Author Archives: G.S. Griffin

The Philosophy of Morality

Posted on by under Religion

Having explored how human morality — ideas and feelings of right and wrong — does not need a god to explain it, instead being the product of our evolutionary history and our unique societies, it is time to address a common criticism of godless morality.

It goes something like this: If morality is purely subjective, if right and wrong do not exist “beyond” or “outside” what humans determine they should be (in other words, are not set by a god), how can one justify telling someone else she has behaved in an immoral way? If a man says rape or murder is morally right, how can another justify saying he is wrong? With no empirical standard of what is ethical, ethics are simply opinions, and why would one human’s opinion have more weight or importance than another’s? Relative morality is meaningless morality.

We can first deal with the obvious point that even if a god-decreed empirical standard exists there is no way for us to know precisely what it is. We’d have to first prove (prove) which god is real and which gods are fictional, then get clarification directly from this being on issues not specifically mentioned in its holy text. So the same question of how one justifies telling another she is wrong haunts the theory of Objective Morality as well. Scriptures are often vague, open to interpretation, so even among those who believe in Objective Morality, and the same God, morals inevitably vary. Conservative and liberal Christians may have different views on right and wrong — on what God’s standards are — based on the exact same holy book! Some Christians firmly believe contraception is a sin. Others disagree. There are debates over what God really thinks about premarital sex and certain sex acts, masturbation, the age of consent, alcohol, and drugs, as well as issues ancient writers couldn’t imagine, from gun control to genetic engineering. While the range of acceptable ethical standards may be more narrow when everyone agrees that Yahweh set Objective Moral laws, individual morals are still very much opinion-based, a matter of human perspective, because such laws are often not comprehensive, clear, or even present in the scriptures. Religious persons somehow think faith-based ethics are on firmer ground and more logical than those based on the works of human philosophers or voluntarily chosen principles like doing no harm, when one cannot prove the faith is true, nor prove its Objective Morality is true, nor even fully know what that Objective Morality would entail. Shifting human values may be problematic, but so are unprovable, unknowable divine ones.

More importantly, the common criticism is an incomplete thought, failing to comprehend the premise.

The premise is indeed that morality is opinion-based. Though rooted in evolution, the society and family one happens to be born into, life experiences, psychological states, and so on, right and wrong are ultimately matters of opinion. The answer to this question (“If morals are human opinions, how can one justify condemning another person’s actions?”) is then obvious: no justification is needed at all. Opinions do not need this kind of justification.

Suppose I were to ask, “What is your favorite color?” and then demanded you justify it using an empirical standard, a standard beyond yourself, beyond humanity — beyond human opinion. The very idea is absurd. The concept of a “favorite color” does not exist in any form beyond our individual selves (do you think that it too was decided by God for us humans to follow?). What sense does it make to demand that the person who expresses a favorite color also “backs it up” using some mythological benchmark not set by humans? Opinions of the prettiest color rest on their own laurels — the subjective standards of man, not the objective ones of a deity.

In the precise same way, no external justification is needed to say, “What the rapist did was wrong, even if he didn’t think so.” If one states that another person behaved in an immoral way, that is a subjective viewpoint like one’s favorite color; there is no requirement that one justifies saying so using anything other than human thought and reason. Opinions, moral or otherwise, do not need to be measured or validated against standards “beyond” or “outside” humanity.

The religious may believe these things are different, because naturally an Objective Favorite Color does not exist but an Objective Morality does. That’s as impossible to prove as the deity it’s based on, but think that if you wish. Regardless, the statement “You have to justify judging others if you don’t believe in an empirical standard” makes no sense. It’s specifically because one doesn’t believe an empirical standard exists that one doesn’t need to justify judging others! If you don’t believe in an Objective Favorite Color, you do not have to justify your favorite color using that standard. If you don’t believe in Objective Morality, you do not have to justify why you think someone did something immoral using that standard. You can stick to human standards — both individual and collective, which you can use to justify your beliefs (for example, my morality — and that of many others — emphasizes minimizing physical and psychological harm, therefore rape is wrong, therefore the rapist has done wrong).

So if no justification is needed to state your opinion that a murderer has done wrong, if the very act of asking for justification is illogical because it ignores the obvious implication of the premise, what of the rest of the common criticism? If it’s all opinion, doesn’t one have to say all opinions are equal, if we look at things objectively? Any notion that Opinion A has more weight or importance than Opinion B is bunk. Is morality then meaningless?

It is true, if we view all this objectively, that Opinion A and Opinion B, whatever they may be, are indeed “equal,” “equally valid or important,” or however else you’d like to phrase it. How else could it be? If there is no deity, no Final Say, to give the thumbs up or down to moral opinions, that is simply reality. (Without an Objective Favorite Color, “My favorite is blue” and “My favorite is green” are both valid.) Now, this generally makes us uncomfortable or sick because it means that though I think the opinions and ethics of the child molester are detestable and inferior to my own there is no deity to say I am right and he is wrong, so our opinions are equally valid. But that’s not the end to the story, because while opinions are equal their real-world consequences are not.

Some moral views lead to death, physical and psychological pain, misery, terror, and so on. Others do not, or have opposite effects. These are real experiences. So while mere opinions, in and of themselves, can be said to be “equal,” we cannot say the same regarding their actual or possible effects. Some moral views are more physically and psychologically harmful than others. This is quite different than favorite colors.

See, the common criticism has it backwards. A lack of an empirical standard makes opinions meaningful, not meaningless. It’s where an empirical standard exists that opinions don’t matter. Consider an actual empirical standard: the truth (yes, atheists and liberals believe in absolute truth). Either George Washington existed or he didn’t. I say he did, another says he didn’t…one of us is incorrect. When it comes to the truth, opinions don’t matter. The objective truth is independent of our opinion. Morality is different: it is not independent of our opinions (it’s opinion-based, after all), and thus our moral views matter a great deal because some will cause more harm than others. If God exists and determined that killing a girl found to not be a virgin on her wedding night was right, your opinion about killing non-virgin girls on their wedding nights would be meaningless. It wouldn’t matter if you thought this wrong — you’d be incorrect. But if there is no deity-designed standard “beyond” humanity, your opinion is meaningful and matters a great deal because awful real-world consequences can be avoided if your moral opinion is heard and embraced.

“Well, so what?” one might ask. “Why is harm itself wrong? Who says we should consider death and pain ‘wrong’ rather than, say, life and happiness?”

The person who asks this has lost sight of linguistic meaning. What exactly does “wrong” (or “bad” or “evil” or “immoral”) mean? Well, it essentially means undesirable. To say something is wrong is to say it’s disagreeable, intolerable, unacceptable, something that should not be done, something to be avoided.

Why is harm wrong? Harm is wrong because it’s undesirable. To put it another way, asking “Why is harm wrong?” is really asking “Why is harm undesirable?” And the answer is “Because it hurts” — because we are conscious, organic creatures capable of experiencing death, pain, humiliation, grief, and so on. Now, this does not mean everyone will agree on what constitutes harm! That is the human story, after all: a vicious battle of opinions on what is harmful and what isn’t (and thus what’s wrong and what isn’t), with some ideas growing popular even while change awaits on the horizon. We even argue over whether causing harm to prevent a greater harm is right (desirable), as with killing one to save many or going to war to stop the evils of others. But the idea that harm is undesirable is universal, because each human creature has something they would not like to happen to them.

This includes those who bring pain and suffering to others or themselves. The rapist may not wish to be raped; the mullah who supports female genital mutilation may not wish to be castrated; the suicidal person may not wish to be tortured in a basement first; the masochist, who enjoys experiencing pain, may not wish to die; the serial killer may not wish to be left at the altar; the sadist, who loves inflicting pain, may not wish to be paralyzed from the neck down.

As soon as you accept the premise that each person has some form of harm he or she wants to avoid, you’ve accepted that harm is wrong — by definition. Even if our views on what is harmful (or how harmful something is) vary widely, we have a shared foundation built on the actual meanings of the terms we’re using. From this starting point, folk from all sides of an issue present their arguments (for instance, “It is wrong — undesirable — for a starving man to steal because that harms the property owner” vs. “It is right — desirable — for a starving man to steal because if he doesn’t he will die”). Though we individuals do not always do so, we often decide that what’s wrong (undesirable) for us is also wrong for others, because we evolved a capacity for empathy and are often smart enough to know a group living under rules that apply to all can actually protect and benefit us by creating a more stable, cooperative, caring society). The disagreements may be savage, but an important premise of harm being wrong because it’s undesirable is universally accepted. Things couldn’t be any other way unless you simply wanted to throw out the meaning of words.

The path forward from there is clear, despite the insistence of some that actions need external justification even if moral opinions do not. This is merely another go at an obviously flawed idea. If no external, objective standard is needed to justify moral views, why would you need one to justify actions based on those moral views? You wouldn’t. We justify our actions based on the subjective, human ideas that are our moral views, and then try to popularize our ideas because we think we know best. It’s simply what human creatures do, whether our ideas are in the minority or majority opinion, whether they lead to death and pain or peace and kindness.

Understandably, some may see no sense in individuals objecting to or regulating the ethics of others. If there’s no higher basis for whose idea of morality is true or better, the next question is oftentimes “How is it then logical to tell someone they’re wrong and force them to live by your moral code?” In a word, self-interest. If you think your morality is better, it’s not an illogical decision to try to convince someone else or even force him to abide by it through law. Even if you know there is no external basis to make your morality objectively “better” or “truer,” it’s still a reasonable action for you to take because you see it as better or truer, and know your efforts can work — minds get changed, so do laws, so do societies. For example, I know there’s no external, objective basis for police murder being wrong, but because I personally think it is, I act. I try to change minds, support law changes. The act is a logical step after opinion formation. If I act, I may help win a world I want, one with fewer senseless killings of unarmed people. If you would prefer a world with your moral code adopted, and know acting can bring that about, it almost seems more logical to act than to not act — even if you know all moral views are equivalent — to bring about that different world! “Logical” just means “makes sense,” after all. So each individual tries to shape the world in a certain way they personally like — a rational thing to do, given individual motives, even while knowing no one is “right.” Acting in self-interest is rarely considered irrational.

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On Reverse Racism

Posted on by under Race Relations

How do we who consider ourselves antiracists define racism? This would seem to be the natural starting point when dissecting the notion of reverse racism (defined as racism against whites).

I view racism as a virus with many strains: conscious beliefs in special flaws in black people (i.e., the white myth of a characteristic black laziness used to explain disproportionate black poverty and welfare use); subconscious biases of the same nature; individual oppression; systemic oppression; or a simple dislike of black folk. I have described and do describe these beliefs, attitudes, and actions as racism (and destroying them as the work of the antiracist), and I’m sure many of you have done the same.

Some of my fellow Leftists will object. “You are confusing ‘racism’ with ‘prejudice’ and ‘discrimination,’ good sir.” And this strikes at the core of the matter, which is of course semantics.

I normally wouldn’t craft an entire piece on an argument birthed by varying definitions, but when the linguistic bloodshed reaches such a level that it begins to inhibit the antiracist cause, well, it becomes difficult to resist.

A liberal stance is that reverse racism does not exist because, as Tessa Thompson’s character in Dear White People put it,

Black people can’t be racist. Prejudiced yes, but not racist. Racism describes a system of disadvantage based on race. Black people can’t be racist because we don’t stand to benefit from such a system.

Franchesca Ramsey, whom I encourage you all to follow on social media, responded to the idea that mistreatment like bullying and racial slurs should be labeled “racism” by saying, “Those are examples of racial prejudice, not racism. That’s because racism isn’t just about individuals. It’s about institutional power.” Indeed, she defines racism as “individual feelings about people of color…supported by institutional power” — so for example, it would be bad enough if someone were to be seen as more dangerous, more aggressive, and more deviant just based on skin color, which Ramsey defines as racial prejudice, but when an institution like the criminal justice system uses its power to lock up this person for a longer prison term than someone of a “less threatening race” who committed precisely the same crime, that is racism (and a massive societal problem blacks face today and have for a long time, long before the War on Drugs).

Zeba Blay of the Huffington Post wrote:

Some people simplify racism as one group not liking another, and think “racist” and “prejudiced” are interchangeable. But racism is a concept that operates on both an individual and institutional level. At its core, racism is a system in which a dominant race benefits off the oppression of others — whether they want to or not. We don’t live in a society where every racial group has equal power, status, and opportunity.

In their definition of racism, Ramsey and Blay at least mention the working relationship between individual and institution, acknowledging the necessity of the former (“racism isn’t just about individuals”; it “operates on both an individual and institutional level”). Some don’t bother, which can really make things confusing. Here I’m reminded of what the great Black Panther Stokely Carmichael said: “If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it’s a question of power.” S.E. Smith recently went so far as to say, “Racism is structural, not personal.”

In sum, they are saying only prejudice (defined as the belief in stereotypes about groups) and discrimination (acting on your prejudice in a harmful way) are strictly personal. Racism cannot be strictly personal. It doesn’t exist unless prejudice and discrimination are institutionalized: supported by government, the education system, the criminal justice system, corporate power, and so on. It’s privilege combined with power. If this is the meaning, reverse racism indeed does not exist.

This writer takes a slightly different tack. I see institutionalism as one of the five major strains of racism mentioned above, not the only strain. I much prefer how the Oxford Dictionary defines racism: “Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior” or “The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race.” Here prejudice and discrimination fall under the umbrella of racism, rather than standing apart.

I don’t see my preferred definition as “more accurate” than what Ramsey and others use, though I do selfishly like that it encompasses my five strains. I also don’t cling to it because it is most common (the Marxist and the atheist are used to small herds) or for tradition’s sake (I say that while not forgetting Carmichael and others who long ago formulated their definition).

However, I believe viewing institutionalism as one of the symptoms rather than the whole disease does more for the cause of racial justice.

All respect to my comrades, I have been amazed that “reverse racism does not exist” is a hill many Leftists seem prepared to die on. Look at this article thus far. It has taken me this long just to sort through the opposing definitions! Surely such time and energy in discourse, whether in person or online, might be better devoted to actually proving that blacks receive longer sentences than whites for the same crimes, including hate crimes, which many whites still think is total nonsense, than arguing that no, a black kid beating up a white kid while spouting anti-white slurs is only prejudice and discrimination, not racism, because it has no connection to historical and modern institutional power. Surely we have bigger giants to slay.

It’s not just being too lazy to argue the point, nor saying the point has no value. We should simply seriously consider what is most productive when engaging with white folk who, as Cornel West would put it, are still “sleepwalking.” How do we best reach people? Many whites who hear “reverse racism does not exist” will immediately close off their minds to anything further you have to say. Granted, the mere words “race” or “racism” can have the same effect, but the denial of reverse racism is a line in the sand for the more reasonable and sensible whites — the reachable ones. Besides, justice won’t allow us to abandon our proselytizing concerning racism, but reverse racism is, I think, a different story. Now, using a broader definition of racism and thus acknowledging reverse racism exists isn’t suggested here to protect white feelings, allow shifty debate partners to distract or diminish from the injustices people of color constantly face (the usual strategy), or yield an inch to “the enemy.” What it does is quickly lay common ground down which the semi of reason can come barreling.

By my definition of racism, I can readily acknowledge reverse racism exists. Not the strain of systemic oppression, naturally, but rather others — the black American who distrusts or dislikes whites, prefers not to hire whites, commits a hate crime against a white person, believes all white people are innately racist or hateful, and so on. Given our brutal racial history and our modern problems, it would be quite remarkable if these types of attitudes and actions were beyond the realm of the possible. Other definitions call them prejudice and discrimination, mine labels them racism — both to incorporate what I see racism as and to create a starting point for a more effective conversation that might more easily change white thought.

With that short acknowledgement I have lost no ground. My ideological opponent and I have simply accepted the popular (and in no way inferior or inaccurate) definition of racism, and I can raise without delay the two points regarding reverse racism that matter most: origin and scale.

Scale addresses the deflection (“White people are discriminated against, too!”). We do not need to redefine racism to obliterate the deflection. Yes, no matter your race and no matter what race you’re thinking about or interacting with, harmful stereotypes and hateful acts are wrong, horrific, and deserve condemnation. But the racism of all strains that blacks face is an infinitely more colossal problem than that which whites face. It isn’t white names on resumes that are 50% less likely to get a call back for an interview. It’s black names. It isn’t white kids who are 2-3 times more likely to be suspended or expelled from school compared to others who commit the same offenses. It’s black kids. And on and on into every arena of life. Yet we live in a society where whites are so shockingly divorced from the facts that they can think discrimination against them is worse than against people of color at the precise same time the FBI finds only 10.5% of all hate crimes in 2015 were directed against whites (a typical percentage), even though the U.S. is still nearly 70% white! White supremacist and rightwing extremist violence is more frequent than that of Islam, the Left, and black nationalists combined. 23 of the 900 hate crimes that occurred in the 10 days following the election were against Trump supporters, mostly white, yet we somehow pretend this is just as egregious as all the rest combined (directed against Jews, Muslims, Hispanics, blacks, gays).

White delusions are quite astounding. It’s not that abuse against whites isn’t wrong and must cease, it’s that no knowledgeable or thinking person would use reverse racism to diminish the importance of dismantling anti-black racism and its effects, past and present. The difference of scale is huge.

Origin addresses where race hatred comes from. I don’t pretend to know the perspectives of black folk or the black experience, but I do not believe for a moment that anti-black sentiment and anti-white sentiment come from the same place.

As someone who writes often about racism, I occasionally have friends who send me videos of black people beating up or harassing white people — as if I was unaware such things were even possible. When that happens, I watch the video or read the article and say — earnestly — that such things are awful and as equally wrong as white folk beating up black folk. Then I speak frankly: hatred and violence do not always come from the same place (in fact, looking at history, they rarely do). We must not pretend hatred and violence against one group cannot be a reaction to hatred and violence against another.

I much suspect that anti-white racism is largely a reaction to anti-black racism. Racism against blacks largely stems from the idea that there’s something wrong with black people — laziness, aggression, deviancy, lower intellect, immorality — which racist whites use to explain black poverty, crime, broken families, lower test scores, etc., rather than bothering to look at history and economics. This blame inspires some whites to do horrific things. Racism against whites is largely an angry backlash against these racists myths, modern mistreatment at the hands of individuals and institutions, and perhaps the past oppression that dug this social pit African Americans are still trying to climb their way out of. This anger can inspire some blacks to do awful things.

These are not the only factors, and you are correct if you think racism from either side feeds racism on the other. But the point is that anyone who takes American history seriously or has an ounce of respect for social researchers who collect and analyze data on today’s world would conclude racist sentiment does not come from the same place, the same history and motives and feelings and thoughts. If we accept reality, it’s easy to imagine that if anti-white racism vanished tomorrow anti-black racism would continue to thrive, yet if anti-black racism vanished anti-white racism would be severely diminished. That is why I personally focus on ending anti-black racism.

I wonder how many conversations did not get to these important things due to semantics.

Arguing reverse racism doesn’t exist because of definitional differences is like spending your days searching for the perfect battlefield while two giants destroy your land.

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Yes, Liberals and Atheists Believe in Absolute Truth

Posted on by under Religion

As America enters what has been called a “post-truth” age, when “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief,” certain sectors of the populace — the liberals, the atheists, the youths — are being attacked for allegedly denying “absolute truth” in favor of “relativistic truth” (or “objective” for “subjective” truth).

Take for example an article from the conservative Federalist right after the election entitled “The Left Decries Our Post-Truth Society While Pushing the Ideas That Fuel It.” Naturally, no actual evidence is offered that the Left abandons facts for emotions more readily than the Right, but the sentiment is clear. The author asks the liberal media criticizing the witless Trump voters who believe most anything despite not a shred of evidence, from Obama being a secret Muslim to 3-5 million illegal votes being cast in the 2016 election:

Where have you been all these years as America has abandoned truth for relativism especially in higher learning (and now in all levels of education)? Haven’t you been paying attention as we have put emotion over facts in just about every sphere of society? Our nation has been abandoning objective truth for more than a century! What did you think would result?

This sudden outcry against post-truth reminds me of the vapors so many had when they heard the Trump “Grab her by the p—” tape. Suddenly, people who had been telling us there’s no right and wrong—no objective values or morality by which we can judge others—switched gears and became Puritans in a flash…

My response to those to those now worried about this “post-truth society” is “You reap what you sow.” This abandonment of objective facts for emotion is the inevitable result of our culture’s unrelenting commitment to moral relativism.

Likewise, one can’t help but notice no evidence is offered to support the notion that Americans of the modern era are more likely to accept emotion-based appeals over fact-based appeals compared to those of over a century ago. But more important to our purposes here is that the writer isn’t actually speaking of absolute truth (what is fact?), she is speaking of absolute morality (what is ethically right?).

The same conflation was made by the Christian satire site Babylon Bee, which ran the article “Culture in Which All Truth is Relative Suddenly Concerned About Fake News,” which featured a fictional interviewee:

American society, while typically rejecting concepts like absolute truth and objective moral standards, is suddenly showing grave concern for the rise of fabricated news stories…

One Oregon man, who rejects the idea that humanity can even be sure the universe exists in any meaningful sense, was nonetheless disturbed by the idea that websites could publish completely false information, for anyone in the world to read.

“It’s just absolutely wrong, in my opinion,” said the man who doesn’t believe in absolute ideals of right and wrong at all. “What if someone reads the information and gets like, deceived? That just seems totally wicked.”

“It just doesn’t seem right that they can publish stuff that’s just blatantly not true,” added the man, who also noted his firm belief that everyone has the right to define their own version of truth.

All this is one of the most poorly thought-out straw man arguments posited by the religious Right.

Most liberals and nonreligious persons believe in absolute truth (just another word for “reality”) just as most conservatives and religious people do. If we define relative truth in its most meaningful form — belief that reality is a matter of opinion — while putting aside other definitions — that we cannot know with certainty what reality is (are we in a computer simulation?), that different cultures in different ages have varying views on what reality is (where does the sun go at night?), and other ideas folks like Nietzsche mean when they say things like “There are no eternal facts as there are no absolute truths” — one would be hard-pressed to find anyone who takes the idea seriously.

As mortals, we try to understand the nature of reality, we believe different things concerning it, and we bicker among ourselves with enthusiasm on the subject. But very few human beings think different opinions equate to different literal realities. Liberals do not suppose that because they believe Obama is not Muslim and some conservatives do that both parties side with equal “truths.” Rather, one is correct and the other incorrect. Likewise, the notion that there both is no god and that there is a god is not something atheists suggest just because some disbelieve and some believe. They cannot both be true, and no one supposes they are. People are generally the same: they believe they know the absolute truth and others don’t. They don’t think reality is a matter of opinion.

However, when conservatives and religious fundamentalists speak of absolute truth this is usually and clearly code for something else entirely. As you see from the articles above, they often mean “absolute morality” or “objective morality.” Yet this is different from absolute truth (if we’re going to bother using definitions of any meaning).

Absolute morality is allegedly a fixed code of ethical behavior that did not originate with human beings. Rather, it was decreed by a god and we creatures are responsible for figuring out what it is — what is right and wrong — and living by it.

Naturally, no, nonreligious people of any political persuasion tend to not believe in absolute morality. They do not think there is any set right and wrong beyond what humans create for ourselves. They believe evolutionary biology and human interactions within unique societies change ideas of right and wrong over time, as evidenced by scientific and historical knowledge. With morality rooted in biological and societal influences, it is indeed purely relative, not absolute in any manner. We simply judge people’s actions as right or wrong on the basis that they do not align with our own, not because we have a guidebook from a deity. Morality is opinion-based. That is what I believe.

(And in doing so consider myself closer to the absolute truth on where morality comes from and how it functions than some! Do not think it clever to say, “Well, you don’t believe X is always wrong, so you don’t believe in absolute truth.” That is like saying, “You don’t believe winter to be the worst season, so you don’t believe in absolute truth.” Humans have different opinions, not different literal realities. Disbelieving in objective morality does not mean you disbelieve in objective truth. I think it is absolute truth that what’s right and wrong is not absolute: not objective, not set by God or independent of humanity.)

But one sees the muddle that conflating absolute truth and absolute morality creates in the articles quoted. A discourse on facts devolves for some bizarre reason into one on what’s ethical. So people believing ludicrously untrue things (“alternative facts”) is blamed on nonbelievers or more liberal people accepting that what’s ethical is subject to change and a matter of perspective. Do we see how absurd this is? How this is assigning a cause that is not necessarily true? Because I think what’s ethical is opinion-based I’m more vulnerable to thinking the precise size of the president’s inauguration crowd, whether the former president was born in Kenya, or whether God exists is opinion-based? Wouldn’t religious conservatives then be more immune to such rumors, rather than their main perpetrators? Might it be more sensible to suppose people believe ludicrously untrue things because they lack critical thinking skills, historical knowledge, or myriad other explanations?

At other times, however, “absolute truth” is simply used to mean God. “God is absolute truth, you don’t believe in God, therefore you don’t believe in absolute truth.” This is of course a definition that makes the term meaningless. “Reality” is really the only helpful definition of “absolute truth.” After all, anyone can simply make up a term for God and marvel that someone else doesn’t believe in it. “You don’t believe in absolute awesomeness? No wonder our society is falling apart.”

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On the Origins of Capitalism

Posted on by under Socialism

Put simply, capitalism is an economic system characterized by the private ownership of business and industry, where earning a profit by selling a good or service is each owner’s basic and necessary goal. Private firms compete to seize a larger and larger share of a given market, to meet (and, in the modern world of advertising, create) the demands of the greatest possible number of consumers, the ultimate success being driving one’s competitors out by underselling them. The capitalist (the owner) can take a greater piece of the market with each competitor that goes under, resulting in more profits. Profits not only enrich the capitalist personally, they allow the firm to expand into markets in other cities, nations, or continents. They allow a commodity to be sold at a lower price. They provide opportunities for investment in new technologies that reduce the cost of production, the number of hours needed to create a commodity, and the number of workers the capitalist needs to employ.

But to accomplish all these things, the capitalist needs workers. He needs them to produce and sell his product at a rate and on a scale he cannot do himself. The workers need currency to survive, so they sell their labor to the capitalists for a wage. The capitalist exploits the workers, as it is the workers who create the wealth. Workers construct the good or provide the service, thus producing the wealth, which is controlled, and pocketed, by the capitalist. The capitalist awards herself much while keeping worker wages as low as possible–to increase profits. The capitalist holds all decision-making power, making capitalism authoritarian as well as a grand theft from the people who generate wealth. Capitalism is the few growing rich off the labor of the many.

Capitalism was a revolutionary change that brought with it unimaginable advances in technology and living standards. While its negative impacts on human society (exploitation and theft, authoritarianism, environmental destruction, etc.) are clear, it also had a positive impact, and one need not read Marxist literature long to notice many authors give an appreciative nod to its inception and early development, an example of which you will see below. Capitalism is still a young enterprise—it has not existed since the beginning of time. As British socialist Chris Harman writes, “Capitalism as a way of organizing the whole production of a country is barely three or four centuries old. As a way of organizing the whole production of the world, it is at most 150 years old” (How Marxism Works). Competition between private firms that use wage-labor has been the driving force of human economics for but a moment in the lifetime of our race, so those who view capitalism as the zenith of economic progress may one day be disappointed. Modern humans have been on earth for 100,000 years and, as Harman notes, “it would be remarkable indeed if a way of running things that has existed for less than 0.5 percent of our species’ lifespan were to endure for the rest of it.”

Much older than capitalism is the division of society into classes, and it is important to understand the origins and societal effects of this phenomenon in order to understand the rise of capitalism.

For 95,000 years, most human societies were characterized by “primitive communism,” in which labor was cooperative and resources were distributed equally or according to need. Anthropologist Richard Lee writes, “Before the rise of the state and the entrenchment of social inequality, people lived for millennia in small-scale kin-based social groups, in which the core institutions of economic life included collective or common ownership of land and resources, generalised reciprocity in the distribution of food, and relatively egalitarian political relations” (see Harman). People’s survival depended on cooperation, which necessitated a classless form of social organization and political leadership. Sometimes, men and women had equal power, and revered leaders usually worked alongside everyone else. Many Native American nations were structured like this only a century ago, and some isolated aboriginal tribes still are in the Pacific and South America.

Human society started changing when agricultural surpluses during the Urban Revolution of 10,000-5,000 B.C. created the specialization of work, which gave rise to class divisions, the State, and the exploitation of the masses under an economic system called feudalism. New technologies allowed food production (and the human population) to explode, and it became necessary for certain individuals in each community to guard and manage stored food. That fell to leaders who had once worked alongside the people, often religious leaders. When cooperation was no longer required for survival, social structures became divided into upper and lower classes. We see that in the most ancient of nation-states, such as Egypt. Those divisions have characterized the last 5% of human existence.

So most human societies now had a small minority of rulers and a huge majority of laborers, and all the exploitation and inequality that comes with such a structure. Though capitalism has similar characteristics, feudalism dominated human societies from 5,000 B.C. to the 15th century A.D. Workers labored not for capitalists who compete with other firms for more profits and market control, but to provide wealth and luxury to powerful heads of state. Harman explains:

The emergence of civilisation is usually thought of as one of the great steps forward in human history—indeed, as the step that separates history from prehistory. But it was accompanied wherever it happened by other, negative changes: by the development for the first time of class divisions, with a privileged minority living off the labour of everyone else, and by the setting up of bodies of armed men, of soldiers and secret police—in other words, a state machine—so as to enforce this minority’s rule on the rest of society.

Under feudalism, your resources and labor were devoted to pharaoh, the emperor, the king, or to your local feudal lord. The vast majority of people worked in agriculture, and did not sell their labor for a wage (soldiers were a notable exception). Production was limited to self-contained estates, and workers (“serfs”) were stuck in unshakable caste systems. One did not expect his or her lot in life to improve or change in any way before death. Most people exchanged their labor for protection, turning over large portions of their produce to the lord and receiving in return the protection of the lord’s armies from bandits and enemy lords, though of course this “exchange” was usually forced upon the poor through conquest and violence. Serfs were by no means allowed to leave as they chose—that would hurt the rulers. There was widespread oppression of the peasant masses by the rulers and their armies, and by the church as well, which demanded portions of crops as tithes.

During this time, there were small numbers of artisans, merchants, and traders in towns selling goods for individual profit, but they worked alone, as a family, or with an apprentice. There were also those who loaned money. But merchants held no economic power over others. Like peasants, they produced a good or service in order to survive, but their goods had to be exchanged for money so the family could in turn purchase agricultural produce. Money had little significance beyond a lord’s need to pay soldiers for their services or a merchant’s need for a means to put food on the table. True wealth was in land. It gave workers a way to feed themselves, and lords sought land through conquest to gain more resources, workers, and power—to live in greater luxury. So the work output of most people enriched the lives of the nobility, and under such a system there was little means for workers to improve production techniques or technology.

But things slowly changed in the 15th century. In Europe, plague destroyed a huge percentage of the population in the 14th century. The surviving nobles demanded more and more goods from the merchants in the towns. Towns thus became more important and more work opened up there for roaming free laborers and escaped serfs. The surviving peasants seized the best land from the dead, and were able to produce more. As a result, trade networks sprung up, markets grew more important in feudal society than isolated production on estates, and living standards rose. Exploration, conquest, and the enslavement of foreign lands and people led to globalization and international trade that made some merchants rich alongside kings, queens, and men of the church.

The “putting-out system” provided peasants a new way of making a living and thus weakened the economic power of the feudal lord. It was also an infant form of capitalist exploitation. Merchants bought the raw materials needed to make a commodity, and paid poor peasants to carry out production. Thus, “the direct robbery of the products of peasant labour was replaced by a system in which individual workers voluntarily accepted less than the full value of their products in return for being supplied with raw materials or tools” (Harman, A People’s History of the World). The poor had not the resources to buy or own the means of production—the raw materials and technology. To survive they were forced to accept whatever payment the merchant offered. Payment was dismal, as the merchant desired and needed profit—money from the sale of a good left over after all production and labor costs had been paid—to continue and improve his way of life. He kept wages low to keep more money for himself.

Importantly, for the common people wealth could be now be amassed in currency. Survival could be ensured by selling one’s labor for a wage (one who did so Marxists called a proletarian, an employer of wage labor being the bourgeois, the merchant, the capitalist). Over the next four centuries, merchants increasingly supervised production (though it was a very slow change, as until the Industrial Revolution of the late 1700s and early 1800s the vast majority of people still did not work for a wage, were not employees of someone else; see Curl, For All the People). New technologies revolutionized production and garnered huge profits. Markets became global. The merchant class grew larger and richer, and more industries were organized under firms with one person employing a larger and larger labor force. Industrial capitalism was born. Marx observed in The Communist Manifesto in 1848:

Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overseer and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

Yet American socialist Michael Harrington called capitalism “the greatest achievement of humankind in history” because “political power no longer had to be authoritarian, for it had ceased to be the principal instrument of economic coercion” (Socialism: Past and Future). Private ownership and competition weakened the power of feudal lords, though “the shifts in social structure opened up possibilities of freedom and justice, not inevitabilities.” In many ways, capitalism helped push the world in that direction. Marx wrote the bourgeoisie “put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors.'” Unfortunately, the change only substituted one form of minority rule for another. The power of the church and of ruling dynasties declined, and the power of the capitalist class increased. “In one word,” Marx wrote, “for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, [the capitalist class] has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.”

He also noted, “Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class,” from “an oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility” to today, where “the executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” Within each nation, as a capitalist class grew and gained colossal wealth, it gained political power, advancing to the top of the social hierarchy, until it “conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway.”

Over the centuries, capitalists solidified control of political power, and in many ways this slowed down the development of liberty and democracy. It was no longer the king or feudal lord oppressing the class of businessmen and the class of laborers, it was the class of wealthy ruling businessmen (like George Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton  in the United States) oppressing the class of laborers. To repeat what Dr. King wrote, “[Capitalism] started out with a noble and high motive, viz., to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against.” New oppressors took over, and like back then the governments of many advanced societies today mostly serve the interests of big business, because politicians are also business leaders or are bought off by them in the form of lobbying, campaign contributions, and so on.

As under feudalism, the majority experienced barbaric treatment at the hands of the minority, not just physical mistreatment in deadly working conditions but also the robbery of their wealth, the wealth workers created with their own hands. The capitalist owners exploited the labor of the people, keeping them poor and desperate while enriching themselves, a problem that still exists. To quote The Communist Manifesto:

The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs. But whatever forms they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.

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Which Religion is the Primary Victim of ISIS Genocide?

Posted on by under Politics

In March 2016, Secretary of State John Kerry declared the Islamic State (also called ISIS or Daesh), an Sunni extremist group controlling territory in Syria and Iraq, guilty of genocide.

“In my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in territory under its control, including Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims,” Kerry said in a speech at the State Department. According to NPR, this is the sixth time the United States officially labeled state or group actions abroad in this way, the previous instance being against Sudan in 2004 (Darfur).

Kerry was under pressure from Congress to make such a declaration; Republicans and Democrats joined together in the House of Representatives and voted 393-0 on Monday to call ISIS actions genocidal. Congress set Thursday as the deadline for the State Department to accept or reject the designation, a deadline many expected the Obama administration to miss.

Kerry did not suggest that military action against ISIS would increase, the main objective of many politicians, particularly Republicans, that sought the designation. The U.S. currently targets and bombs both known and suspected ISIS operatives using unmanned drones, a tactic that protects the lives of American servicemen but also kills far more innocent bystanders than it does terrorists, according to multiple sources, and aids in terrorist recruiting efforts, inspiring further violence.

ISIS crimes against humanity include mass public executions, torture and mutilation, crucifixion, rape, kidnapping, sex trafficking, expulsion, destruction of places of worship, and forced conversion. Members have set about “stoning alleged adulterers to death and throwing gay men off buildings to their death and using child executioners,” to quote the International Business Times. Shia Muslims, Christians, and Yazidis (who worship one God, honor seven angels who look over the Earth, and believe in reincarnation) are the main targets of ISIS, whose members wish to subjugate others to Sunni Islam (the “true,” “pure” Islam) and their new caliphate.

Journalist Amy Goodman claimed that “ISIS has killed more Muslims than certainly members of any other religion,” which is likely accurate. Shia Muslims (13% of Syrians, 60-65% of Iraqis) have likely lost the most civilians at the hands of ISIS, followed by Yazidis (less than 1% of Syrians and Iraqis) and Christians (10% of Syrians, less than 1% of Iraqis).

In the first 8 months of 2014, ISIS killed 8,500 civilians in Iraq (a country with very few Christians), according to a U.N. report. From mid-2014 to late 2015, ISIS executed an estimated 10,000 people in Syria and Iraq, including 2,000 civilians in Syria and 3,000 civilians in Iraq. Thousands more people have died in suicide bombings, in battles, and massacres. For example, nearly 1,700 Iraqi Air Force cadets, mostly Shia, were murdered at Camp Speicher in Tikrit, Iraq in June 2014 and up to 5,000 Yazidi were mowed down in August 2014 in Sinjar Province, Iraq. Those events are not included in the 10,000 tally. The Knights of Columbus and In Defense of Christians identified some 1,100 Christians killed by ISIS in the report they sent to Kerry on March 9.

The reports caution these estimates are conservative — the precise number of deaths among all these groups is unknown, but likely higher.

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