02:03 Materialism 02:32 Modes of production 04:52 Means of production 06:10 Clases sociales 07:23 Idealism 09:10 Labor 10:00 The marxist critique of Capitalism: Explotación laboral 10:26 Trabajo necesario 11:00 Surplus labor 15:30 Comunism 17:05 Privae property 17:28 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon 19:00 Orthodox comunism ------ 19:55 From capitalism to Socialism 20:02 Unions 22:22 Seize political power and stablish a (true) democracy 23:52 Use the political power to implement socialist policies ---- 24:57 Stages of Comunism 26:32 "vulgar socialism" ---- 31:32 La evolución de la ideología socialista
Thank you for putting this out there. Im new to anarchism and marxism , and im adhd so i cant focus long enough to read. So this is my main way of obtaining knowledge. Thank you sir, id like to smoke a joint with you sometime.
very nice overview. helped me to understand the different types of communism, the differing opinions amongst communists, and also how it has actually played out in nations that tried to implement it
21:55 Once we realize that we are all proletariat before we are black or white or Christian or Muslim, etc. Once we realize that we are first and foremost proletariat and we have that in common, we will begin to recognize our power in numbers.
Actually it's not true that the United States was focused mostly on the Pacific Theatre in WWII. There was an explicit American war policy called "Germany First" that ensured the primary focus and priority of the U.S. Army was the defeat of Germany. In fact, about three quarters of U.S. casualties in WWII occurred in the European Theatre while the remaining quarter resulted from the clash with Japan. Also, while it is true that the Red Army took the brunt of the German Wehrmacht, it is reductive to only look at casualties to determine each country's contribution in defeating the Axis. The Lend-lease agreement and the resulting shipments of enormous amounts of supplies and materiel to the Soviet Union was crucial in the victory, along with the provision of key intel and direct military support through the intense bombing of German cities and infrastructure. Without Lend-lease supplies, the USSR would not have survived the Second World War.
Thank you - good video. Can you touch on whether the famine that happened in North Korea is for the same reason it happened in Soviet and China? Also, why didn’t this famine happen in South Korea, which also industrialized rapidly?
Because S. Korea industrialized naturally through an open market and free trade. When a free market is allowed to function, it learns to solve its own problems. But when a governing body tries to manage an entire economic system which is infinitely complex, it's doomed to fail because butterfly effects are a real phenomenon. S. Korea self regulated itself to a self sustaining society. N. Korea, China, and USSR tried to control and uncontrollable system that died and collapsed. Thats the biggest fallacy of socialism. It puts people in charge of things they have no business being in charge of.
@@itzbebop Nonsense! Both countries were developing equally until the 1980's. The US poured billions into South Korea and put an embargo on the North which has lasted to this day. So yeah North Korea is not as materialistically wealthy as South Korea. But they do well with what they have. So take your capitalistic BS elsewhere.
To answer your question, the North does not have as much viable agricultural land as South Korea. So when droughts hit they are much more devastating. Plus the US has had an embargo on North Korea since its founding. That played a key role in the famine.
@@Octoberfurst they do well? the popoganda machine and secret police and information wars that suppress basic human rights like free speech? Not to mention all the starving people who are covered with all sorts of parasites? Got enough money to pour into nuclear development programs but can't take care of your own people despite receiving billions from China and USSR/Russia? 2 countries that received billions in funding. 1 collapsed, 1 thrived. 1 has free markets and trades with the rest of the world. The other controls its markets and suppresses innovation and free speech and trade and murders millions of its own people. what else?
one of the better explanations on socialism. most of the vids online are just 30 minutes of dumpster burning on capitalism. But a few things. who deserves the surplus? a - the business owner who took out risk, created systems of management, poured their own capital onto a venture with no guarantee it will work out or that they'll even get their money back b - person who gets hired to do some work and gets paid no matter what, even if the company goes bust. c - 3rd option i'm not considering? If a person is scheduled for 8 hours, but only works 6 hours, they still get those 2 hours of labor in the form of an 8 hour paycheck. Am i missing something here? If you abolish personal property, that removes the very innate human desire to constantly work towards gain. is that not directly opposite to the materialism that marx speaks on? I've never heard anyone accuse Stalin or Mao or any Communist leader of intentionally causing famines and starvation. where is the literature on this? Isn't it fundamentally agreed that those were results of the policies that they and their regimes put forth? Would you say that the rapid industrialization that led to widespread starvation was not the result of the rapid control that mao and stalin and their regimes trying to control a system that they had no business trying to control?
Thanks for the questions! "who deserves the surplus?" Under capitalism, A - the business owner deserves the surplus. Marx is clear on this. The ideological apparatuses (this is Althusser, not Marx) of the system function to convince everyone that the owners deserve the surplus. It's important to remember that Marx's theory isn't an ethical nor moral argument. He does say capitalism will collapse because it's wrong or bad but because it has inherent contradictions that cannot be reconciled. The workers have an interest in the surplus of their labor, as do the capitalists. As a result, their interests collide with one another. Marx's theory is that, eventually, this collision will result in the downfall of capitalism. Not because capitalism is "wrong" but because this conflict is inevitable. "If a person is scheduled for 8 hours, but only works 6 hours, they still get those 2 hours of labor in the form of an 8 hour paycheck. Am i missing something here?" I think you're saying that they're "on the clock" for 8 hours but only perform 6 hours of labor? This is one reason why Marx is against paychecks. They don't reflect actual work and they function as a mechanism to separate (alienate) us from the processes and production of our work. Nowadays, it's even worse. If I'm a software developer, I sit in a cubicle, or a co-working space, or my apartment, type some things, and one day numbers appear in my bank account. There's no direct connection to the labor we put in, the value it creates, and what the worker receives in exchange (not to mention our relationships with the end product of our labor). See our video on alienation for more there: th-cam.com/video/gSVdZOFp5Ss/w-d-xo.html Regarding the first two questions, it's common to present the labor theory of value at the micro-scale (i.e. one worker, one owner, etc.) but Marx avoids this in his analysis. He focuses on the macro. His solution is for all to collectively share in the risk and the surplus. It's very difficult for us to adopt this perspective because our society is so individualistic. "I" did the work. "I" took the risk", and so on. I'm not accusing you as an individual of doing this, we all do. It's one of the main ways our society is broken. We've lost the ability to think about the collective 'health' of our society/world and the ways in which all of the systems are interconnected and impact each other (maybe we never had that ability, but we need it). "If you abolish personal property, that removes the very innate human desire to constantly work towards gain." I would disagree that humans have an innate desire to work towards gain (as would Marx). Once basic survival needs are met, along with a surplus to "weather the storm," there's nothing natural about amassing huge amounts of surplus. luxury, etc. This behavior has only been found in relatively recent human history. I think this singular item is a (one of the) fundamental differences between capitalists and anti-capitalists. Capitalism really doesn't make any sense unless humans are naturally "greedy" and so on. Marx believed it was against our human nature to behave in ways associated with capitalism (greed, exploitation, etc.). This belief (that humans are naturally greedy) is really tied to enlightenment era thinking such as Hobbes but none of that is grounded in real science. Anthropology didn't exist yet. Hobbes was a philosopher. There's just not a lot of support for it in real life. Of course there are examples throughout history, but nothing to suggest that it's natural to all humans. Not to mention the critique against the idea of a singular unchanging "human nature" anyway. "I've never heard anyone accuse Stalin or Mao or any Communist leader of intentionally causing famines and starvation." Not scholars, but "regular people" make this claim all of the time. "Stalin was responsible for millions of deaths as a result of famine." But Stalin, as an individual, was not responsible for the famine. "Would you say that the rapid industrialization that led to widespread starvation was not the result of the rapid control that mao and stalin and their regimes trying to control a system that they had no business trying to control?" I'm not 100% clear on what you're saying here but I think you're saying that they had no business trying to control the economy? Or maybe trying to control the process of industrialization?
a. alot of risk is covered by the state these days. patents and other intellectual property inhibit innovation and competition by limiting who can and cannot use that technology., and the state is responsible for much of the innovation. this is referred to as "socializing risk, but privatizing the profits" or "socialism for the rich". You'll find these critiques more in libertarian socialist circles, as people like Benjamin Tucker (Individualist Anarchist) and Thomas Hodgeskin (a Ricardian socialist) explain how laissez-faire was one-sided, to the effect of creating a privileged class out of owners of capital. Tucker, for example, is known for explaining how it is achieved using what he called the 4 monopolies: land, tariffs, money, and patents. others in the modern day have expanded, such as Charles Johnson, who is responsible for a book called "Markets, Not Capitalism", which is a collection of essays showing how our modern belief in free-markets is warped, and they don't actually exist. b. Surplus is born AFTER the workers are paid. if you eliminate the owner and make the workers the owners (like a worker cooperative) there is no surplus, as there is no middleman between the workers and the market. they are paid what the product sells for on the market....assuming you keep market socialism or free market anarchism (terms are often used interchangeably) and don't use planned economies. in the individualist tradition, for example, open competition drives prices down to cost. c- just some notes. if you look at something like the gaming modding community, people will work without the idea of profit (which is considered 1/3 of the "trinity of usury" according to Tucker...the other 2 are rent and interest. they are considered unearned income by Individualists for all intents and purposes), working only to improve something for the sake of the whole community. The Elder Scrolls and The Sims, both, have massive modding communities. Some will put their stuff on patreon, so you can donate if you want, but it isn't necessary. cooperation is natural. what capitalism does is harness that cooperative tendency (think division of labor) and shape it to its most efficiently productive rate in order to make as much profit as possible. personal property is not abolished, even under marx. the Communist Manifesto explicitly says that only capitalist private property is abolished. he means resources, not your house. private property is simply redefined to personal property. the more towards individualist you get, the more it personal property is treated as private, but its based on occupancy and use conditions. in other words, Absentee Property doesn't exist, which means land rent vanishes, and people buy houses instead of renting them. They might have the community charge a land value tax for excluding other people from your property, they may even keep deeds. Some will argue you can still sell it, while others consider it abandoned if you move....you no longer occupy it. the notion of "dictatorship of the proletariat" was warped by Russia. Democratic Socialism is closer to that. To Marx, the present system could be known as "the dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie". the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of democracy, not an actual dictator. Russia didn't have that. they had a bureaucratic State Capitalist (early stage of communist transition of society) regime that subordinated the working class under an actual dictator. Yugoslavia is a better example under Tito, as they actually began the transition, using both market socialism and planned economy, until Tito died, which left them without a guiding vision. My own assessment regarding China is limited to what i've read about it, but i would agree that starvation wasn't intentional, but was the effect of industrializing too rapidly, by turning the majority of farmers into workers, leaving a food shortage. I do know they attempted to create communes (which is the whole point of communism), but failed.
Yooooo, just a Vietnamese who actually live through “socialism” u are asking for, the “freedom” you expecting there is something “Citizen, u have broke the law but if u give me 500k Dong(25dollars), i will allow u to go cause my monthly wage is so fucking low that i can only feed my family through corruption”-Police or Military personnel in Viet Nam till today
what is this "not a moral argument" supposed to mean, exactly? was Marx not morally opposed to the exploitation he speaks of? what kind of "beef" does he have, if not moral? aestetic? are there marxists who think that exploitation is morally neutral or good? i hear that line repeated so often, yet people seem never seem to explain why they say it or do anything with that statement.
I can answer this. The use of the word "exploitation" makes it seem Marx is making a moral argument. It is a translation afterall. Marx wasn't speaking English. In other words, what Marx was saying is that Capitalism can't exist without the bourgeoisie compensating the proletariat for less than what profit they bring to the company. If a worker brings in X profit, that worker can't be paid X for that work or the company makes no profit and will go bankrupt from overhead costs. It's not a moral argument. It's just how a company survives.
@@geraldford878 trust me, the work "ausbeutung", is _at least_ as morally coded as "exploitation" is, perhaps a bit more. a more neutral term for exploitation would be "ausnutzung", and even that would sound pretty bad when talking about people. but you're missing the point. if i would say, for example: "the state is exploitative, because an interaction where one party is free to use violence will tend to be to the detriment of the party the other party". it would be really weird if i would say "but that's not a moral argument!" after that, because it's obviously implied that we are better of without it, and thus _should_ get rid of it. unless, that is, if something fishy were going on. like if i knew something that would negate the moral case against the state, but i choose to omit that. and then i could later say: "but i didn't literally say it was bad!", as some sort of attempt of a defense.
Guilty. Although "stark capitalist fan" wouldn't be the term I'd use. I'm just not seeing much of a great argument on the Marxist philosophy. Allowing people to take ownership of their "means of production" sounds like a win. However, not taking home a surplus of work is not so much a win. I say, divide the surplus of work among the workers and pay more to those who want to work more. Then give corporate leaders some after that. That really hits at the core of why folks are angry with the system. There's poor leadership expecting more from workers that don't make enough to have a fulfilled life. Instead of hitting at the core of the issue and making compromises with both camps, we're forced to get pulled to the lesser of one ideology over the other. Maybe there's something good in both ideologies and we should retain a level of pragmatism that allows us to pull our heads out of our asses, stop squabbling over spilled milk, and put our big boy pants to figure this shit out. Just my opinion. Maybe I'm a radical who knows.
@@XenonDiosmitide it doesn't help how the leftists fight amongst themselves. But the main goal is to ultimately have no distinction of class, no need for money that can be hoarded and not need for a third party to enforce social rules
@@sethtwc It doesn't help how the left and right fight among themselves and with each other. I can't pin down with absolute certainty the "intent" of a certain institution but I can definitely state with certainty that division on the magnitude does not foster constructive problem solving. I don't remember who said this -- "United we Stand, Divided we Fall" -- but it is especially relevant to today's political climate. Sure it's fun to speculate and poke fun at the opposition in good humor, but it's degenerated into something far more terrible to where we can't even solve problems anymore. That is a much bigger concern than what left or right believes.
It’s moves large groups of people from farms to factories without the efficiency of the farms changing fast enough for the food supply to ajust causing famine
Marx didn't invent the Labor Theory of Value, he only expanded it. People like Adam Smith and John Locke, both, used a version of the LTV. Locke also used a Labor Theory of Property, while arguing that the earth was given to all mankind for subsistence....aka, the commons...aka socialism. Thomas Jefferson is an American who would argue the same thing (in a letter to Madison). Both Locke and Jefferson should be seen as Free Market Socialists (libertarian socialists). The LTP is invoked by everyone, from Ricardian Socialists, like Thomas Hodgeskin, to modern day "libertarians"...the people who scream "taxation is theft!". An argument based on earning something is tantamount to the LTP. What this does in capitalism is create one of Marx's capitalist contradictions. if the LVP is applied universally, then the Ricardian Socialists were correct: wage labor is theft. The surplus value is earned by the laborers, who should be entitled to the full extent of their labor. instead, they are denied the very principle that allows the capitalist to own the factory. Owning something is not labor. The idea of profit only applies to owning something, because laborers don't see profit. the profit motive is disconnected from labor. that changes under worker cooperatives, when workers eliminate the middleman, and are entitled to whatever the product sells for on the market. According to Mutualist theory, competition (without things like patents) would drive prices down to cost. the modern version of cost contains at least part of the LTV, otherwise, labor cannot be included in cost. by eliminating the capitalist owner(s), the distinction between owner and producer (labor) is eliminated. wealth automatically gets distributed on a wider scale, according to participants, and the necessity of the state wanes. Social Liberalism and Social Democracy become less of a necessity to redistribute already redistributed wealth (wage labor redistributes wealth to the owning class). If you took Immanuel Kant's universal principle in deontological ethics (the categorical imperative), it becomes clear that capitalism cannot work. not everyone CAN be an owner of capital, and this, necessarily, means there will be superiors/inferiors in power. the universal principal is a principal of equality in a sense. it has to apply to everyone equally. the consequence is wealth/poverty that creates class antagonism, as well as revolution and crime, because the one universal law that cannot be overruled is the first rule of life: survive. Personal property includes things like the land/house you live on. it's usually based on occupancy and use, or usufruct (from the community, which, in the more private version, would include a land value tax for private use). some version of personal property are treated as private property. the biggest problem with capitalist private property is known as absentee property, property you own but do not use or occupy yourself. this is what allows the capitalist to own the factory, and it's also what allows absentee landlordism to exist. barring absentee property, no one would rent houses anymore. they would own them. The division is also carried out by what's known as cultural marxism. The slogan of Marx was "workers of the world, unite!". The cultural shift has worked to divide people even more. the workers on the right, for example, see CRT as a divisive tactic equivalent to what Marx and Engles say about the bourgois. This is why i've tried to ignore the cultural wars and focus on the workers recognizing that they have the same problem, and it's not each other. Dictatorship of the Proletariat - centralized democracy. direct democracy, by it's very nature, is decentralized. to someone like Bakunin, centralized democracy is not so different from the Dictatorship of the Bourgoisie. The anarchists foresaw Lenin coming. The same point of contention would exist between Marx and the anarchists: The dictatorship would be misunderstood. Lenin achieved power via a coup d'etat after the Bolsheviks lost an election. essentially, he stole the russian provisional government. There is an individualism that still exists in decentralization that kind of vanishes in centralization. Benjamin Tucker, who was an individualist anarchist (a Proudhonian/Stirner socialist against communism, so the distinction existed before lenin, just not in Marxism) wrote of the state not being able to wither away, as it is the tendency of the state to grow, not recognizing any boundaries. a state religion would be the result, and the dictatorship of the majority would, essentially, wipe out individualism. it's an argument against excessive democracy as well as centralized. from the ground up cannot be properly achieved if individuals lose their agency and autonomy via the majority. you cannot have a majority without first having individuals that comprise it. society has to start with the individual, the citizen, the most fundamental piece of any society.
Nowhere in the video do we say that he invented it. We could've gone into Smith and Ricardo and on and on and it would've been a 6 hour video. That's not what we were after here. Anyone interested in the history and specifics of the Labor Theory of Value can google it.
@@RevolutionandIdeology I'm not saying you did. I'm not trying to correct you, but, as you mentioned in the video, it's complicated stuff distilled or simplified. I'm just trying to add to the conversation.
@@elliotroberts7 socialism has actually worked very well for a lot of countries before the USA intervened. Do ur research. Capitalism hurts the working class way more. Not giving people their basic human necessities and putting the value of capital infront of the value of human life is messed up.
@@elliotroberts7 the Ussr was a backwater feudal society and in 2 decades it defeated the nazis and turned in a heavily industrialized country and the second world power, completely eliminating illiteracy, unemploiyment and homelessnes
@@vexillopath947 capitalism literally encourages the exploitation of the working class for the benefit of the rich… I would much rather live in a socialist country where my life is put above the value I hold to rich peoppe
In very simple terms, if an employee generates $20/hr for their employer and earns a wage of $15/hr, they're being exploited by their employer to the tune of $5/hr. You may believe this is justified or not but capitalism requires this exploitation in order to function.
Lmfao! Did 11:00 did you really just say that you are not paid for the hours you work? Uhh, that's not how that works. If you sign a contract to work for a wage then you get paid per hour. If you sign a contract for a salary then your pay is based on that contract. You said, "working this amount of time for this amount of money is what I need." It's hard to consider anything else you will say after this point will be meaningful.
I think all forms of government no matter what its origin or purpose will go bad. I don't trust a single government employee hell I don't turn my back on the librarian anymore not after the incident
I certainly hope the title is accurate. It seems every time I try to get a straightforward explanation of socialism on the TH-cams it turns into a too long critique of capitalism, why capitalism is bad, and ringing endorsement of socialism without ever actually defining or describing it in any useful way. Just appeals to some vague notion of egalitarianism, simplistic us/them class descriptions, and appeals to some nebulous moral sense that flagrantly violates Humes Guillotine. Yes, I commented before watching because I want to be pleasantly surprised by reason and logic. But this is TH-cam, my expectations are low. *post watch edit - Ok, there was about five minutes of useful description. The rest was just the same old, hackneyed, backward looking, navel gazing, enthralled to historical narrative apologia. Unsurprising.
Maybe someone should write a manifesto about the class of the "Misinformed" revolting against "Slightly less Misinformed." I'd read that shit. At least for the shear comedy!
How does a society progress with the deincentivation of invention? Leaving it solely to ones charitably? As someone who's new to politics, it seems to that that is the question.
Humans innately retain the drive to improve things, and many highly innovative things have occured in socialist states. My personal favorite is Russian Constructivism and it's massive contribution to art, graphic design and art production.
soviets invented satellites lmao. Capitalism and competition can innovate too, sure. We humans innovate by nature but in capitalism all the progress is made in the name of profit and that leads to abominations such as planeed obsolence
This video really underplays the horrors of the totalitarianism of the USSR and China (more people died due to the great leap forward than any other historical event) and ignores the lack of freedom of speech and movement - people couldn't leave these countries and were killed or imprisoned if they tried to do so. This lack of freedom and other similar horrors happened in many countries that called themselves communist. Not engaging in this or underplaying this does a huge disservice to the millions of people who died and suffered under the ideology of communism.
@@sblaney66 firstly socialism is different from communism and that is not relevant in the definition of socialism and communism, like when talking about capitalism do you mention the horrible things certain counties did that aren’t related to capitalism no
Its fine.....until you realize that an economic system and market is infinitely complex and no human group or body will ever exist that will ever be able to effectively distribute resources unto the people without creating catastrophic effects in all other parts of the system.
@@RevolutionandIdeology The individual parts that occupty the infrastructure set up in the supply chains will always be able to solve the problems that arise within better than any governing body will ever be able to. Because the problem gets solved from within, the effected parts of the supply chain stemming from that chain will be able to adapt better, faster, quicker than if a governing body came in to try fix it from the outside. If the system as it exists isn't working, then we would have much more wide spread poverty, starvation, and civil unrest then we do now. Instead we have a lower class that is fat and obese and far superior technology and standards of living than has ever existed in human history. Do we have problems? absolutely. But i'll take these problems over the craps created by socialism any day of the week.
@@itzbebop that sounds smart. You're referring to letting the market guide production? Not so smart. That leads to crashes and mass waste of human resources. Central planning could work if capitalist forces didn't try their hardest to smash them up with war, coups and embargoes.
Yooooo, just a Vietnamese who actually live through “socialism” u are asking for, the “freedom” you expecting there is something “Citizen, u have broke the law but if u give me 500k Dong(25dollars), i will allow u to go cause my monthly wage is so fucking low that i can only feed my family through corruption”-Police or Military personnel in Viet Nam till today
Unfortunately they won't listen to you. They want it so bad. They will say that wasn't real communism, or they will say everything is great in Vietnam, or Cuba or the USSR. They will give every excuse they can think of.
@@dustinb1275 just because socialism has failed in some cases doesn’t mean it’s bad. There is multiple occurrences where socialism worked very well, helping everyone and over all improving the life of its civilians. Until the USA stepped in and funded coops too kill these leaders that helped better the life’s of people. Capitalism treats the working class way worse. Capitalism encourages the exploitation of the worker for the benefit of the rich. Don’t tell me that capitalism rewards you for working hard, cause I don’t think that Jeff Bezos works millions of times harder that people that have two or three jobs and can barely survive in america
02:03 Materialism
02:32 Modes of production
04:52 Means of production
06:10 Clases sociales
07:23 Idealism
09:10 Labor
10:00 The marxist critique of Capitalism: Explotación laboral
10:26 Trabajo necesario
11:00 Surplus labor
15:30 Comunism
17:05 Privae property
17:28 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
19:00 Orthodox comunism
------
19:55 From capitalism to Socialism
20:02 Unions
22:22 Seize political power and stablish a (true) democracy
23:52 Use the political power to implement socialist policies
----
24:57 Stages of Comunism
26:32 "vulgar socialism"
----
31:32 La evolución de la ideología socialista
Outstanding presentation! This was a very fair and open talk. Loved it!
Thank you for putting this out there. Im new to anarchism and marxism , and im adhd so i cant focus long enough to read. So this is my main way of obtaining knowledge. Thank you sir, id like to smoke a joint with you sometime.
You described me to a 'T'. 😁
very nice overview. helped me to understand the different types of communism, the differing opinions amongst communists, and also how it has actually played out in nations that tried to implement it
Thanks for watching!
21:55 Once we realize that we are all proletariat before we are black or white or Christian or Muslim, etc. Once we realize that we are first and foremost proletariat and we have that in common, we will begin to recognize our power in numbers.
Exactly! That part really stood out to me too!
Thank you. Is it possible to get rid of the background noise? There is a high pitch metallic sound coming from the back.
Actually it's not true that the United States was focused mostly on the Pacific Theatre in WWII. There was an explicit American war policy called "Germany First" that ensured the primary focus and priority of the U.S. Army was the defeat of Germany. In fact, about three quarters of U.S. casualties in WWII occurred in the European Theatre while the remaining quarter resulted from the clash with Japan. Also, while it is true that the Red Army took the brunt of the German Wehrmacht, it is reductive to only look at casualties to determine each country's contribution in defeating the Axis. The Lend-lease agreement and the resulting shipments of enormous amounts of supplies and materiel to the Soviet Union was crucial in the victory, along with the provision of key intel and direct military support through the intense bombing of German cities and infrastructure. Without Lend-lease supplies, the USSR would not have survived the Second World War.
Great summary
It was informative and benefitted me immensely. Thank you
Excellent video dude! Have you made any additional videos that are more in depth?
Thank you - good video.
Can you touch on whether the famine that happened in North Korea is for the same reason it happened in Soviet and China?
Also, why didn’t this famine happen in South Korea, which also industrialized rapidly?
Because S. Korea industrialized naturally through an open market and free trade. When a free market is allowed to function, it learns to solve its own problems. But when a governing body tries to manage an entire economic system which is infinitely complex, it's doomed to fail because butterfly effects are a real phenomenon. S. Korea self regulated itself to a self sustaining society. N. Korea, China, and USSR tried to control and uncontrollable system that died and collapsed. Thats the biggest fallacy of socialism. It puts people in charge of things they have no business being in charge of.
because south korea himself recognition from the USA.so you simply says yes.
@@itzbebop Nonsense! Both countries were developing equally until the 1980's. The US poured billions into South Korea and put an embargo on the North which has lasted to this day. So yeah North Korea is not as materialistically wealthy as South Korea. But they do well with what they have. So take your capitalistic BS elsewhere.
To answer your question, the North does not have as much viable agricultural land as South Korea. So when droughts hit they are much more devastating. Plus the US has had an embargo on North Korea since its founding. That played a key role in the famine.
@@Octoberfurst they do well?
the popoganda machine and secret police and information wars that suppress basic human rights like free speech? Not to mention all the starving people who are covered with all sorts of parasites? Got enough money to pour into nuclear development programs but can't take care of your own people despite receiving billions from China and USSR/Russia?
2 countries that received billions in funding. 1 collapsed, 1 thrived. 1 has free markets and trades with the rest of the world. The other controls its markets and suppresses innovation and free speech and trade and murders millions of its own people.
what else?
Fantastic video thank you!
Thanks for watching!
Thank you for this video
Thanks for watching!
one of the better explanations on socialism. most of the vids online are just 30 minutes of dumpster burning on capitalism.
But a few things.
who deserves the surplus?
a - the business owner who took out risk, created systems of management, poured their own capital onto a venture with no guarantee it will work out or that they'll even get their money back
b - person who gets hired to do some work and gets paid no matter what, even if the company goes bust.
c - 3rd option i'm not considering?
If a person is scheduled for 8 hours, but only works 6 hours, they still get those 2 hours of labor in the form of an 8 hour paycheck. Am i missing something here?
If you abolish personal property, that removes the very innate human desire to constantly work towards gain. is that not directly opposite to the materialism that marx speaks on?
I've never heard anyone accuse Stalin or Mao or any Communist leader of intentionally causing famines and starvation. where is the literature on this? Isn't it fundamentally agreed that those were results of the policies that they and their regimes put forth?
Would you say that the rapid industrialization that led to widespread starvation was not the result of the rapid control that mao and stalin and their regimes trying to control a system that they had no business trying to control?
Thanks for the questions!
"who deserves the surplus?"
Under capitalism, A - the business owner deserves the surplus. Marx is clear on this. The ideological apparatuses (this is Althusser, not Marx) of the system function to convince everyone that the owners deserve the surplus. It's important to remember that Marx's theory isn't an ethical nor moral argument. He does say capitalism will collapse because it's wrong or bad but because it has inherent contradictions that cannot be reconciled. The workers have an interest in the surplus of their labor, as do the capitalists. As a result, their interests collide with one another. Marx's theory is that, eventually, this collision will result in the downfall of capitalism. Not because capitalism is "wrong" but because this conflict is inevitable.
"If a person is scheduled for 8 hours, but only works 6 hours, they still get those 2 hours of labor in the form of an 8 hour paycheck. Am i missing something here?"
I think you're saying that they're "on the clock" for 8 hours but only perform 6 hours of labor? This is one reason why Marx is against paychecks. They don't reflect actual work and they function as a mechanism to separate (alienate) us from the processes and production of our work. Nowadays, it's even worse. If I'm a software developer, I sit in a cubicle, or a co-working space, or my apartment, type some things, and one day numbers appear in my bank account. There's no direct connection to the labor we put in, the value it creates, and what the worker receives in exchange (not to mention our relationships with the end product of our labor). See our video on alienation for more there: th-cam.com/video/gSVdZOFp5Ss/w-d-xo.html
Regarding the first two questions, it's common to present the labor theory of value at the micro-scale (i.e. one worker, one owner, etc.) but Marx avoids this in his analysis. He focuses on the macro. His solution is for all to collectively share in the risk and the surplus. It's very difficult for us to adopt this perspective because our society is so individualistic. "I" did the work. "I" took the risk", and so on. I'm not accusing you as an individual of doing this, we all do. It's one of the main ways our society is broken. We've lost the ability to think about the collective 'health' of our society/world and the ways in which all of the systems are interconnected and impact each other (maybe we never had that ability, but we need it).
"If you abolish personal property, that removes the very innate human desire to constantly work towards gain."
I would disagree that humans have an innate desire to work towards gain (as would Marx). Once basic survival needs are met, along with a surplus to "weather the storm," there's nothing natural about amassing huge amounts of surplus. luxury, etc. This behavior has only been found in relatively recent human history. I think this singular item is a (one of the) fundamental differences between capitalists and anti-capitalists. Capitalism really doesn't make any sense unless humans are naturally "greedy" and so on. Marx believed it was against our human nature to behave in ways associated with capitalism (greed, exploitation, etc.). This belief (that humans are naturally greedy) is really tied to enlightenment era thinking such as Hobbes but none of that is grounded in real science. Anthropology didn't exist yet. Hobbes was a philosopher. There's just not a lot of support for it in real life. Of course there are examples throughout history, but nothing to suggest that it's natural to all humans. Not to mention the critique against the idea of a singular unchanging "human nature" anyway.
"I've never heard anyone accuse Stalin or Mao or any Communist leader of intentionally causing famines and starvation."
Not scholars, but "regular people" make this claim all of the time. "Stalin was responsible for millions of deaths as a result of famine." But Stalin, as an individual, was not responsible for the famine.
"Would you say that the rapid industrialization that led to widespread starvation was not the result of the rapid control that mao and stalin and their regimes trying to control a system that they had no business trying to control?"
I'm not 100% clear on what you're saying here but I think you're saying that they had no business trying to control the economy? Or maybe trying to control the process of industrialization?
a. alot of risk is covered by the state these days. patents and other intellectual property inhibit innovation and competition by limiting who can and cannot use that technology., and the state is responsible for much of the innovation. this is referred to as "socializing risk, but privatizing the profits" or "socialism for the rich". You'll find these critiques more in libertarian socialist circles, as people like Benjamin Tucker (Individualist Anarchist) and Thomas Hodgeskin (a Ricardian socialist) explain how laissez-faire was one-sided, to the effect of creating a privileged class out of owners of capital. Tucker, for example, is known for explaining how it is achieved using what he called the 4 monopolies: land, tariffs, money, and patents. others in the modern day have expanded, such as Charles Johnson, who is responsible for a book called "Markets, Not Capitalism", which is a collection of essays showing how our modern belief in free-markets is warped, and they don't actually exist.
b. Surplus is born AFTER the workers are paid. if you eliminate the owner and make the workers the owners (like a worker cooperative) there is no surplus, as there is no middleman between the workers and the market. they are paid what the product sells for on the market....assuming you keep market socialism or free market anarchism (terms are often used interchangeably) and don't use planned economies. in the individualist tradition, for example, open competition drives prices down to cost.
c- just some notes. if you look at something like the gaming modding community, people will work without the idea of profit (which is considered 1/3 of the "trinity of usury" according to Tucker...the other 2 are rent and interest. they are considered unearned income by Individualists for all intents and purposes), working only to improve something for the sake of the whole community. The Elder Scrolls and The Sims, both, have massive modding communities. Some will put their stuff on patreon, so you can donate if you want, but it isn't necessary. cooperation is natural. what capitalism does is harness that cooperative tendency (think division of labor) and shape it to its most efficiently productive rate in order to make as much profit as possible.
personal property is not abolished, even under marx. the Communist Manifesto explicitly says that only capitalist private property is abolished. he means resources, not your house. private property is simply redefined to personal property. the more towards individualist you get, the more it personal property is treated as private, but its based on occupancy and use conditions. in other words, Absentee Property doesn't exist, which means land rent vanishes, and people buy houses instead of renting them. They might have the community charge a land value tax for excluding other people from your property, they may even keep deeds. Some will argue you can still sell it, while others consider it abandoned if you move....you no longer occupy it.
the notion of "dictatorship of the proletariat" was warped by Russia. Democratic Socialism is closer to that. To Marx, the present system could be known as "the dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie". the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of democracy, not an actual dictator. Russia didn't have that. they had a bureaucratic State Capitalist (early stage of communist transition of society) regime that subordinated the working class under an actual dictator. Yugoslavia is a better example under Tito, as they actually began the transition, using both market socialism and planned economy, until Tito died, which left them without a guiding vision. My own assessment regarding China is limited to what i've read about it, but i would agree that starvation wasn't intentional, but was the effect of industrializing too rapidly, by turning the majority of farmers into workers, leaving a food shortage. I do know they attempted to create communes (which is the whole point of communism), but failed.
This was amazing
Yooooo, just a Vietnamese who actually live through “socialism” u are asking for, the “freedom” you expecting there is something “Citizen, u have broke the law but if u give me 500k Dong(25dollars), i will allow u to go cause my monthly wage is so fucking low that i can only feed my family through corruption”-Police or Military personnel in Viet Nam till today
what is this "not a moral argument" supposed to mean, exactly? was Marx not morally opposed to the exploitation he speaks of? what kind of "beef" does he have, if not moral? aestetic? are there marxists who think that exploitation is morally neutral or good?
i hear that line repeated so often, yet people seem never seem to explain why they say it or do anything with that statement.
i want to know this too: is "exploitation" not a moral term?
Totally thought the same. If Marx was against exploitation, on what ground? Bringing in moral argument weakens his justifications? Not with me.
I can answer this. The use of the word "exploitation" makes it seem Marx is making a moral argument. It is a translation afterall. Marx wasn't speaking English. In other words, what Marx was saying is that Capitalism can't exist without the bourgeoisie compensating the proletariat for less than what profit they bring to the company. If a worker brings in X profit, that worker can't be paid X for that work or the company makes no profit and will go bankrupt from overhead costs. It's not a moral argument. It's just how a company survives.
@@geraldford878 trust me, the work "ausbeutung", is _at least_ as morally coded as "exploitation" is, perhaps a bit more. a more neutral term for exploitation would be "ausnutzung", and even that would sound pretty bad when talking about people.
but you're missing the point. if i would say, for example: "the state is exploitative, because an interaction where one party is free to use violence will tend to be to the detriment of the party the other party". it would be really weird if i would say "but that's not a moral argument!" after that, because it's obviously implied that we are better of without it, and thus _should_ get rid of it. unless, that is, if something fishy were going on. like if i knew something that would negate the moral case against the state, but i choose to omit that. and then i could later say: "but i didn't literally say it was bad!", as some sort of attempt of a defense.
God forbid people who are stark capitalist fans would want to watch this video
Guilty. Although "stark capitalist fan" wouldn't be the term I'd use. I'm just not seeing much of a great argument on the Marxist philosophy. Allowing people to take ownership of their "means of production" sounds like a win. However, not taking home a surplus of work is not so much a win. I say, divide the surplus of work among the workers and pay more to those who want to work more. Then give corporate leaders some after that. That really hits at the core of why folks are angry with the system. There's poor leadership expecting more from workers that don't make enough to have a fulfilled life. Instead of hitting at the core of the issue and making compromises with both camps, we're forced to get pulled to the lesser of one ideology over the other. Maybe there's something good in both ideologies and we should retain a level of pragmatism that allows us to pull our heads out of our asses, stop squabbling over spilled milk, and put our big boy pants to figure this shit out. Just my opinion. Maybe I'm a radical who knows.
@@XenonDiosmitide it doesn't help how the leftists fight amongst themselves. But the main goal is to ultimately have no distinction of class, no need for money that can be hoarded and not need for a third party to enforce social rules
@@sethtwc It doesn't help how the left and right fight among themselves and with each other. I can't pin down with absolute certainty the "intent" of a certain institution but I can definitely state with certainty that division on the magnitude does not foster constructive problem solving.
I don't remember who said this --
"United we Stand, Divided we Fall"
-- but it is especially relevant to today's political climate.
Sure it's fun to speculate and poke fun at the opposition in good humor, but it's degenerated into something far more terrible to where we can't even solve problems anymore. That is a much bigger concern than what left or right believes.
I don't understand why rapid industrialization causes famine. Where can I find a full explanation?
It’s moves large groups of people from farms to factories without the efficiency of the farms changing fast enough for the food supply to ajust causing famine
@@Pateint Thank you!
Very good 👏🏼🙏🏼
Thanks for listening
Where's the link on class consciousness?
www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/lukacs3.htm
Marx didn't invent the Labor Theory of Value, he only expanded it. People like Adam Smith and John Locke, both, used a version of the LTV. Locke also used a Labor Theory of Property, while arguing that the earth was given to all mankind for subsistence....aka, the commons...aka socialism. Thomas Jefferson is an American who would argue the same thing (in a letter to Madison). Both Locke and Jefferson should be seen as Free Market Socialists (libertarian socialists). The LTP is invoked by everyone, from Ricardian Socialists, like Thomas Hodgeskin, to modern day "libertarians"...the people who scream "taxation is theft!". An argument based on earning something is tantamount to the LTP. What this does in capitalism is create one of Marx's capitalist contradictions. if the LVP is applied universally, then the Ricardian Socialists were correct: wage labor is theft. The surplus value is earned by the laborers, who should be entitled to the full extent of their labor. instead, they are denied the very principle that allows the capitalist to own the factory. Owning something is not labor. The idea of profit only applies to owning something, because laborers don't see profit. the profit motive is disconnected from labor. that changes under worker cooperatives, when workers eliminate the middleman, and are entitled to whatever the product sells for on the market. According to Mutualist theory, competition (without things like patents) would drive prices down to cost. the modern version of cost contains at least part of the LTV, otherwise, labor cannot be included in cost. by eliminating the capitalist owner(s), the distinction between owner and producer (labor) is eliminated. wealth automatically gets distributed on a wider scale, according to participants, and the necessity of the state wanes. Social Liberalism and Social Democracy become less of a necessity to redistribute already redistributed wealth (wage labor redistributes wealth to the owning class). If you took Immanuel Kant's universal principle in deontological ethics (the categorical imperative), it becomes clear that capitalism cannot work. not everyone CAN be an owner of capital, and this, necessarily, means there will be superiors/inferiors in power. the universal principal is a principal of equality in a sense. it has to apply to everyone equally. the consequence is wealth/poverty that creates class antagonism, as well as revolution and crime, because the one universal law that cannot be overruled is the first rule of life: survive.
Personal property includes things like the land/house you live on. it's usually based on occupancy and use, or usufruct (from the community, which, in the more private version, would include a land value tax for private use). some version of personal property are treated as private property. the biggest problem with capitalist private property is known as absentee property, property you own but do not use or occupy yourself. this is what allows the capitalist to own the factory, and it's also what allows absentee landlordism to exist. barring absentee property, no one would rent houses anymore. they would own them.
The division is also carried out by what's known as cultural marxism. The slogan of Marx was "workers of the world, unite!". The cultural shift has worked to divide people even more. the workers on the right, for example, see CRT as a divisive tactic equivalent to what Marx and Engles say about the bourgois. This is why i've tried to ignore the cultural wars and focus on the workers recognizing that they have the same problem, and it's not each other.
Dictatorship of the Proletariat - centralized democracy. direct democracy, by it's very nature, is decentralized. to someone like Bakunin, centralized democracy is not so different from the Dictatorship of the Bourgoisie. The anarchists foresaw Lenin coming. The same point of contention would exist between Marx and the anarchists: The dictatorship would be misunderstood. Lenin achieved power via a coup d'etat after the Bolsheviks lost an election. essentially, he stole the russian provisional government. There is an individualism that still exists in decentralization that kind of vanishes in centralization. Benjamin Tucker, who was an individualist anarchist (a Proudhonian/Stirner socialist against communism, so the distinction existed before lenin, just not in Marxism) wrote of the state not being able to wither away, as it is the tendency of the state to grow, not recognizing any boundaries. a state religion would be the result, and the dictatorship of the majority would, essentially, wipe out individualism. it's an argument against excessive democracy as well as centralized. from the ground up cannot be properly achieved if individuals lose their agency and autonomy via the majority. you cannot have a majority without first having individuals that comprise it. society has to start with the individual, the citizen, the most fundamental piece of any society.
Nowhere in the video do we say that he invented it. We could've gone into Smith and Ricardo and on and on and it would've been a 6 hour video. That's not what we were after here. Anyone interested in the history and specifics of the Labor Theory of Value can google it.
@@RevolutionandIdeology I'm not saying you did. I'm not trying to correct you, but, as you mentioned in the video, it's complicated stuff distilled or simplified.
I'm just trying to add to the conversation.
not me trying to figure out how to make this happen in the US-
@@elliotroberts7 socialism has actually worked very well for a lot of countries before the USA intervened. Do ur research. Capitalism hurts the working class way more. Not giving people their basic human necessities and putting the value of capital infront of the value of human life is messed up.
@@elliotroberts7 the Ussr was a backwater feudal society and in 2 decades it defeated the nazis and turned in a heavily industrialized country and the second world power, completely eliminating illiteracy, unemploiyment and homelessnes
Socialism or barbarism!
@@Unite-4-Peace capitalism is slavery
@@ThePeanutButterCup13 poor slave. I wish you flee to some socialist paradise of a country soon.
@@vexillopath947 capitalism literally encourages the exploitation of the working class for the benefit of the rich… I would much rather live in a socialist country where my life is put above the value I hold to rich peoppe
This video is mislabeled it is about Marxism not socialism!
wut?
@@RevolutionandIdeology your video was only about marx idea of socialism
What do you mean by exploitation?
In very simple terms, if an employee generates $20/hr for their employer and earns a wage of $15/hr, they're being exploited by their employer to the tune of $5/hr. You may believe this is justified or not but capitalism requires this exploitation in order to function.
@@RevolutionandIdeology An employee cannot generate value for an employer only
Customer can do that
Okay so revolutionary vanguards are leftist influencers LMAO shfhahd
Lmfao! Did 11:00 did you really just say that you are not paid for the hours you work?
Uhh, that's not how that works.
If you sign a contract to work for a wage then you get paid per hour.
If you sign a contract for a salary then your pay is based on that contract. You said, "working this amount of time for this amount of money is what I need."
It's hard to consider anything else you will say after this point will be meaningful.
your awesome
I think all forms of government no matter what its origin or purpose will go bad. I don't trust a single government employee hell I don't turn my back on the librarian anymore not after the incident
20:16
"Necessary labor" Lol.
I certainly hope the title is accurate. It seems every time I try to get a straightforward explanation of socialism on the TH-cams it turns into a too long critique of capitalism, why capitalism is bad, and ringing endorsement of socialism without ever actually defining or describing it in any useful way. Just appeals to some vague notion of egalitarianism, simplistic us/them class descriptions, and appeals to some nebulous moral sense that flagrantly violates Humes Guillotine.
Yes, I commented before watching because I want to be pleasantly surprised by reason and logic. But this is TH-cam, my expectations are low.
*post watch edit - Ok, there was about five minutes of useful description. The rest was just the same old, hackneyed, backward looking, navel gazing, enthralled to historical narrative apologia. Unsurprising.
Glad you enjoyed!
This a video about Marxism!
Maybe someone should write a manifesto about the class of the "Misinformed" revolting against "Slightly less Misinformed." I'd read that shit. At least for the shear comedy!
How does a society progress with the deincentivation of invention? Leaving it solely to ones charitably? As someone who's new to politics, it seems to that that is the question.
Humans innately retain the drive to improve things, and many highly innovative things have occured in socialist states. My personal favorite is Russian Constructivism and it's massive contribution to art, graphic design and art production.
soviets invented satellites lmao. Capitalism and competition can innovate too, sure. We humans innovate by nature but in capitalism all the progress is made in the name of profit and that leads to abominations such as planeed obsolence
Lenin helped perfect Marxist Revolutionary Socialism, that intro was so inadequate.
Lenin was aight for his time
@@Sazi_de_Afrikan correction:
All-Time
@@nanoaged1 not based
This video really underplays the horrors of the totalitarianism of the USSR and China (more people died due to the great leap forward than any other historical event) and ignores the lack of freedom of speech and movement - people couldn't leave these countries and were killed or imprisoned if they tried to do so. This lack of freedom and other similar horrors happened in many countries that called themselves communist. Not engaging in this or underplaying this does a huge disservice to the millions of people who died and suffered under the ideology of communism.
Those aren’t inherent parts of socialism through they are just authoritarianism which is unrelated to socialism
. @Pateint But communist countries are cited in this video with no mention of the horrors carried out by their regimes.
@@sblaney66 firstly socialism is different from communism and that is not relevant in the definition of socialism and communism, like when talking about capitalism do you mention the horrible things certain counties did that aren’t related to capitalism no
@@Pateint But communist countries are cited in this video with no mention of the horrors carried out by their regimes.
Its fine.....until you realize that an economic system and market is infinitely complex and no human group or body will ever exist that will ever be able to effectively distribute resources unto the people without creating catastrophic effects in all other parts of the system.
So...keep rolling w/what you got (even though the absolutes you've used infer it's also not effective)?
@@RevolutionandIdeology The individual parts that occupty the infrastructure set up in the supply chains will always be able to solve the problems that arise within better than any governing body will ever be able to. Because the problem gets solved from within, the effected parts of the supply chain stemming from that chain will be able to adapt better, faster, quicker than if a governing body came in to try fix it from the outside. If the system as it exists isn't working, then we would have much more wide spread poverty, starvation, and civil unrest then we do now. Instead we have a lower class that is fat and obese and far superior technology and standards of living than has ever existed in human history.
Do we have problems? absolutely. But i'll take these problems over the craps created by socialism any day of the week.
@@itzbebopbased
@@itzbebop that sounds smart. You're referring to letting the market guide production? Not so smart. That leads to crashes and mass waste of human resources. Central planning could work if capitalist forces didn't try their hardest to smash them up with war, coups and embargoes.
@@itzbebopYou are ignorant, wrong, and confident.
Yooooo, just a Vietnamese who actually live through “socialism” u are asking for, the “freedom” you expecting there is something “Citizen, u have broke the law but if u give me 500k Dong(25dollars), i will allow u to go cause my monthly wage is so fucking low that i can only feed my family through corruption”-Police or Military personnel in Viet Nam till today
Unfortunately they won't listen to you. They want it so bad. They will say that wasn't real communism, or they will say everything is great in Vietnam, or Cuba or the USSR. They will give every excuse they can think of.
@@dustinb1275 just because socialism has failed in some cases doesn’t mean it’s bad. There is multiple occurrences where socialism worked very well, helping everyone and over all improving the life of its civilians. Until the USA stepped in and funded coops too kill these leaders that helped better the life’s of people. Capitalism treats the working class way worse. Capitalism encourages the exploitation of the worker for the benefit of the rich. Don’t tell me that capitalism rewards you for working hard, cause I don’t think that Jeff Bezos works millions of times harder that people that have two or three jobs and can barely survive in america