Nietzsche Contra Socialism
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 มี.ค. 2023
- This week on Untimely Reflections, we answer the age-old question... who is whinier and more triggered, the left or the right? The right gave a strong showing for the "Nietzsche Contra Capitalism" episode, lots of salt. The lefties have their work cut out for them, but I think they can beat them if they try.
Patreon: www.patreon.com/untimelyreflections
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/0ZARzVC...
Nietzsche's critique of capitalism is in fact inextricably bound to his critique of socialism. What he finds beneath both approaches to managing human economic affairs is the utilitarian value structure and the view of the human being as homo economicus. Socialism, rather than the solution to capitalism, is the necessary end of the same internal logic, and further seeks to cut off avenues for man's will to power as we labor under the mistaken assumption that by reducing suffering we will maximize pleasure. The closer we proceed to an idealized, painless society, the more our individuality is smoothed over. Increasingly, the only avenue for the expression of power is through the only remaining hierarchical structure: the state. Originally created by mankind to be a means, the state becomes the ends. In a twisted irony, the likes of the socialists and anarchists - who desire above all for a classless, stateless society - bring forth an all-powerful state as the means of doing this, and become consumed by it.
A neat aspect of the episode order here is that we're covering Nietzsche's political thought in a rough chronology - meaning that, while we might jump around from place to place, and occasionally grab a quote from Beyond Good & Evil, we're moving from the second and third book of Human, All Too Human into covering a lot more material from Daybreak, while still drawing on sources from elsewhere in the middle period. The next episode - Nietzsche's critique of fascism - covers around the same period, in terms of the letters and statements he made about Wagner and Elisabeth during his breaks with them, in addition to drawing on passages from throughout his work.
Ian Wright's article, "Capital as a Real God": ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2...
Thomas Brobjer's studies showing that Nietzsche knew Marx: www.degruyter.com/document/do...
My essay on Star Trek (please note, this was written some time ago, and I am planning a re-write for a reading of it, so there may be some fat on there that needs to get trimmed off): untimely-reflections.blogspot...
#nietzsche #philosophy #philosophypodcast #historyofphilosophy #politicalphilosophy #socialism #capitalism #utopia
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The video thumbnail is gold. Had me in tears 😂 ... Well done Sir.
🤣
"Hey, there's gonna be a party later. Wanna come?"
"Sure, I'll Mietzsche there!"
Oyyyy 🥴
😑
I don't know if you would read this comment or not but this is like the third or fourth time I listen to this episode, and I have to say, the insights here are absolute gold. Man, every minute, every sentence is artfully and intellectually well-crafted that I've put most of it in my notes. You have no idea how much I appreciate and value you work and analyses. You have been my primary source of wisdom for the past two years or so. God bless you, and I wish a life-ascending life! Thank you, man. I will never forget you.
Definitely going to read your Star Trek essay. Sounds like it expands on an idea I've had too. Kirk's speech about being thrown out of paradise made me realize it: "Maybe we weren't meant for paradise. Maybe we were meant to fight our way through, struggle, claw our way up, scratch for every inch of the way. Maybe we can't stroll to the music of the lute. We must march to the sound of drums."
Directly quoted in the essay! 😁
00:00 📜 Nietzsche's critique of socialism and capitalism is linked through their shared reliance on utilitarianism and the concept of homo economicus.
01:49 🤔 Value judgments in politics and utility are inherently subjective, leading to the appeal of socialism when it aligns with the majority's perspective.
02:45 🌐 Nietzsche sees socialism as an inevitable outcome of capitalism's maturation, emphasizing the importance of understanding his critique of capitalism.
05:43 💰 Nietzsche criticizes the shift towards valuing wealth (gold) as a form of power, comparing it to the worship of a god, reflecting the influence of capitalism.
13:27 🧠 Nietzsche contends that with the decline of religious and absolute moral authority, utility and pleasure have become dominant societal goals, leading to an insatiable pursuit of wealth and contentment.
19:58 😩 Nietzsche argues that when the primary goal of morality becomes pleasure and the state's goal is self-preservation, it can lead to a relentless pursuit of wealth and an unsatisfying existence.
20:41 🧐 Nietzsche argues that focusing solely on reducing pain and suffering may also minimize human pleasure and well-being, challenging the idea that painlessness is the ultimate measure of a good society.
21:52 🤔 Nietzsche questions whether science can adequately address moral questions and suggests that it tends to overlook underlying values in our approach to solving moral problems.
23:41 🧐 Nietzsche critiques the socialist goal of a propertyless society, arguing that it ultimately aligns with the same utilitarian quest for well-being as defenders of capitalism like Sam Harris and Steven Pinker.
25:22 🤔 Nietzsche asserts that suffering and challenges are essential for human enhancement and creativity, and the pursuit of pure well-being can lead to stagnation and unhappiness.
30:09 🤯 Nietzsche distinguishes between the "Creature" and the "Creator" within humanity, suggesting that the desire to transcend limitations and strive for greatness is an intrinsic part of human nature.
33:08 🌍 Nietzsche implies that the shift from individual utility to collective utility is a natural progression, and socialism represents a stage in this evolution where class consciousness and collective advantage become prominent.
35:12 😶 Nietzsche critiques socialism as a broad collective movement driven by the desire for material comfort and class advantage, regardless of ideological distinctions within socialism itself.
41:59 🔄 Nietzsche suggests that socialism, in its pursuit of collective well-being, may deprive individuals of the struggle, pain, and pursuit of property, potentially limiting their sense of power and purpose.
42:14 🌍 Socialists aim for the control of productive forces by the proletariat as the ultimate goal, with freedom being more essential than well-being or equality.
44:46 🎭 Nietzsche contrasts the Athenian concept of freedom, where individuals can play multiple roles, with the dangers of excessive freedom that can lead to a society of stage players and unpredictable dynamics.
46:07 🔗 Nietzsche suggests that modern society is on a path towards similar stage-play dynamics, with people increasingly embracing the idea of playing roles and experimenting with themselves.
49:55 🏗 Nietzsche questions whether modern societies, focused on individual freedom, can maintain the structure and long-term goals of traditionalsocieties that were based on roles and sacrifice for the future.
52:38 💡 Nietzsche argues that maximizing individual freedom leads to short-sightedness, self-interest, and undermines the collective goals and sacrifices necessary for a stable society.
59:26 🔄 Nietzsche criticizes both Socialists and the wealthy elite, suggesting they share a similar inner discontent with modern life, shaped by past injustices and power relationships.
01:03:34 🏛 Nietzsche predicts that the abstract moral idea of utility will manifest itself within the state, as people seek to reify and impose their ideals in the physical world, potentially leading to unpredictable outcomes.
01:03:49 🤔 Nietzsche believes that even in an authoritarian regime, the moral duty to maximize the well-being and happiness of all mankind remains a binding principle.
01:04:29 📜 Nietzsche discusses the need for individuals to have pathetic principles, unconditional oughts, to which they can subject themselves without shame.
01:05:12 🤝 Nietzsche explores the modern sense of universalism influenced by Kant, where everyone is subjected to one principle, attempting to break down hierarchies.
01:06:06 ⚖ Nietzsche contrasts the use of dialectic, wielded by Socrates, as a tool of lower classes to level hierarchies with those in power who don't need to explain themselves.
01:07:01 🏛 Nietzsche predicts that the yearning for freedom preached by anarchists and socialists will ultimately manifest in the form of a state, centralizing power.
01:09:33 💡 Nietzsche warns that once socialism develops, bureaucratic institutions will become the primary outlet for individuals' Will to Power.
01:14:52 💼 Nietzsche criticizes the glorification of work and warns that identifying oneself solely as a worker in a society focused on productivity leads to atomization and stagnation.
01:20:38 💰 Nietzsche critiques the pursuit of material prosperity in both capitalist and socialist contexts, highlighting the waste of internal value in the pursuit of external objects.
01:24:33 🗳 Nietzsche argues that determining a fair percentage of labor owed to workers is a challenge for any system, whether based on market logic or collective decision-making.
01:25:16 🤔 Nietzsche points out the shift in societal perception of labor from being shameful in antiquity to being seen as valuable and laudatory in the modern world, due to illusions about work.
01:26:39 🚀 Nietzsche criticizes the socialist promise of improving material well-being as a substitute for inner development, advocating for individuals to seek self-mastery and challenge in new and savage lands.
01:27:46 🌍 Nietzsche suggests that European laborers should engage in massive migrations to escape the trap of becoming cogs in the machine of production or slaves of the state or revolutionary parties.
01:35:50 🛠 Nietzsche envisions colonizations as a means for Europe to rejuvenate its cultural consciousness, unlearn excessive wants, and embrace heroism in the face of challenges and hardships.
01:38:11 🌐 The discussion highlights the evolving dynamics of capitalism and socialism, blurring the lines between state and corporations, and the dominance of a technocratic state. The traditional debate between capitalism and socialism may no longer be relevant in the moder
Clarity, excellent voice quality, good construction, thoughtful and exceptionally rare intellectualism
54:17 Even beyond that, we're too atomized to create a society. The biggest question of our era, one which is being completely ignored, is how does one deatomize a society? Which is just another way of asking, how does one create the incentive structures which would create a society?
It's hard to argue with Watts that every aspect of the cosmos is a more or less elaborate form of hide and seek. The comfort/ennui dilemma is of course yet another example of this.
Question: are you talking about Alan Watts ?
@@galvezledoux154 I believe that's who they're talking about. Alan Watts has a few talks about life/all that is being one, including the divine, and basically that if everything is always one being there isn't any exploration and there's loneliness. So the one split itself and hid parts of itself and the "game" is our quest to remember that the one is also the other, our Self is everyone's Self and the universe's Self.
Also, never ceases to amaze me how well Watts explained Eastern philosophy to Western audiences lol
@@galvezledoux154 Yep. 👍
If taken seriously, Nietzsche is the necessary corrective to anti-capitalism (which found its most severe overcorrections in the Weather Underground Organization and in Stalin’s purges and Mao’s GLF and GCPR, which has been acknowledged by people in those aisles to varying degrees, some critical acceptance, others denial by appeal to political necessity, especially given that Lenin, like Nietzsche, was a political realist and that this influence pervades a lot of left wing political analysis, with few exceptions, mostly from social anarchists). I’m not sure that corrective’s happened as much as it should have, though I have a vague memory of Foucault doing something similar denouncing his former compatriots after the 1969 Paris riots. I also remember watching Daniel Tutt’s lectures on Nietzsche (I also remember something by Raymond Geuss running along similar lines) which may indicate more receptivity among self-proclaimed Marxists to this side of Nietzsche’s critique than the presentations of, say, Stephen Hicks or Jordan Peterson. While there’s not much charity online towards a proper definition of conservatism, I have not seen that the right certainly has taken heed of his critique of capitalist logic, as they’ve done the opposite. Maybe there is something of value to take from something like Heidegger’s countryside path without having to be too millenarian or too fearful of technology. I’m actually just a minute in, still, thanks for the video.
Nietzsche contra Socialism
Nietzsche contra capitalism
Priceless information
Many thanks
😎
What part of Nietzs? Because he's pretty statist at times as long as it serves the greater good of mankind, and doesn't care for those who he deems buy into and act out the slave morality, or how history might treat them
Have you ever heard about or encountered the 20th century greek philisopher and historian Panagiotis Kondylis? who's uniquely descriptive approach to morality and politics with many Nietzschean and machievellian elements that permeates all his writings i think you would appreciate. One of His most essential work called power and decision is recommended to start with.
"The constituent parts that the pleasure is composed of, is pain."
Comfort might have turned out to be the required first floor of a vast scaffolding of future human endeavor and struggle. We couldn't be the kind of people Nietzsche dreamed of if most worked endlessly as drudges, serfs, slaves. And that's what capitalism permitted. That kind of material creativity, the way free individuals could master interesting ways to move and arrange molecules, that might have been what we really require to become fully human. And so, as all great philosophers, he offered stunning ideas that were fundamentally wrong, but may have given us hints as to what is accurate about humans.
He has said the direct opposite. We can only be what he has dreamed of if most work as slaves. Slavery is a necessity for the social hierarchy.
Your Nietzsche Contra Trilogy makes for a great “response” book to Schumpeter’s Capitalism Socialism And democracy. Please let us know if you have any books out. Cheers.
What biography of FN do you recommend?
I would like to hear your analysis of Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. Seems like a deeply Nietzschean work
Well, Hesse definitely read Nietzsche, as well as other writers.
His most damning writing regarding socialists/communists is in thus spake Zarathustra "The tarantulas". He fully eviscerates the core psychology leading to such beliefs
Are you able to do Max Stirner and Nietzsche possible connection?
I think Mammon is a perfect description of Capitalism.
Yes.
Seems rather crude; to me Capitalism seems to be more of a manifestation of Moloch.
1:25:00
Decades before the post-structuralists, too.
Well they wouldn't have been without him. I've seen people categorise Nietzsche as the first poststructuralist.. if you want to ignore Max Stirner...
@@noahmaatiihafa Or, at any rate, the first post-modernism. Foucault was definitely strongly influenced by him. And post-structuralism came from postmodernism.
I was expecting you to jump right in to Will To Power for this one because he’s quite clear and direct about his views off “the socialists”.
There is no “beyond the free market” just as there is no capitalism or socialism. These words are mere superficial thoughts. The underlying Value, as you point out, is the substance of the matter.
The Eudaemonistic approach to life and understanding human life will always lead to dissipation and degeneration . These thinkers like Pinker are trying to turn science into another version of Christian moral practice.
On your section with respect to suffering there is still to this day very high levels of suffering, just maybe hidden. Such as in for example Niger and the process of uranium mining, and the subsequent death from water borne diseases, high childhood mortality and so on. You can contrast that to some of the outbursts of elation and riots in the streets following the coup that occurred there. And even otherwise the process of industrialization was also a process of immense suffering, which may not necessarily emesh with an increased capacity or reception of joy, which again begs the question of who’s joy, is the high childhood mortality the increased capacity of a mothers joy when a child does live in a longer life. Does the mothers death increase the husband’s appreciation of a second wife or can it be met with great indifference? The communist states so often did not even begin to reach out at the possibilities and their demise or lack of development into becoming communist also has to do with their methodological nationalism, at times the methodological nationalism was an attempt at salvaging what was gained, rather than proceeding into something more transcendent. The aspects on how much production do we need, and the paradoxes of freedom I think really should be thought through more, I thought the aspects on atomization were quite thought provoking and I doubt that any communist state could take shape like those prior due to these atomization to the point that even nationalism isn’t the same substantively and in what it means to people as before.
One quote of his I read struck me, because like ""Beyond Good and evil," it puts him outside ordinary binaries.
I like the means used by Socialists, but I do not lie their ends." I do not like the means because they involved struggle, but I do not like the ends, because they are for a world without struggle."
Nietzsche is saying that struggle is, in and of itself, good, regardless of what one is struggling for. But Utopian ideals such as Socialism, for a perfect and thus conflict free world, would not be a good thing if it were ever actually achieved.
I DON'T THINK THAT CONCEPT WOULD AREAL TO VERY MANY PEOPLE ON EITHER THE RIGHT OR THE LEFT.
Nice
Interesting reply to a brooding ever present question. Much food for thaught with no final answer.
I have a lot of respect for Nietzsche but this idea of just dip out of society and go colonize some far away isolated land in South America,while some Chinese migrants will come to replace you,is stupid and ironically utopian,it is now in the modern world and was back then in the 19th century,when he wrote it.
You don’t get it
Ive listen to alot if videos on Nietzsche, for some reason Ive listened to yours the most.... it's interesting that when Nietzsche got rid of God and religion, he needs to find another to take it's place.😮
Tulip mania
Ask this! What is your truest desire? What extreme actions are you willing to take for it. Aim there I say. Heaven must be torn, by you from the heavens.
I must disagree with nietzsche that society cannot exist in a free state. Like with actual socialism and not soviet state capitalism. There would be no reason to force people into certain roles for long term projects. With modern technology even great feats of engineering simply require the capital (there are also issues with the environment but those can usually be hashed out.) Of course one might say that the will to power is fulfilled by government politics, but there is no reason term limits couldn't make career politicians impossible (not that this WOULD be the case, just that it could hypothetically be the case.)
I also think that a will for the common good could very easily be made manifest by community efforts, rebuilding local infrastructure, planting community gardens etc. instead of "the party" or "great leaders" like lenin or stalin. I think their construction and maintenance would be sufficient. People can sacrifice for their local community, instead of grand national projects, but those aren't mutually exclusive either.
in any society where local sacrifice is honored there becomes a social normality which reduces ones free will to be themself
@@ethanschaefer1906 Nietzsche himself was in favor of meritocratic hierarchy, even in the political realm. But that would necessarily come with honor so it would be a social norm to try to climb the ladder, which would also reduce free will. Social norms are going to exist regardless.
I mean we could get rid of the irrelevant ones like gender, but Nietzsche was still in favor of rather substantial social rigidity. He liked people only having one job for life, said civilization needed people to be firm like rocks. I would say the modern condition was too rigid and the postmodern condition is too porous. My point, however, is that if social norms are going to exist either way it is just a matter of determining which fields should be meritocratic and which should be democratic.
I don't think he was against all types of social norms I think he was just very meritocratic. He also thought a socialist system would be stagnant but that is a different conversation.
Can’t see any good reason for “socialism”.
u Can’t see any good reason.
@@nescius2 yep. & anyone who does is a parasite
Nietzsche was of a proto- "third position".
Did you watch the video on 100x speed, or?
@@Mifiboi No, just commenting on that fact Nietzsche comments on both systems and the synthesis of future ideologies. The proponents of fascism, not fitting in our traditional political spectrum, were really into Nietzsche's critiques of both ideas... among other things Nietzsche wrote.
@@gamingandgunpla The critique of fascism is up next.
@@untimelyreflections That would be fascinating. Not that this isn't! Great work!
Another one! It's hard to keep up!!! :)
Capitalism lifts most people out of poverty, don't think Nietzsche understood the value of competition from what I read, similar to Marx who didn't understand competition. Marx was a revolutionary person, Nietzsche was similar in a different way.😊
National Socialism is the Right Hand of The Left.
- James Lindsay
Shit, I get it: Nietzsche was a woman. Right, Nietzsche, your cultural relativism may serve to bring back those big strong bronze age Hellenistic motorcycle men who were okay with pederasty, any one of whom may have been the one? Eh? Eh? This feeling was forbidden and a Christian family-centered lifestyle favored in your time. He was gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that (except if you're trying to reshape general morality)! That explains the combination of clear intelligence with rank perspectival relativism AND an attempt at creating, single handedly, a new morality. He was gay! His "philosophy" is about what he's attracted to, which explains the aporia of relativism and clear preference for whatever does not happen to be his particular situation (not even time, sucker).
That the contingency of human understanding should be first articulated (for our time) by a gay man is a triumph for the gay community. But it also explains the biases of the thinker, which is not so good.
Trying to emulate what you aspire is not gay. The commenter may not be gay, but sure does live in a society which think admiring other men's strength equals getting penetrated by them. Admiring Herculian strength, but in physical and mental sense, trying to present that there was something unique about Greece was what he was doing. And the lustfull degeneracy equates its for getting penetrated.
😂 thats not what gay means i thought he was an incel
You're insane.