Cafe of Broken Dreams by John scientific terrorist in action

Why Capitalistic Greed Rocks and Religious Solidarity Not

Probably the most famous rebuke against capitalism is that the capitalism is based on greed. Once I have read interesting statement:

If someone thinks that he lives alone in this planet he's wrong, because we have to help each other and go forward. To think at my own prosper is a crime.

the Morality of Motive

I do disagree with that quote, but why? At the beginning we need to find out what the greed is and for this we could use ideas of a German philosopher Immanuel Kant. He made an interesting statement about ethics:

Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

Kant in his studies of duty suggested that higher moral purpose can’t be found in the output achieved by our action, but in the motive that is behind the action. What does it mean in a practical example?

I will try to compare it with Islamic morality as Islam is one of the most fatalistic religion and also one of the biggest political religions criticizing morality of capitalism. But we could easily find same examples in another religions.

My Muslim friend has told that the responsibility of every Muslim is not only to pay Zakat which is some kind of tax used as a help for poor people, but also Sadaka which is a non-profitable secret help, meaning I am the only one who knows about that help.  When I die, god will ask me what have I done for others. Then based on my actions during my live he will decide if I am worth of going to the paradise.

But according to Kant, help based on the motive of the last judgment is not moral, because if I pay Zakat or practice Sadaka with knowledge or faith that it will help me to reach paradise, heaven or better next live, I do act greedy as my goal is to success during the last judgment and go to the paradise.

Just to be clear, I do not criticize charity or actions which has been done for example by Mother Teresa. I am trying to find higher moral principle behind our actions  and this can be according to Kant in the motive with the knowledge that for my help I will in the end pay a big price. Sadaka and Zakat as actions can be moral, but the motive for them can’t.

What is very interesting for a Muslim would be then on of the most moral things which he could do an attempt to destroy Islam in order to stop many conflicts caused by Islam directly or indirectly (some of them were probably more brutal than the World War 2) with the knowledge that by this action he has signed an infinite suffering in hell. This would be a great example of the very moral motive.

This morality paradox greatly shows that almost behind every action we can find some greed, that is why capitalism put greed as the basic and natural motive of a human action.

the Morality of Action

But how to limit this greed? Can we find some morality in actions? I guess you would no be surprised if I say yes we can, and capitalism in this question scores very well.

I have answered that charity as an action is for me moral, and of course theft is not moral for me, but why? (do not forget that even a thief can have a very moral motive for his action, for example father trying to save his child)

To explain it, I will show you three concepts of law.

• Objective (natural) law – is the law created by man, and its goal is to show us bad actions which should be forbidden and which are common for every human and shared by the whole humanity because they are based on human nature. Follow this law is necessary if we want to achieve prosperity. Typical example is theft.
• Positive law – is the law which is not objective but relative, for example created in order to avoid something bad. Like if I made drugs illegal people would not be able to use them so much. Typical examples are, drug illegalization, gun ownership illegalization, …
• Divine law – is the law sent us by god which we must follow in order to achieve prosperity. Typical examples are illegalization of homosexual marriages or adoptions, blasphemy or adultery, ..

Instead of detailed describing and explaining of those laws and philosophical creation of property I will try to prove why the objective law is the only one moral and right. However anyone who would be interested in detailed description I recommend this Alex’s comments of  Rothbard’s book The Ethics of Liberty and of course the book itself is worth of reading too. You can do it for free here.

The best statement showing ideals of objective law is:

Law is to be objective because if law cannot be applied rationally, law cannot be applied universally.

It says that if we want to find universal law for everyone we have to explain it in an objective logical way! Why divine law doesn’t contains any objectivity greatly explains this statement:

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

This quote deducts that all religions are subjective and that is why none of them is probably completely right. Also if you have heard any debate between people of two different religions, you know that both sides tried to argue objectively. For example “your religion says kill those, my says protect those” so mine is better.

Second problem of divine laws is that we can very easily beat them by other religion. Islam says that it respects other religion and its goal is also to set up Islamic laws in Islamic society, but what if my god sent me capitalism and said that capitalism must be achieved in the Arabic Peninsula as well. Would Islam tolerate me? I doubt so.

To find out which religion is better we just must use reason, but the question is then why we don’t leave divine laws at all and try to create our own laws based on reasoning, because this option obviously works much better.

Divine law is nothing more than some kind of positive law and the problem of the positive law is simple, it is against objective law. Against something which is natural part of every born human. Try to avoid bad things by committing crimes against our basic human rights is impossible.

Basic human liberties we are born with, others can only take them out.

For example well known illegalization of homosexual rights is not moral because it is against objective law, actually it means that it is an aggression against natural right of every people. If you want to know why it is against it you will have to read the link posted above. Basically because homosexual marriage is a deal between two persons which does not harm non involved persons.

Objectively immoral actions are those which are against the objective law, anything else is subjective (you do not have to like red colour but it does not mean people can’t wear red). If you support illegalization of homosexual marriages you have to support another positive laws, like this one:

I  forbid praying in order to increase labor , just imagine that possibilities if everyone would work 15 minutes longer per day instead of praying!

Moral goals of capitalism

Pure capitalism is derived from classical liberalism which invented terms freedom and objective law. Capitalism is the only one model of society which include objective law and does not brake it.

Wealth and development which capitalism gave humanity is enormous. 200 hundred years ago in the times when the capitalistic industrial revolution began, the Archduchess of Austria Maria Theresa had sixteen kids. But only nine of them reached 18. Mortality in kingdom families was extremely big what even then in a common families. Today 200 years later in the same country there is a 99,98% chance that every born baby will reach 18. Actually there is 99,1% chance that it will reach 60. Mortality is today extremely low!

Many people says that capitalistic society consume to much, but this is simple not true, capitalistic society is one of the most effective ever, lets compare two countries: Israel and Egypt:

Israel has a population about 7,4 million and area approximately 22 770 square kilometres – big part of area is created by the Negev desert.

Egypt has a population about 76 million and area approximately 1 001 449 square kilometres – big part is created by the Sahara desert.

What we see here is that Egypt has 10 times more people and 43 times bigger area – much more land resources, much bigger absolute consumption so how does economical output look:

GDP of Egypt: $442.640 billion

GDP of Israel: $200.630 billion

Despite of the massive Mubarak’s secularization  and capitalization in Egypt last years the Islamic law have still strong position in the land which has shown the recent decision about swine slaughter. And obviously it does harm. Average Israeli produces almost 5 times more effectively than average Egyptian and Israel has almost 20 times more effective usage of land. Does it mean that Iraelis work 5 times more? No they do not, capitalistic economy can simply plan much better than anything else. (for a hairsplitters amount of the USA help is almost similar for both countries)

Because today post is full of statements I will end it with one too.

A religious people are to support greedy capitalism, because it is the only way for really tolerant, prosperous and moral way of society.