Wilhelm of Bavaria declared during the persecution of the Anabaptists: "Who will deny, will be beheaded. Who will not renounce, will be burned". Live it in our days, he would be considered a monster like Pol Pot, however, for Europe of the 16th century, such severity of morals was in the order of things. Wilhelm IV did not particularly stand out against the background of his bloodthirsty contemporaries. At the same time, the willingness to stab your neighbor with a sword or burn him alive coexisted in the heads of our ancestors with the willingness to share his shirt with the same neighbor. The ideas of altruism were as strong as in the 16th century, and in much earlier times. Now, in the 21st century, we have become much more humane. At least in words, we respect human life and freedom. Country, in which dissenters are beaten with hoes, cause universal contempt as backward and underdeveloped. With altruism, but, things are pretty much the same, and how 500 years ago. People for the most part are in no hurry to work hard for the needs of society for free, they remain selfish, thinking first of all about their own pocket. Socialism and capitalism solve this issue. The easiest way to illustrate the differences is with an anecdote about Jews, who learned to drink vodka. Everyone brought a bottle and poured into a common cauldron. When the rabbi scooped from the cauldron and took a sip, it turned, that there is only water - everyone decided to save, relying on other participants. At this moment, the socialists begin to tell their main tale - you should not replace vodka with water, as you, fool, better to work in a team. Learning to drink is critical, so your spending on vodka will eventually pay off and even bring you profit. Pouring water into a common cauldron instead of vodka, you are not cheating the team, you are deceiving yourself. In real life, this stupidity does not work. As the Russian biologist Ilya Mechnikov correctly noted, people are not insects, they will not put the tasks of the anthill higher, than your own tasks. Because of this, there will always be unprincipled parasites in the team., and if you can't control people, then in the end it will be beneficial for everyone to give a damn about others, to take care of yourself. Classics of socialism, “It’s more profitable for you to work for a team”, - this is a lie. Nikolai Chernyshevsky wrote "What to do?" also in 1863 year, there he gave detailed instructions on building a profitable anthill of altruistic seamstresses. Other socialists read the book, admired her, but not in a hurry to move in together, to live as a team, together. Chernyshevsky's plan, - “everyone voluntarily takes care of everyone and benefits everyone”, - completely failed. The capitalists argue differently, they don’t think about personal gain in such matters at all. A decent person from a capitalist society, whether it's a worker, tradesman or industrialist, does not replace vodka with water, because it is against his conscience, and since he is well endowed, to afford the luxury of living honestly. Capitalist morality reflects reality much better, since it does not promise immediate material rewards for helping society. Free distribution of food to the needy and other purely capitalist undertakings are planned unprofitable, At the same time, the capitalists willingly participate in them. Experienced capitalists know, that good deeds are punished, since gratitude is not characteristic of the human species. The naive promises of socialists in the spirit of “today you helped society, and tomorrow society will help you" cause them a sad smile. “Today you helped society, and tomorrow society unanimously expelled you from Athens ”, - that's a much more common story. Socialists cannot get out of the trap of materialism. As Dostoevsky so aptly remarked, they don't go further than their belly. And since the main thing in life is to fill your belly hearty, equally dividing between the proletarian brothers the wealth taken from the bourgeois, then elementary logic tells you to wield alone, because it’s more profitable for your belly. properly, This is what we see in practice.. If among the rank and file socialists you can still sometimes find an honest worker, then the leaders of the socialists usually behave in their personal lives like caricature characters from their own agitation - they devour in three throats, steal from the general cash register, keep subordinates in hunger and a black body. The problem is here, repeat, in materialism, it is he who pulls socialism with a weight to the bottom. After all, we know really working communes, who live on the principle of common property. These are religious communities., associations of deeply religious people. Socialists could take such communes as their model, However, there are two insurmountable obstacles in their way.. At first, the ideology of socialism directly requires mocking believers, reject all immaterial. Secondly, such communes must be voluntary, they should also regularly expel lazy and selfish people from their ranks. With voluntariness under socialism, things are not very good. The first problem can be circumvented, abandoning materialism. To do this, you need to transform the socialist movement into a chiliastic sect, replacing the obviously false “it’s more profitable for you as a fool” with the sublime “we are building a bright kingdom of communism”. In the USSR, among the communists of the twenties and thirties there were enough heroes, who not only laid themselves out in full, but they also infected others with their enthusiasm. The second problem cannot be solved. "Monks" will be a minority anyway, it is impossible to rely on them the economy. For one more or less healthy collective farm there will be twenty diseased collective farms, made up of slackers, crooks and drunkards. No matter how you shuffle the deck, no matter how you wave banners, force at least 20% collective farmers honestly work hard "for the common good" will not work. So that the whole system does not crumble, like a house of cards, will have to take resources from profitable collective farms, give them away to losers. Several years of unfair redistribution, and all the ideological fuse of the young communists will reliably come to naught.Let me summarizeSocialists say we are good people, because we think about the welfare of society, and you are a scoundrel, because you only think about yourself. In reality, things are different. They think about the welfare of society like socialists, так и капиталисты — в природу человека накрепко прошито требование помогать окружающим. The difference is, что социалисты помогают обществу, рассчитывая извлечь из этого в конечном итоге личную выгоду. Capitalists help society, because they think it is right for ideological reasons.
Oleg Makarenko
