 As has kind of been said, it might seem maybe a more abstract question, a less pressing question, a less vital question to discuss, but actually it's a really important question to discuss and answer and at the end of the day to be prepared for because, you know, when revolutionary movements start to happen, questions like, is it okay to kill people? Should we arm the workers? These can become of the utmost importance and if we have an incorrect understanding of these or if we're kind of can be stifled by different pressures or different attacks on the basis of morality, this could completely derail a revolutionary movement and time and time again you've seen kind of pre-revolutionary movements or kind of movements of the workers that have been, that have been kind of betrayed by the leaders who have pacifist illusions and kind of call for workers not to take up arms in the moment when they should take up arms. An example of that kind of would be the the movement in Sudan in 2018 where you had a huge movement of the workers and the kind of press layers all in struggle and you had the ruling class use these reactionary armed bands of people going around terrorizing the workers and in that movement and in that moment the leadership of that movement did succumb to kind of accusations of amoralism and did kind of succumb to pressures from pacifism and these ideas violence is wrong we must turn over cheek we need to show the better way and that led to that movement facing a huge setback and obviously things have moved on and today there is still big movements in Sudan but that whole episode kind of shows the importance of the question of morality and if we don't have a very clear question and a clear and developed understanding of morality it can really put the class struggle back and can really really cause us problems but and quite often I think in society Marxists are kind of painted especially by maybe liberal kind of figures or right-wing figures as kind of a moral creature is obsessed and who would do anything who would lie you cheat who would murder to achieve the aims of of you know the revolution would achieve their aims and the day that we have no understanding of morality and we'll just basically do whatever to get what we want and which is obviously not the case and actually I would say morality is a really important question for us and we have actually a deeper more scientific understanding of what morality is and then liberals do or then right-wingers do or then kind of the average person might have and as Marxist we don't just say oh some things are good because they are or this idea is wrong or you should never do this just because that's the way things are in fact we should be able to justify and explain why our actions are good and bad why our actions are justified or unjustified and because of that we have a more much more deeper and much more scientific understanding of morality I would argue than can other layers and a kind of key text when you're looking at kind of Marxism and ethics Marxism and morality is their morals and ours by Trotsky and that's something I would really recommend if you've not had a chance to read it and it's a kind of pamphlet and I would really recommend I'm sure the bookstore will have copies downstairs and it was written by Trotsky in 1938 where he was facing quite a bleak global situation you know the Stalinists had kind of taken hold in Russia and a lot of the old Bolsheviks had been killed or had been imprisoned after the Moscow Childs there was a lot of demoralization globally I guess from kind of communists and other people and outside of Russia in particular a lot of kind of liberals and a lot of people who had maybe been Stalinists or had supported the USSR but kind of changed their mind started to use the question of morality to really attack Russia to attack the USSR and even more seriously to attack the October Revolution and at that time there was this accusation I think it's something probably we've all still heard today that you know Stalinism and the kind of terrible things that happened because of the Stalinist degeneration were the inevitable result of the violence of the lack of morals of Bolshevism the lack of the morals of the of the Russian Revolution and so basically blaming Stalinist reaction on the immorality of the Russian Revolution and it's obviously you know quite ludicrous to say that the degeneration of the USSR and obviously all the crimes that came with that you know the corruption the secret police tortures murder then those were that those were inevitable because the revolution was somehow bad or immoral or violent and obviously apart from being very basic and very crude it looks at things as a very static isolated abstractions you know just taking a list of features and saying oh if you have this this this and this then you are dictatorship and that's bad and but instead you know we look at events in relation to one another we look at things as part of a historical process of change. Stalinism is not just a static dictatorship but was a bureaucratic reaction against a revolution in an underdeveloped developed an isolated country and you know the kind of crimes of Stalinism and the kind of terrible things that happened under Stalinism was a move to re-establish privileges in a case where the material based abolish them couldn't be sustained and so I would say like we don't just believe that Stalinism happened because we don't have enough morals so it's all bad things will always end up happening and we have a much more deeper analysis of it and on this point Trotsky writes in their morals and ours Stalinist frame-ups are not a fruit of Bolshevik amoralism no like all important events in history they are a product of the concrete social struggle and I think that's really kind of important when we face these kind of accusations of amoralism and to actually explain no this is the reason why those things happened under the USSR it's not just because of violence in the Russian Revolution and it was kind of in the context of these accusations that Trotsky wrote this pamphlet to kind of tackle this question that the lack of morals that Marxists have don't just mean the Russian Revolution degenerated but this idea that it would mean revolutions would always degenerate that basically attacking the fact you could ever even have communism by saying oh no if you have violent means you're gonna end up with a violent society or something like that and but before I even address the kind of question of morals and what we kind of think about morals I would just like to flip the question you know on these liberals on these right wings on these other strands of political thought which seek to attack us through accusations of immorality and you know any kind of a moral compass that that these different layers are seeking to judge us us by capitalism obviously comes out eternally worse and you know the kind of attack that oh violence is wrong killing is wrong you should never take up arms you know these kind of calls yet at the same time these layers are more than happy to support imperialist wars where the violence is for what it's for nothing is for imperialism or is for some kind of abstract and support for the nation compared to us who are actually engaged in wars to put an end to the current system and that we live under and that causes so much violence and even when you start to look at you know kind of accusation that you have no regard for life life is so precious and I'm sure you've all heard the kind of figure of a hundred million dead because of communism which was kind of popular has been popular with right wingers since 1997 when it was released in this book called the black book of communism so they basically argue a hundred million people have died because of communism or 1.2 million people a year and while there's a lot of exaggeration in those figures and a lot of liberty taken with what was included even if you take that face value we can only imagine the capitalism's death toll the death toll of capitalism and you know if we look at figures the in a normal year the World Health Organization estimates that 3.8 million people die from lack of clean water 1.5 million people die from preventable disease and 14 million people die from hunger and that's just a kind of normal year so that's already 19 million people considerably more than ever has been accused of communism killing have been killed and that leaves out you know imperialist wars it leaves out people dying from lack of medical care leaves out unsafe conditions at work poor housing no housing at all and all the kind of ills that are an inevitable product of the capitalist system and that's before we even discuss the kind of outbreak of coronavirus and something which could have been completely prevented and completely controlled and if the system had the interests of the people at its heart but obviously doesn't the system is run the interest of profit and it's run in the interest of the ruling class and at least five million people and have already died from coronavirus and the real figure is likely to be far far higher than that and that was all completely inevitable so I think it's just the utter cheek that they they dare to accuse us of having a disregard for life or us being letting people die and being engaged in violence and killing when you look around at the capitalist system and and that it's it's full of violence it's full of death and destruction and we are the people fighting to overthrow that and putting into that and and so I would actually like to use the words of the famous kind of Scottish Marxist John McClain in his speech from the dock in 1919 and he kind of said I am not here then as the accused I'm here as the accuser the accuser of capitalism which is dripping with blood from head to foot I think it's really important in any kind of discussion on morals to lay out the complete hypocrisy of these kind of liberals and right-wingers who dare to say that what we believe in or we're immoral and when the system that they defend with every inch of their beating is so violent and so horrible and so much worse by any kind of moral compass that they're judging people by I think the next part of my kind of lead-off and I want to look a bit deeper at the kind of questions of well what what is morality what are morals and or on what basis do we ascribe something as wrong or as right and kind of look at the questioner of is there eternal moral truths you know are there things which are always wrong or always right and I think you know in society there is an understanding of certain things being bad or certain things being wrong and I'm sure if you went out and asked someone on the street you know what what is wrong they would maybe say like oh it's wrong to kill people or it's wrong to steal it's wrong to lie and those kind of things I think there is a general understanding of society of certain things being wrong or certain things being bad or certain things being immoral but you know we're Marxist we're very scientific and it's important for us not to just take that at face value and go all right well that's what people think is right and wrong that must just be it you know we have to actually go in and then analyze these things and I think a key question is that are those things static do people always think that those things are right and wrong I think the clear answer is no you know views on different moral questions have changed incredibly over time quite drastically and the fact that morality is not is not static at all but it reflects wider society and reflects and the kind of society that we're living in and so I guess one kind of example and would be sure if you ask people most people out on the street you know adulterate is it wrong to cheat on someone a lot of people go oh yeah that's wrong like that's bad and that's an idea most people in our society probably hold and but this whole concept would be completely bizarre and probably even difficult to comprehend to someone living in a kind of primitive agricultural society where marriage doesn't even exist and or monogamy doesn't even exist and because individual marriage isn't a component of their society of course there wouldn't be moral rules or moral understandings around kind of cheating or adultery and things like that and it'd be completely bizarre the question of whether that is right or wrong and another question is of course slavery something which I'm sure the vast vast majority of people if you ask them is slavery right or wrong they say no slavery is wrong it's disgusting terrible and of course we would agree but in ancient Greece in ancient Rome and probably not the slaves themselves but the citizens that the other people who lived there we find it completely ludicrous the idea that slavery was bad or slavery was wrong and which is completely understandable because their entire society was built upon the basis of slave labor so of course the morality would reflect that I think there's so many examples and maybe people would like to come in in the discussion of different questions where we can clearly see that the morality is not at all static and that it changes to reflect the kind of society that we're living under and the kind of understandings of the day I think that's quite clear and it's something that we as Marxist view morality as being a product of an epoch and morality is not natural morality is not innate and morale moral views are part of class society and they are enacted in a given society through maybe religious rules through laws through moral norms and they change and reflect the situation the position and the interest of a given ruling class and morality is a key component of ideology and so kind of looking at what ideology kind of is the ways of kind of seeing the world the explanations the half truths which the ruling class espouses and kind of puts out into society in order to justify its existence in order to justify the existence of the system that we love under and in order to maintain its power so obviously looking at kind of slave societies and of course the the morality of the day which was pushed forward with by the ruling class was that slavery is good and fine and in order to justify that society to preserve its existence and to maintain the power of the ruling class and of course you know ruling classes can maintain their power in loads of different ways you know they have the state if we look at our our current and society they have like the media all these kind of things but this alone is not enough to completely preserve the power of the ruling class because ruling classes are a tiny minority who are preserving their power over the vast vast majority of society and so ideology is like an extra kind of way that the ruling class tries to maintain its power and morality is a key part of that and where that leaves us kind of as Marxist our rule is obviously to strip away these illusions and to kind of reveal the false nature of of bourgeois ideology and so if we look at kind of morality that's a real key component of ideology a key way that people kind of are encouraged to see the world and see the capitalist system as eternal as inevitable and you can see that through certain morals a classic one is stealing that's obviously part of protecting private property the idea is wrong to steal yet you know extracting surplus labor the huge theft that goes on every day and which allows the ruling class to maintain their wealth and their power that's not seen as wrong or stealing that's just seen as as they're kind of right to do that and while if we were to suggest expropriating certain companies and certain people would say oh no that's wrong that's stealing so you can clearly see the class nature of morality the the role that it plays in maintaining the current system and in their morals and ours Trotsky says on this point from the point of view of eternal truths revolution is of course anti-moral but this merely means that the idealist morality is counter-revolutionary that it is in the service of the exploiters so then but coming back on this point some people might argue they might say okay yeah you know some morals change some things change in different societies and ownership slavery people used to think it's wrong right now people think it's wrong but some things are always right or wrong right you know killing is a classic one people say oh every society and doesn't doesn't think it's right to kill every society there's rules about killing and I mean that's true to a certain extent and most societies if not all societies have some kind of moral rules or moral judgments around killing and you know some people argue oh well this just expresses you know some innate or some natural kind of moral norms that the whole of humanity has I don't know we're born with or we just have deep inside there's certain things that are right for humans and certain things that are wrong and but I would completely disagree with this you know I would say yeah it's true there are some moral norms that are in common across different societies but that's because it's just the most basic things which allow us to live together in a group and you know it's understandable that there's gonna be a lot of moral kind of codes that limit killing because a society where people just go around and kill each other all the time won't really last for very long and but that doesn't mean there is natural or doesn't mean it's innate and it means that it comes from the needs of society and the needs of living in a group and the needs of preserving a society and I think it's what is important as well to note that quite often these kind of moral rules especially ones that are common in lots of different societies are often very variable and very contradictory so you know the idea it's wrong to kill and something common in most societies yeah you can kill if you're in the army and in fact it's seen as good to kill it's seen if there's a war it's a moral right to go and kill someone and so it's completely flipped and you know in self-defense it's seen as right to kill and even more ludicrously you know with the death penalty so we're told oh it's wrong to kill don't kill that's that's immoral and yet the state kills people and in a lot of countries to kind of punish them for their wrongs and so we can clearly see that even these kind of moral norms which do supposedly exist across all different societies are not enacted in a way that is consistent is very contradictory and obviously isn't kind of natural I think kind of looking even deeper on the question of well what is a moral what what is it to say something is right or something is wrong and I would say is to say what you should or shouldn't do you know a moral is basically saying what is or what isn't permissible and so this idea that morality and that we can make decisions on what we should or shouldn't do that that could come from anywhere apart from the material world is completely ludicrous and so the idea that we somehow have these entire you know innate or eternal or natural moral truth this is actually just a religious hangover and from the past because you know the idea that there could be right and wrongs which come from outside society outside the material world and this could only come from a God and which is obviously something that we don't believe in and this is like an illusion that we as Marxist should strip away the only place that we can actually get rights and wrongs decide on if an action is permissible or not has to be from the material world it can't come from kind of outside and on this point Trotsky and has a quote which I personally really like and he says whoever does not care to return to Moses Christ or Muhammad whoever is not satisfied with eclectic hodgepodge's must acknowledge that morality is a product of social development that there is nothing invariable about it that is serve social interests that these interests are contradictory that morality more than any other form of ideology has a class character and so I think it's really important for us as Marxist to understand there is no innate or natural or everlasting right and wrongs right and wrongs morality is a product of society is a product of class society and what we think in a given time is a result of the kind of class society that we're living under so I guess then that moves on to where does that leave us then as Marxist is there a Marxist morality and you know should we just throw it all away or how should we respond to it and you know I think it's quite important that we don't believe in fixed moral codes and we don't believe that there's just a list of things which are right and a list of things which are wrong and we're quite clear in that current morality the morality of the current society is bourgeois morality it reflects the attitude of the bourgeois class and it serves to protect the interests of the ruling class so we stand like in opposition to that and but does that mean that we think that's it there's no right or wrong you should just go around and kill people randomly or live freely or just do whatever anything is permissible and we say of course not you know morality is a question of what you should and shouldn't do and just because we reject bourgeois morality that doesn't mean you should just we think you should do everything and anything and so yeah we don't have a list of things that you should and shouldn't do like some religion because we're a scientific philosophy you know before deciding if an action is permissible we need to analyze the action we need to think through the consequences we need to weigh up what's gonna happen and then make a decision and and there's obviously like a common kind of moral code of the end justifies the means and you know should we as Marxists do we believe in all the ends justify the means and I mean we do follow it to a certain extent because if you're not judging an action on its consequences what else are you judging it on you know if you're not judging or should I do this this is what's gonna happen you are just going back again to abstract moral codes to him to religion or to idealism to basing your moral judgments on the nature but the idea of the ends justifies the means that loan is not enough because yes the means should justify the ends but the end aim also needs to be justified you know so if we look at the question is it is it justified to kill is it justified to kill for a nation well you need to justify the nation you know is it justified to kill for God you then need to justify your religion and I think this is like a really great thing that Trotsky kind of and goes into a bit more depth on in the pamphlet and he says a means can be justified only by its end but the end in its turn needs to be justified from the Marxist point of view which expresses the historical interest of the proletariat the end is justified if it leads to increasing the power of man over nature and the abolition of power of man over man so you know we are Marxist and our actions and are the consequences of our actions need to be justified by the fact that we are Marxism we are fighting for the liberation of society so that is what we need to judge everything by and you know philosophers kind of saying all these are right or these are wrong they never kind of go that further step so maybe if they say oh it's right to kill for a nation they never then say well why is it right to kill for a nation what is the nation why do you think that is justified in itself and because of the end of the day Bors War morality is about maintaining the status quo and so that's only what could kind of be expected so for us as Marxists when we're deciding if something's moral if we're deciding if something's right or wrong we're deciding something's justified or not we don't have a kind of outside moral code but we weigh up the action with its consequences with the aim of liberating society and so Trotsky on this point says permissible and obligatory are those and only those means we answer which unite the revolutionary proletariat fill their hearts with in irrecursible hostility to oppression teach them contempt for official morality and its democratic echoers imbue them with consciousness of their own historic mission raise their courage and spirit of self-sacrifice and struggle so we are fighting for revolution and in that we have to weigh up actions and what effect that is going to have in the class struggle so we would see as wrong or we would see as not permissible actions which set parts of the working class against each other because that is not going to help us strive towards the aim of class struggle so we see racism as wrong and because it sets part of the working class against each other and it weakens the working class we see actions which lower people's consciousness as wrong you know things like religion we would see that as wrong because it lowers the working class's consciousness we would see is wrong actions which make the class kind of docile or dependent or blindly following leaders and again it's not some kind of fixed moral code that we then write up on our walls and follow by every day but all actions must be weighed up in the moment in the actual class struggle as part of revolutionary strategy and tactics and I guess like the other question is if we kind of hypothesize about a communist society a future communist society what would the morality of that society be again would there just be no morals and because morals is part of kind of ideology and we'd say no you know people just wouldn't think everything is right or everything is wrong and there were probably there almost certainly would be a common understanding of right and wrong there would be a kind of proletarian morality and that I'm sure would say well senseless violence is wrong and we've already said racism is wrong non-work and not participating in the running of society is wrong but I think it would be slightly different in that people wouldn't just you know like in current society people just maybe view morals as natural or eternal and just say oh that is bad because it's bad but I think in a future communist society would be a more developed understanding of morality and people would maybe say yeah senseless violence is wrong and because that destroys our fellow workers or not working is wrong because and that's the basis that we you know we hold our society together and we're building a society together or racism is wrong because it divides the workers and it's a kind of foreign idea that's being planted in our in our midst so we are more developed sense of morality that there isn't just a list of things that are right and a list of things that are wrong but we think through the consequences of the actions we think and through what's going to happen and then kind of decide if something is permissible or not with recourse to the real material world and recourse to the actual consequences and aims in a kind of scientific manner you know as I said morality is part of ideology and it's part of the illusions and illusions involved with morality are a key way in which the ruling class kind of maintains their power and that's something that we also need to work to strip away we to go out and say you know there are no eternal moral truths there are no fixed set of things which are right and wrong and but we as thinking conscious human beings have to make judgments all over where action if actions are permissible or if they're not and anyone kind of alive can see that the capitalism is hotter without it and the most moral and the most important thing that we can do is to strip away kind of illusions in bourgeois morality to kind of strip away the excuses and to kind of strip away I guess bourgeois ideology more more broadly strip away the idea that the capitalist system is necessary is useful is inevitable we need to work against that and I guess more broadly we need to get to work building a revolutionary organization which is capable of toppling this disgusting system and all of the vices that that brings with it kind of once and for all and I'd like to kind of end with a sort of longer quote in which Trotsky used to end the pamphlet and I just think it's a really good kind of somewhat of our view towards morality and he said in these immense events the Trotsky's learned the rhythm of history that is the dialectics of class struggle they also learned it seems and to a certain degree successfully how to subordinate their subjective plans and programs to the objective rhythm they learn not to fall into despair over the fact that the laws of history do not depend on their individual tastes and are not so subordinated to their own moral criteria they learn to subordinate their individual desires to the laws of history they learn not to be frightened by the most powerful enemies if their power is in contradiction to the historical development they know how to swim against the stream in the deep conviction that the new historic flood will carry them to the other shore not will all reach that not all will reach that shore many will drown but to participate in this movement with open eyes and with an intense will only this can give the highest moral satisfaction to a thinking being