Below is the text of a speech I gave in Warwickshire in May 2022 to a group of freedom lovers. The content is mine but I’m eternally grateful to the genius of Ayn Rand for most of the underlying ideas.
Here in Kenilworth in 1265 Simon de Montford lead the barons in a revolt aimed at reducing the power of the King. During the civil war which started in 1642, Kenilworth was a stronghold of the Roundheads, who did eventually subdue the King.
Today, thanks to covid, it is clear we are in another battle against the state: for control over our lives – our schools, our universities, our media, our cars, our boilers, our bodies, our houses, our money, our diet, our Internet.
Simon de Montford and the Roundheads, reduced but did not remove the over-arching power of the state. De Montford gained some rights for individuals by having Magna Carta legally established.
The Roundheads killed one authoritarian but ended up replacing him with another: Cromwell.
The Restoration, then the Glorious Revolution curtailed the power of the monarchy, but enthroned Parliament instead as the sovereign who now lords it over us.
I suggest what we want to be recognised is that all the above are wrong. It is not the King, not Parliament and not the UN that is sovereign. It is the individual.
What I want to talk about today, and what I explore in my books and on my websites, is why this hasn’t happened. Why isn’t the individual treated as a sovereign human being with the right to determine his or her own life?
The standard answer is that if people are left to their own devices, there will be anarchy, mayhem and the destruction of persons and property at random.
Why assume that people want to hurt each other? There did used to be a certain justification for this. Before the Industrial Revolution, life was much harder. People did desperate things to stay alive. But science, technology and capitalism have shown that we’re all much better off specialising in different fields and trading our products with others – rather than spending our time fighting them off. That way we can produce more values.
But this economic truism, is a lesson that has not been learned, certainly not embraced, especially by our intellectuals. Especially since the invention and propagation of socialism. Something that Yuri Bezmenov knows all about.
Socialism is a political and economic system in which the means of production, distribution and exchange are controlled by the collective. It is the chief enemy of individualism because it crushes individual choice on the altar of social obedience. In practice of course, there is no such thing as the collective or society to perform this control and demand this obedience – it always ends up being the state, i.e. the government.
Socialists used to claim that their centralised control would be more efficient. But no one believes that now. Not after the poverty of the USSR and Maoist China. So why is socialism still so popular?Why are all of today’s political parties heading towards full socialism, just at different rates?
For the full answer, see my books, but today I will give you the outline.
Socialism is not fundamentally an economic system. In fact capitalism is not fundamentally an economic system. They are both political systems. And like all political systems, they rest intellectually upon moral systems. Capitalism rests upon the morality of self-interest. Socialism rests upon the morality of altruism.
That is the relationship between politics and morality. Whatever you believe to be the good, is likewise what society should aim to achieve. Otherwise you are in an impossible position. How can you do what you believe to be right, if society forbids it? Conversely, how can you achieve the good if everyone around you is doing the opposite? You can’t. The only solution seems to be withdrawing from society and living hidden lives, more or less alone.
At times like these I sympathise with this view. If you’re interested in seeing what it would take, I recommend reading ‘Atlas Shrugged’ by Ayn Rand. But breaking off from society is not an easy option. I don’t want to give up the life I’ve got. There’s still a lot of good in it for me: good people, good things, good experiences. So rather than give those up just yet, let’s return to morality and politics and see what we can do to change them.
If socialism rests on altruism, then it is altruism that we have to fight and replace with something better. But ‘hold on’, I hear you say, ‘surely altruism is the right moral system. How can we ditch that? What would we replace it with? Surely not self-interest? Selfishness is just wrong.’
And therein, ladies and gentlemen, lies the challenge. How can we ditch a moral system that we’ve relied on since Christianity became dominant, about 1700 years ago?
More fundamentally, what’s wrong with altruism? Why does altruism lead to socialism? Couldn’t it lead to some other, more freedom-oriented system?
To find out, let us examine what being ‘altruistic’ means. The Oxford Dictionary of English says ‘showing a disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others; unselfish’. What does this entail in practice? Let’s take the covid vaccines.
If you’ve already had a viral disease and therefore have some natural immunity, in the old days, that was good enough to protect you and others. This time the government said ‘No! Take the vaccines anyway. Against your better judgement and against decades of knowledge about viruses’.
But these vaccines were new and therefore relatively untested.
Taking one therefore entailed a realistic health risk. The government, and society at large said, ‘Take it anyway, for others.’ Now that’s real altruism. When you do something not just neutral to your own interests, but actually against them, in order to help others. When you have nothing to gain (except others’ approval) and everything to lose (if the vaccine injures you). That is ‘self-sacrifice’ and that is the true meaning of altruism.
Not ‘being kind to others’ but suffering yourself whilst attempting to be kind to others. And here’s the real clue to altruism’s evil nature: if what you do doesn’t actually end up helping others, if your taking the vaccine doesn’t actually stop others getting the disease, it doesn’t matter. As long as you sacrificed yourself, according to altruism, you’ve done the right thing. And what if the vaccine makes you ill or weakens your immune system? All the better proof of your sacrifice.
Or take it one step further. What if your taking the vaccine actually ends up harming others, perhaps by making the virus go on longer in the environment due to a lack of natural resistance? It doesn’t matter – so long as you displayed ‘disinterested and selfless concern’.
So in a nutshell, by following the morality of altruism, even if the outcome is that you get ill and others get ill, you have done the right thing. You are a good person. Because you sacrificed your judgement, then your health to the idea of helping others. That is what governments around the world told us to do. It is what the church told us to do. To suffer, for the sake of others, even if it does no good, even if it does everyone involved harm.
That is the power of altruism, and that is why I say it is evil.
If you need further examples, consider Hitler destroying Jews for the sake of others: the Aryans. Or Mao destroying the Chinese people for the sake of others: future Chinese people. Or Stalin destroying the bourgeoisie for the sake of others: the working class. The others in each case, gained nothing, they lost too. Or Boris destroying people’s cars, jobs, warmth and energy with Net Zero for the sake of future generations.
These examples show the deadly mistake of basing your morality on what you think is good for others. Which others? Clearly not the Jews or the bourgeoisie or the car drivers. What is good for others? You can’t ask all of them. What if they disagree? Who would be their spokesman? A politician. How much power should he have? As much as it takes to ensure people make sacrifices.
What it boils down to in practice is sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice and obedience for the sake of obedience. That is why I say altruism is evil.
So what do we replace it with? And how? You cannot force people to change their idea of judging good and bad. You have to persuade them. And it’s not a minor change to make.
Morality is the daily driver behind all our actions. It literally gets us out of bed by saying ‘here are your goals, now go and achieve them’. But we don’t have to listen. We can stay in bed if we like. Morality relies on our power of choice. Even obedience is a choice. A thousand policemen with rubber bullets and water cannon cannot make you do something. They can blow you off your feet like a leaf and they can hurt you like kicking a dog. But it is them, not you, that makes these things happen. Even the cleverest psychological manipulation is still someone else doing the manipulating – not you. No one can literally make you act a certain way, because no one can literally make you think a certain way. Individual humans have individual choice. And our choices make us who we are. That is what I mean by ‘the individual is sovereign’. It is fundamental to human nature. And it is the secret fear of altruist politicians. Their Achilles heel. ‘What if the people won’t obey me?’, they cry. ‘ I’ll be lost, hopeless, weak.’ And this is the clue to a new morality.
One that is in accordance with human nature, one that respects the power of choice, and one that is fitted for individuals who want to flourish. The name of that morality is rational self-interest. What does that mean?
Rational self-interest is the moral code we already live by in our better moments – when we focus on what we want and how to get it.
It is simple to describe but hard to live by. It simply means using your own reason, not the edicts of others, to decide what goals will enhance your life and what actions will enable you to achieve them.
And that’s a lot harder than ‘following the rules’, ‘complying with regulation’ and ‘going with the flow’. It requires self-confidence, planning, logic, research, adaptability and weighing difficult choices. Who to be friends with? Who to marry? What career to pursue? What food to eat? What hobbies to take up? What charities to support? What books to read? What medicine to take? What fitness programme to follow? What conferences to go to?
That is what it takes to be a flourishing human individual. But the rewards are worth it: friends, wealth, health, fun, stimulation, wisdom, enjoying experiences of life all around the world and, given a lifetime, with thousands of other people. In short happiness.
Happiness is the rightful pursuit of any human being and rational self-interest will get you there.
Self-sacrifice will not.
And anyone who claims a right to stop you being happy is your enemy. Your life is yours, it is sacred, it is sovereign, and if we all stood up and declared that proudly, the false moral edifice of altruism would crumble and we would win the battle that Simon de Montford and the Roundheads lost.