【喬老爺子: 讓我告訴你為什麼共產黨宣言是錯的】Jordan Peterson深度評析一次搞懂為什麼不能支持共產主義/以仇恨與鬥爭為前提的主義如何能成為民主基石?/內地禁片

please join me in welcoming Dr Jordan

Peterson for the first opening

[Music]

statement well thank you for that

insanely enthusiastic welcome for the

entire event and and also for being here

I have to tell you first um that this

event and I suppose my life in some

sense hit a new Milestone that I was

just made aware of by a stage hand today

backstage who informed me that last week

the tickets for this event were being

scalped online at a higher price than

the tickets for the Leafs playoff

games so I I don't know what to make of

that that's all right

so how did I prepare for this um I went

I familiarized myself to the degree that

it was possible with slavo x's work and

that wasn't that possible because he has

a lot of work and he's a very original

thinker and this debate was put together

in relatively short order and what I did

instead was Return to what I regarded as

the original cause of all the trouble

let's say which was The Communist

Manifesto and what I attempted to do

because that's mark and we're here to

talk about Marxism let's say and um what

I tried to do was read it and to read

something you don't

just follow the words and follow the

meaning but you take apart the sentences

and you ask yourself at this level of

phrase and at the level of sentence and

at the level of

paragraph is this true are there

counterarguments that can be put forward

that are credible is this solid thinking

and I have to tell you and I'm not

trying to be flippant here that I have

rarely read a track now I read it when I

was 18 it was a long time ago right

that's 40 years ago but I've rarely read

a track that made as many errors per

sentence conceptual errors per sentence

as the Communist Manifesto it was quite

a miraculous reread it and it it was

interesting to think about it

psychologically as well because I've

read student papers that were of the

same ilk in some sense although I'm not

suggesting that they were of the same

level of glittering literary Brilliance

and pmic quality and I also understand

that the Communist Manifesto was a call

for Revolution and not a standard

logical argument but that

notwithstanding I have some things to

say about the authors psychologically

the first thing is that it doesn't seem

to me that either marks or Engles

grappled with one fundamental with this

particular fundamental truth which is

that um almost all ideas are wrong and

so if you and it doesn't matter if

they're your ideas or someone else's

ideas they're probably wrong and even if

they strike you with the force of

Brilliance your job is to assume first

of all that they're probably wrong and

then to assault them with everything you

have in your Arsenal and see if they can

survive and what what struck me about

The Communist Manifesto was it was akin

to something y said about typical

thinking and this was the thinking of

people who weren't trained to think he

said that the typical thinker has a

thought it appears to them like an

object might appear in a room the

thought appears and then they just they

just accept it as true they don't go the

Second Step which is to think about the

thinking and that's the real essence of

critical thinking and so that's what you

try to teach people in university is to

read a text and to think about it

critically not to destroy the utility of

the text but to separate the wheat from

the chaff and so what I tried to do when

I was reading the Communist Manifesto

was to separate the wheat from the chaff

and I'm afraid I found some wheat yes

but mostly chaff and I'm going to

explain why um hopefully uh in

relatively short order so I'm going to

outline 10 of the fundamental axioms of

the Communist Manifesto and so these are

truths that are basically held as

self-evident by the authors and um

there're truths that are presented in

some sense as unquestioned and I'm going

to question them and tell you why I

think they're um unreliable now we

should remember that this tract was

actually written 170 years ago that's a

long time ago and we have learned a fair

bit from since then about human nature

about Society about politics about

economics there's lots of mysteries left

to be unsolved but left to be solved but

we are slightly wiser I presume than we

were at one point and so you can forgive

the authors to some degree for what they

didn't know but that doesn't matter

given that the essence of this Doctrine

is still held as sanas act by a large

proportion

of

academics probably are among the

most what would you call guilty of that

particular sin so

here's proposition number one history is

to be viewed primarily as an economic

class

struggle all right so so let's think

about that for a minute um the first of

all is there the proposition there is

that history is primarily to be viewed

through an economic lens and I think

that's a debatable proposition because

there are many other motivations that

drive human beings than economics and

those have to be taken into account

especially that drive people other than

economic competition like economic

cooperation for example and so that's a

problem the other problem is that it's

actually not a nearly a pessimistic

enough um description of the actual

problem because

history

history this is to give the devil is

due the idea that one of the driving

forces between history is hierarchical

struggle is absolutely true but the idea

that that's actually history is not true

because it's deeper than history it's

biology itself because organisms of All

Sorts organize themselves into

hierarchies and one of the problems with

hierarchies is that they tend to arrange

themselves into a winner take all

situation and so and that that is

implicit in some sense in Marx Marx's

thinking because of course Marx believed

that in a capitalist Society Capital

would accumulate in the hands of fewer

and fewer people and that actually is in

keeping with the nature of hierarchical

organizations now the problem with that

isn't so much the fact of the so there's

the there's accuracy in the accusation

that that is a Eternal form of

motivation for struggle but it's an

underestimation of the seriousness of

the problem because it attributes it to

the structure of human societies rather

than the deeper reality of the existence

of hierarchical structures per se which

as they also characterize the animal

kingdom to a large degree are clearly

not only human constructions and the

idea that there's hierarchical

competition among human beings there's

evidence for that that goes back at

least to the Paleolithic times and so

that's the next problem it's that well

the this ancient problem of hierarchical

structure is clearly not attributable to

capitalism because it existed long in

human history before capitalism existed

and then it predated human history

itself so the question then arises why

would you necessarily at least

implicitly link the class struggle with

capitalism given that it's a far deeper

problem and now it's also you got to

understand that this is a deeper problem

for people on the left not just for

people on the right it is the case that

hierarchical structures dispossess those

people who are at the bottom those

creatures who are at the bottom speaking

say of animals but those people who are

at the bottom and that that is a

fundamental existential problem but the

other thing that Marx didn't seem to

take into account is that there there

there are far more reasons that human

beings struggle than their economic

class struggle even if you build the

hierarchical idea into that which is a

more comprehensive way of thinking about

it human beings struggle with themselves

with the malevolence that's inside

themselves with the evil that they're

capable of doing with the spiritual and

psychological warfare that goes on

within them and we're also actually

always at odds with nature and this

never seems to show up in Marx and it

doesn't show up in marxists Marxism in

general it's as if nature doesn't exist

the primary conflict as far as I'm

concerned or a primary conflict that

human beings engage in is the struggle

for life in a cruel and harsh natural

world and it's as if it's as if that

doesn't exist in the Marxist domain if

human beings have a problem it's because

there's a class struggle that's

essentially e OMC it's like no human

beings have problems because we come

into life starving and Lonesome and we

have to solve that problem continually

and we make our social Arrangements at

least in part to ameliorate that as well

as to as to well upon occasion

exacerbated and so there's also very

little understanding in The Communist

Manifesto that any of the like say

hierarchical organizations that human

beings have put together might have a

positive element and that's an absolute

catastroph because hierarchical

structures are actually necessary to

solve complicated social problems we

have to organize ourselves in some

Manner and you have to give the devil is

due and so it is the case that

hierarchies dispossess people and that's

a big problem that's the fundamental

problem of inequality but it's also the

case that hierarchies happen to be a

very efficient way of Distributing

resources and it's finally the case that

human hierarchies are not fundamentally

predicated on Power and I would say the

biological an anthropological data on

that or Crystal Clear you don't rise to

a position of authority that's reliable

in the human society primarily by

exploiting other people it's a very

unstable means of obtaining power so so

that's a

problem well the people that laugh might

do it that

[Applause]

way okay now the other another problem

that comes up right away is that Marx

also assumes that you can think about

history as a binary class struggle with

clear divisions between say the proletar

proletariat and the burgeois and that's

actually a problem because it's not so

easy to make a firm division between

who's exploiter and who um exploitee

let's say um because it's not obvious

like in the case of small shareholders

let's say whether or not they happen to

be part of the oppressed or part of the

oppressor this actually turned out to be

a big problem in the Russian Revolution

and by big problem I mean tremendously

big problem because it turned out that

you could fragment people into multiple

identities and that that's a fairly easy

thing to do and you could usually find

some axis along which they were part of

the oppressor class it might have been a

consequence of their education or it

might have been a consequence of their

of their of their uh of the well that

they strived to accumulate during their

life or it might have been a consequence

of the fact that they had parents or

grandparents who were educated or rich

or that they were a member of the

priesthood or that they were socialists

or anyways the the listing of how it was

possible for you to be berso instead of

proletariat grew immensely and that was

one of the reasons that the Red Terror

claimed all the victims that it claimed

and so that was a huge problem it was

probably most exemplified by the de

demolition of the kulacs who were

basically peasants peasant Farmers

although effective ones in the Soviet

Union who had managed to raise

themselves out of serfdom over a period

of about 40 years and to gather some

some degree of material security about

them and about 1.8 million of them were

exiled uh about 400,000 were killed and

the net consequence of that um removal

of their private property because of

their Bourgeois status was arguably the

death of 6 million ukrainians in the

famines of the 1930s and so the binary

class struggle idea that was a bad idea

that was a very very bad idea it's also

bad in this way and that and this is a

real slight of hand that Marx pulls off

is you have a binary class division

proletarian Bazi and you have an

implicit idea that all of the good is on

the side of the proletariat and all of

the evil is on the side of the Bourgeois

and that's classic group identity

thinking you know it's one of the

reasons I don't like identity politic

itics is because once you divide people

into groups and pit them against one

another it's very easy to assume that

all the evil in the world can be

attributed to one group The hypothetical

oppressors and all the good to the other

and

that well and that's that's that's naive

that's naive Beyond Comprehension

because um it's absolutely foolish to

make the presumption that you can

identify someone's moral worth with

their economic standing so and that

actually turned out to be a real

problem as well because

um Marx also came up with this idea

which is a crazy idea as far as I can

tell of the that's a technical term

crazy idea of of the dictatorship of the

proletariat and that's the next idea

that I really stumbled across it was

like okay so what's the problem well the

problem is the capitalists own

everything they own all the means of

production and they're pressing everyone

that would be all the workers and

there's going to be a race to the bottom

of wages for the workers as the

capitalists strive to extract more and

more um value from the labor of the

proletariat by competing with other

capitalists to drive wages downward

which by the way didn't happen partly

because wages wage earners can become

scarce and that actually drives the

market value upward but the fact that

that you assume a priority that all the

evil can be attributed to the

capitalists and all the good that the

bis and all the good could be attributed

to the proletariat meant that you could

hypothesize that a dictatorship of the

proletariat could come about and that

was the the first stage in the Communist

Revolution and remember this is a call

for Revolution and not just Revolution

but bloody violent revolution and the

overthrow of all overthrowing of all

existent social structures

um anyways the the the the the problem

with that you see is that because all

the evil isn't divided so easily up into

oppressor and oppressed that when you do

establish a dictator of the proletariat

to the degree that you can do that which

you actually can't because it's

technically impossible and an absurd

thing to consider to begin with not

least because of the problem of

centralization I mean you have to

hypothesize that you can take away all

the property of the capitalists you can

replace the capitalist class with a

minority of pro proletariat how they're

going to be chosen isn't exactly clear

in The Communist Manifesto that none of

the people who are from the proletarian

class are going to be corrupted by that

sudden access to power because they're

well by definition good so so then you

have the good people who are running the

world and you also have them centralized

so that they can make decision decisions

that are insanely complicated to make in

fact impossibly complicated to make and

so that's a failure conceptually on both

dimensions because first of all all the

proletariat aren't going to be good and

when you give put people in the same

position as the evil capitalists

especially if you believe that social

pressure is one of the determining

factors of human character which the

marxists certainly believe then why

wouldn't you assume that the proletariat

would immediately become as or more

corrupt than the capitalist which is of

course I would say exactly what happened

every time this experiment was run and

then the next problem is well what makes

you think that you can take some system

as complicated as like capitalist free

market

society and centralize that and put

decision-making power in the hands of a

few people the mechanism

by without specifying the mechanisms by

which you're going to choose them like

what makes you think they're going to

have the wisdom or the ability to do

what the capitalists were doing unless

you assume as Marx did that all of the

evil was with the capitalists and all

the good was with the proletariat and

that nothing that capitalists did

constituted valid labor which is another

thing that Marx assumed which is

palpably absurd because people who are

like maybe if you're a dissolute

Aristocrat from 1830 and or earlier and

you run a feudal estate and all you do

is spend your time gambling and and and

and chasing prostitutes well then the

your labor value is zero but if you're

if you're running a business and and

it's a successful business first of all

you're a bloody fool to explo exploit

your workers because even if you're

greedy is sin because you're not going

to extract the maximum amount of Labor

out of them by doing that and the notion

that you're adding no productive value

as a manager rather than a capitalist is

it's absolutely absurd all it does is

indicate that you either know nothing

whatsoever about how an actual business

works or you refuse to know anything

about how an actual business works so

that's that's also a that's also a big

problem so then the next problem is the

criticism of profit it's like well what

what's wrong with profit exactly what

what's the problem with profit well the

idea from the Marxist perspective was

that profit was theft you know but

profit well can be theft because crooked

people can run companies and so

sometimes profit is theft but that

certainly doesn't mean that it's always

thre theft what it means in part at

least if the capitalist is adding value

to the corporation then there's some

utility and some fairness in him or her

extracting the value of their abstract

labor their thought their abstract

abilities their ability to manage the

company and to engage in proper

competition and product development and

efficiency and the proper treatment of

the workers and all of that and then if

they can create a profit well then they

have a little bit of security for times

that aren't so good and that seems

absolutely bloody necessary as far as

I'm concerned and then the next thing is

well how can you grow if you don't have

a profit and if you have an Enterprise

that's valuable and worthwhile and some

Enterprises are valuable and worthwhile

then it seems to me that a little bit of

profit to help you grow seems to be the

right approach and so and then the other

issue with profit and you know this if

you've ever run a business is it's

really useful constraint you know like

it's not enough to have a good idea it's

not a good enough to have a good idea

and a sales and marketing plan and then

to implement that and all of that that's

bloody difficult like it's not easy to

have a good idea and it's not easy to

come up with a good sales and marketing

plan and it's not easy to find customers

and satisfy them and so if you allow

profit to to constitute a limitation on

what it is that you might reasonably

attempt it provides a good constraint on

on

wasted labor and so most of the things

that I've done in my life even

psychologically that were designed to

help people's psychological health I

tried to run on a for-profit basis and

the reason for what that was apart from

the fact that I'm not averse to making a

profit partly so my Enterprises can grow

but was also so that there were forms of

stupidity that I couldn't engage in

because I would be punished by the

market enough to eradicate the

Enterprise and

[Applause]

so okay and then so the next the next

issue this is a weird one so Marx and

angles also assume that this

dictatorship of the pro Ariat which

involves absurd centralization the

overwhelming probability of corruption

and impossible computation as the

proletariat now try to rationally

compute the manner in which an entire

market economy could run which cannot be

done because it's far too complicated

for anybody to Think Through um the next

theory is that somehow the proletariat

dictatorship would become magically

hyperproductive and there's actually no

Theory at all about how that's going to

happen and so I had to infer the theory

and the theory seems to be that once you

eradicate the Bourgeois because they're

evil and you get rid of their private

property and you you you you eradicate

the profit motive then all of a sudden

magically the small percentage of the

proletariat who now run the

society determine how they can make

their productive Enterprises productive

enough so they become hyperproductive

now and they need to become

hyperproductive for the last error to be

logically coherent in relationship to

the Marxist theory which is that at some

point the proletariat the dictatorship

of the proletariat will become so

hyperproductive that there'll be enough

material goods for everyone across all

dimensions and when that happens then

what people will do is spontaneously

engage in meaningful creative labor

which is what they had been alienated

from in the capitalist horror show and

the Utopia will be magically ushered in

but there's no indication about how that

hyper productivity is going to come

about and there's no Al there's also no

understanding that well that isn't the

Utopia that is going to suit everyone

because there are great differences

between people and some people are going

to find what they want in love and some

are going to find it in Social being and

some are going to find it in conflict

and competition and some are going to

find it in creativity as Marx pointed

out but the notion that that that will

necessarily be the end goal for the

utopian state is preposterous and then

there's the dovian observation too which

is one not to be taken lightly which is

what sort of shallow conception of

people do you have that makes you think

that if you gave people enough bread and

cake and the dovi in terms and nothing

to do with busy them to except to busy

themselves with the continu continuity

of the species that they would Al all of

a sudden become peaceful and Heavenly

dov's idea was that you know we were

built for trouble and if we were ever

handed everything we were we needed on a

silver platter the first thing we would

do is engage in some form of creative

destruction just so something unexpected

could happen just so we could have the

adventure of our lives and I think

there's something well there's something

to be said for

that so and then the last error let's

say although by no means the last was

this and this is one of the strangest

parts of the Communist Manifesto is Marx

agre admits and angles admit repeatedly

in The Communist Manifesto that there

has never been a system of production in

the history of the world that was as

effective at producing material

Commodities in excess than capitalism

like that's that's extensively

documented in The Communist Manifesto

and so if your proposition is look we

got to get as much material security for

everyone as we as as possible as fast as

we can and capitalism already seems to

be doing that at a rate that's

unparalleled in human history wouldn't

the logical thing be just to let the

damn system play itself out I mean

unless you're assuming that the evil

capitalists are just going to take all

of the flat screen televisions and put

them in one one big room and not let

anyone else have one the The Logical

assumption is that well you're already

on a road that's supposed to produce the

proper material productivity and so well

that's 10 reasons as far as I can tell

that and so what I saw in that that that

the Communist Manifesto is is like

seriously flawed in in virtually every

way it could possibly be flawed and also

all in an in an an um uh evidence that

Mark was the kind of narcissistic

thinker who could think he was he was

very intelligent person and so was

angles but what he thought what he

thought when he thought was that what he

thought was correct and he never went

the second stage which is wait a second

how could all of this go terribly wrong

and if you're a thinker especially a

sociological thinker especially a

thinker on the broad scale a social

scientist for example one of your more

obligations is to think you know you

might be wrong about one of your

fundamental axioms or two or three or 10

and as a consequence you have the moral

obligation to walk through the damn

system and think well what if I'm

completely wrong here and things invert

and go exactly the wrong way like I

can't I just can't understand how

anybody could come up with an idea like

the dictatorship of the proletariat

especially after advocating its

implementation for with violent means

which is direct part of the Communist

Manifesto and actually think if they

were thinking if they knew anything

about human beings and the proclivity

for malevolence that's part and parcel

of the individual human being that that

could do anything but lead to a special

form of Hell which is precisely what did

happen and so I'm going to close because

I have three minutes with with the a bit

of evidence as well that

um Mark's also thought that what would

happen inevitably as a consequence of

capitalism is the rich would get richer

and the poor would get poorer so there

would be inequality the first thing I'd

like to say is we do not know how to set

up a human system of Economics without

inequality no one has ever Managed IT

including the Communists and the form of

in inequality changed and it's not

obvious by any stretch of imagination

that the free market economies of the

West have more inequality than the less

free economies in the rest of the world

and the one thing you can say about

capitalism is that although it produces

inequality which it absolutely does it

also produces wealth and all the other

systems don't they just produce

inequality so here's here's a few stats

here's a few free market stats okay um

from 1800 to 2017 income growth adjusted

for inflation GR grew by 40 times by for

production workers and 16 times for

unskilled labor um well GDP fact GDP

Rose by a factor of about 0.5 from 1 AD

to 1800 so from 1 AD to 1800 ad it was

like nothing flat and then all of a

sudden in the last

27 years there's been this unbelievably

upward movement of wealth and it doesn't

only characterize the tiny percentage of

people at the top who admittedly do have

most of the wealth the question is not

only though what's the inequality the

question is well what's happening to the

absolutely poor at the bottom and the

answer to that is they're getting richer

faster now than they ever have in the

history of the world and we're

eradicating poverty in countries that

have adopted moderate free market

policies at a rate that's unparalleled

so here's an example the UN Millennial

one of the UN Millennial goals to was to

reduce the the rate of absolute poverty

in the world by 50% between 2000 and

2015 and they defined that as a $190 a

day pretty low you know but you have to

start somewhere um we be we we hit that

at 2012 three years ahead of schedule

and you might be cynical about that and

say well it's kind of an arbitrary

number but the curves are exactly the

same at $3.80 $3.80 a day and $760 a day

not as many people have hit that but the

rate of increase towards that is the

same the bloody un thinks that we'll be

out of poverty defined by a190 A Day by

the year 2030 it's unparalleled and so

so the so the rich may be getting richer

but the poor are getting richer too and

that's that's not the look I'll leave it

at that um because I'm out of time but

one of the I I'll leave it with this

um the poor are not getting poor under

capitalism the poor are getting richer

under capitalism by a LGE margin and

I'll leave you with one statistic which

is that now um in in Africa the child

mortality rate in Africa now is the same

as the child mortality rate was in

Europe in 1952 and so that's happened

within the span of one Lifetime and so

if you're for the poor if you're for the

poor if you're actually concerned that

the poorest people in the world rise

above their starvation levels then the

all the evidence suggests that the best

way to do that is to implement something

approximating a free market economy and

so thank you very

much

can me okay thank you Dr

Peterson know the

corner is Christ Alone our now forever