Socialism’s success relies upon us not asking this simple question.
00:00 Socialism isn’t dying
01:11 The crappy coach metaphor
02:08 Economics: NOT where the battle is fought
03:12 How socialism guilts you
05:18 The unanswerable question
08:15 Starve them of your guilt & finish the vampire
Transcript
Nikos Sotirakopoulos: Socialism is like a vampire. While every few years we think it’s dead, we think it’s done for. Somehow it keeps coming back from the dead. Coming back to haunt us. But here’s the thing. Every vampire has something it cannot stand. Every zombie has its Kryptonite. For Dracula, it was light and garlic. For socialism, the Kryptonite is a simple question.
But before we get to that question, that can keep socialism away and eventually kill it. First, we need to understand what keeps the vampire alive. What keeps socialism relevant? Because this is remarkable, right? Socialism has only failures to sow it has to sow ruined lives ruined economies. And yet somehow, after some years, it’s back into fashion. Time and again, some years ago, it was Bernie Sanders or Mélenchon in France or Varoufakis in Greece, and these days with Mamdani in New York. It keeps coming back.
To use a sports metaphor. Socialism is like that crappy coach, that crappy manager who relegates every team he coaches, and then somehow next season, he’s back. Next season, he finds a job. He reinvents himself in some insignificant way. Like, I don’t know, he grows a goatee and he’s like, hey, new season, new me. Forget all my past incompetence. I’m up to a new start. And then he gets another team and destroys that team as well.
So how is it that this crappy coach keep finding a job? How does socialism always make a comeback, under a new pretense? Some. Then it was like the old left, then the new left. The critical race theory, social justice, you name it.
But here’s the first crucial thing to understand. Socialism does not rely on its successes. It does not rely on economic success. It does not rely on raising wealth. It doesn’t even promise wealth anymore. It doesn’t even promise anymore to bring progress. So you have to understand that we have won the economic argument, the economic fight against socialism. Actually, we did this two centuries ago.
No one any more takes the labor theory of value seriously these days. But guess what? None of that matters. Because it is not the economic argument that socialist relies on to stay relevant. We can quote Hayek from now till the end of times, and we can post economic graphs and cite bond work in all this is great. Endless respect to the Austrian school of economics.
But that won’t do, because it is not economics. It is the emotional claim, the emotional claim to your sense of the good that keeps socialism relevant. It is the moral high ground that socialism has claimed for itself. And even worse, the moral high ground that we have given to socialism without the fight. It is this moral high ground that keeps socialism alive.
It is socialism claim that we are on the side of morality and morality, every socialist will tell you and you will believe it, because that’s what you’ve been taught. Morality means caring about others. You’ve never had any other theory of what it means to be good, right? Or not just caring, but to make a tiny insidious switch.
To be good means to sacrifice for others, sacrifice for others. And socialism is the system that facilitates this sacrifice, facilitates taking from those who have, and giving to those who have not. We don’t need Robin Hood to do it. Socialism will do it for you. So socialists always end up guilting you because at the end of the day, there is always someone who is in more need, more need than you are.
So socialists will take from you and they will guilt you. They will give you that you have a duty to society. You have a duty to the poor. You have a duty to the poor of the Third World. You have a duty to the unborn generations. You have a duty to polar bears. Maybe you have a duty to the unborn generations of polar bear. You have a duty.
And the question is why? Why do you have a duty? Why does everyone and anyone have a claim in your life? Why? Why is it that the justification for your existence has to be serving others? Why are the needs of others more important than your needs, or the needs of those that you have chosen to love? Seriously, Why? Please, someone tell me. Enlighten me if you have an answer.
Why is it that to be good means you giving up what is important to you and giving it to me, or to any other random guy who happened to need it? Why is this the good? Ayn Rand puts it in one of your essay. She said something like actual noise from other side. Why is it evil for you to enjoy something but good for someone else to enjoy it?
I mean, if you haven’t candy, if you have a candy, why is it immoral for you to enjoy it? But if you give it to someone else and they eat it, then suddenly that’s moral. Why doesn’t the other person also have not to pass it down to the next person, who might also be an even bigger need? So why is it that if I make money and I want to keep it, it is bad? But when it’s taken from me and given to welfare, let’s say, why is it good for the welfare recipient to keep it?
And the answer, my friends, is that there is no good answer to this question. There is no why. Actually, there has never been a good explanation for why sacrifices the good. I’ve never had a good argument on why to leave means to serve. I mean, everyone says it, but no one tells us why. Usually the only answer you’ll hear is, oh, it’s because it’s on the Bible. Or my parents told me so. Okay, but that’s not good enough. So seriously, why? I mean, if it’s supposedly virtuous for you to give up your life as socialist ask you to do, isn’t it also vicious for others to demand it? No. I mean, if virtuous for you to give up your life, then those who claim it, they should be bad.
And again, it’s not just socialism. Every form of collectivism, every form of movement demanding you to sacrifice for the common good, they make this argument which makes no sense because it has no good answer. So at the end of the day, remember with the zombie or the vampire or I don’t what’s many horror movies, but I remember that you have to strike the dagger in the heart for the zombie to die.
But instead, what we do with socialism is we shoot its legs with water pistols because we keep trying to fight socialism with economic data. We have these debates about the tax should be 23% or 25%, but those are just water pistols and they do not work because the vampire does not care about numbers. The vampire feeds on your guilt.
So to end socialism, you have to stop accepting the idea that you are a servant. You have to shout from the rooftops, and actually not first of all, not from the rooftops, first, you have to decide to shout to yourself that your life belongs to you. And once you realize that, then the vampire has no more blood to drink.
And that is the dagger in the heart of socialism.
Thank you for your time.
