correctness or incorrectness. 678 00:58:09.780 --> 00:58:16.620 But a theory can never be valid for a bourgeois or an American if it is invalid for a proletarian 679 00:58:16.620 --> 00:58:19.180 or a Chinese. 680 00:58:19.180 --> 00:58:24.340 If the Marxians and the racists were right, it would be impossible to explain why those 681 00:58:24.340 --> 00:58:30.760 in power are anxious to suppress dissenting theories and to persecute their supporters. 682 00:58:30.760 --> 00:58:36.700 The very fact that there are intolerant governments and political parties intent upon outlawing 683 00:58:36.700 --> 00:58:41.820 and exterminating dissenters is a proof of the excellence of reason. 684 00:58:41.820 --> 00:58:47.300 It is not a proof of a doctrine's correctness that its adversaries use the police, the hangman 685 00:58:47.300 --> 00:58:50.220 and violent mobs to fight it. 686 00:58:50.220 --> 00:58:55.820 But it is a proof of the fact that those taking recourse to violent oppression are in their 687 00:58:55.820 --> 00:59:02.100 subconsciousness convinced of the untenability of their own doctrines. 688 00:59:02.100 --> 00:59:08.660 It is impossible to demonstrate the validity of the a priori foundations of logic and praxeology 689 00:59:08.660 --> 00:59:12.960 without referring to these foundations themselves. 690 00:59:12.960 --> 00:59:19.100 Reason is an ultimate given and cannot be analyzed or questioned by itself. 691 00:59:19.100 --> 00:59:23.800 The very existence of human reason is a non-rational fact. 692 00:59:23.800 --> 00:59:28.640 The only statement that can be predicated with regard to reason is that it is the mark 693 00:59:28.640 --> 00:59:34.900 that distinguishes man from animals and has brought about everything that is specifically 694 00:59:34.900 --> 00:59:36.440 human. 695 00:59:36.440 --> 00:59:41.700 To those pretending that man would be happier if he were to renounce the use of reason and 696 00:59:41.700 --> 00:59:47.640 try to let himself be guided by intuition and instincts only, no other answer can be 697 00:59:47.640 --> 00:59:52.360 given than an analysis of the structure of human society. 698 00:59:52.360 --> 00:59:59.020 In describing the genesis and working of social cooperation, economics provides all the information 699 00:59:59.020 --> 01:00:04.420 required for an ultimate decision between reason and unreason. 700 01:00:04.420 --> 01:00:10.380 If man reconsiders freeing himself from the supremacy of reason, he must know what he 701 01:00:10.380 --> 01:00:11.580 will have to forsake.