Commercial Little Culture

In the Saint Hill Special Briefing Course lecture of 18 July 1963, entitled "Errors in Time", Hubbard compares Russian Communism with Ivan Pavlov's theories on conditioned reflex. As an anecdote in the midst of this lecture, he remarks on the "Bantu's" reaction to Communism. The "commercial little culture" is similar to the standard antisemitic notion that Jews are obsessed with money.

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So communism becomes fought, and communism becomes very disastrous when practiced. And the poor sods that are walking around with communism wonder where their next muzhik is coming from. They don't know. And that's because when Pavlov did his work, he never said that life consisted of reward and punishment.

He does a total anatomy of punishment. And here's this drifting factor, reward, which is apparently on automatic. The reason capitalism works is because nobody has analyzed it, and people want pay and they give them pay.

I almost started a riot amongst Bantus by telling them that if communism came to South Africa — this was real mean of me — why, they wouldn't, they wouldn't get paid, that communism didn't pay you for your work. And they thought this was terrible. And they were spitting on the street and stamping and damning Khrushchev, see?

I mean it was very upsetting to them. Because the one thing — the very, very commercial little culture the Bantu has … And boy you talk about the importance of debts! Some guy owes some money, why that debt will be passed down, and next generation, and next generation somebody's great great great great grandchildren are still worried abou those two cows, you see, that Uncle Zidd, or something, is owed. They just — the idea of commerce and money and that sort of thing is very deeply ingrained in these people.

And to tell them that communism was a system of getting them to work so they didn't have to be — so they wouldn't be paid, that just about finished it.

Now, if capitalism was earnest about fighting communism, and so forth, it would dig up a few salient truths and let them have it, see? Because that is the lie back of communism. The lie back of communism is man is a physiological animal going forward on the basis of a punishment stimulus-response. And of course, man does not, DOES NOT, respond to punishment stimulus response. Very un-uniform response.

You've had the experience yourself. You take somebody and you say, "If you don't so-and-so and so-and-so, I'm going to rhrr-rhrr-rhrr-rhrrr".

And A, that you told this to, cringed and said, "Oh yes! All right, all right. Don't beat me." And B, C and D said, "Why you SOB. Knock your block off, see?" You'd knock their heads in, and they'd get back up, and they still wouldn't do it. And you knock their heads in, and they'd get back up, and they still wouldn't do it. And it's not a constant, don't you see?

In other words, not all living beings succumb to the stimulus of promised punishment. The whole Roman Empire caved in because a sect, called the Christians, moved in, who didn't stimuli or who didn't "respo" when they got the stimuli of punishment. The court said, "We're going to burn you at the stake." And they said "Burn away! We will become martyrs." And the Roman Empire couldn't handle them! That was it! That was it, see, they'd met their match. Very important. Extremely important.