Christopher Hitchens describes the issue of class inequality in the United Kingdom on CSPAN in 1987. Issues of inequality in the UK are now worse than ever.
@@popefrancis1629 wahey an overly long discussion about the most unimportant points Hitchens has made where they smoke weed half way through. Hooray for that...
Polemicist extraordinaire. Hitch could with ease reach back centuries to bolster his case. He was so well spoken and well grounded that he could take nearly any side of any issue and make a case so compelling as to part waters.
@@arriuscalpurniuspiso He was a true heavyweight ..Amazing guy ,,Didnt agree with everything he said ,but I,m a big fan ..I would hate being the victim in a debate against him . Cannon fodder..
Yup. If, when I had cable, I'd have known about Hitchens as I do now, I'd have always been on C-SPAN looking for him, and only flipping away to another channel if I didn't see him.
The death of this lion truly marked the end of an era - the man is irreplaceable Just as he could roar, he could recite poetry that could melt most jaded of hearts: th-cam.com/video/ABsd5WssVS0/w-d-xo.html
@@lol9334 The same problems remain today, 50 years of trickle down economics has not worked. The millennials are a lot poorer then many previous generations before them. Higher GDP, wages stagnant...it's a bad deal overall. People are still getting screwed by the system.
Not entirely true. His views on things did change after 9/11. He was much more hawkish. He would always say he wasn't a socialist anymore but still fancied himself a Marxist (his words not mine). He was still very much a socialist in this clip, which is always great to see.
Young Hitchens...He always looked good but I liked him better in his 50s and up till the end. His voice stayed the same though. I would always recognize his voice.
They really allowed a good amt of time for the caller and Hitchens to express their thoughts. It's nice the host didn't insist they keep it to a sentence or two.
@@jonathanrivlin6248 No not longer attention spans, just more time for content and less time for commercials. Now every second spent talking is seconds spent not collecting $$$
@Antediluvian Atheist In the next US election a Democrat candidate was criticised by the US media for copying the same speech word for word, the same problems are worldwide.
Because, until the introduction of improved education, life chances and free university grants, all of which Labour introduced, University was inaccessible to the vast majority of Britons due to the sheer cost involved. My dad, for example, was the first person in his family to go to Uni from his family. We so easily forget how much Labour, and social welfare, gave us, that now we're blithely letting the Tories take it all away, because they think only rich people should be afforded any opportunities in life.
Hitchens, as ever, succinctly outlining his argument in a few sentences - in this case, how Thatcher turned the so-called post-war consensus on its head. Wish we still had him with us.
@@Charlesputnam-bn9zy Using words that sound like they should go together to cover up the fact that you have no idea what you're talking about. I don't care who says otherwise, "landscape paint" is not a verb, and "of void his words" makes zero sense in this sentence.
Fascinating as always to listen to Hitchens. He had a sense of humour and was quite funny at times which I like him. It always makes me want to listen to someone when they can make me laugh as well.
In the UK, you are born into power and money and groomed to the top. I say that knowledge is power, always has been and the elite have hoarded it for centuries. The only exception is the internet, which has made the proliferation of knowledge and information availible to many who would have never had a chance to access it, were it not invented.
How do you explain that the education act of 1840 in the UK stipulated that every child has a right to an education...knowledge hasn't been hoarded....its the raquetring that's the problem
@@dancespav Regardless class is a huge thing in the U.K., worse than before. Inequality had massively increased as well. Only difference now is the middle class dress like tramped and like to act working class out of their own insecurities for being rich.
@@KingKhan20000 Class is Fluid and defined by those who haven't got what someone else has. My ol man is working Class but is classier than many so called Upper Class and with more money because as the name stipulates he 'works' up the Class system. The problem is that I may have delusions of granduer being next generation from a successful working class parent. Not forgetting that of people with money are from the baby boom era where a house for 30k is now 600k so there are more deluded working Class people than there are upper class. What is wrong with Ineqaulity? Everyone starts off with a plot of land the same size and grow the same crop. So we are equal to begin with. My land happens to be more fertile than yours. I have more carrots than you to take to the market. And now you complain about inequality when we started off the same. Bonkers And Regardless of what I said, you don't have a cohesive response to.the what I asked. You dismissed that the Upper Class have offered the same education to everyone and that lower classes, with access to this, may not be as clever or maybe just can't be arsed. Education is key and education is free as well as classless
@@dancespav My mother, born in 1920, had to leave school at the age of 14. Compulsory education in the UK ended at the age of 15 up until around 1970. Many secondary modern school pupils left at that age with no formal qualifications.
The person asked a good question: why is there no better alternative. The answer, of course, is Georgism. A system of private capital and enterprise in which we compensate society for our externalities, especially that of denying other people access to good land we hold for our exclusive use.
@@KeithKnightDontTreadonAnyone I think it's hard to justify the idea that the state has the authority to collect rent in any absolute sense. But I think it's pretty evident that the state should have the authority to collect ground rents **to the extent the state is authorized to enforce the landowner's right to exclusive use of the land.**
No there’s no good ideas because our so called intellectuals are useless. Low intelligence cretins who got to where they were because of their privilege and being good at being told what to do.
It's a shame that most people waste their time tuning in to the punditry on corporate cable news networks. I once saw Hitchens on Fox talking to Hannity but Hannity was a complete ass interrupting Hitchens constantly, trying to prevent him from speaking some truth to their brainwashed viewers. I'm grateful for C-Span that provides a platform for intelligent conversation.
We really only have about 70 year sample size of capitalism vs. socialism. Before that the global economy was mostly a colonial/monarchist economy. In fact it's very hard to find any examples in world history of pure capitalism or pure socialism. Generally most national economies are hybrid economies.
Just look at the miracle of chile, the best example of pure capitalism in the world (under a dictatorship no less). The notion that you always have to meet people in the middle is bullshit. Capitalism works. Period. Socialism exists purely because of human greed and laziness.
Moses king. The dictatorship you believe worked was a US backed coup of the democratically elected leader, Allende. That was exactly what has just happened in Bolivia in 2019/2020
@@dunny61a That's a completely separate issue. The question is: does capitalism work better than socialist/hybrid economies? The answer is yes. Chile, during the 80's, was the wealthiest country in Latin America, surpassing all the other socialist/hybrid countries. If you want to debate the US foreign policy of the last 50 years, that is a separate issue.
The bags under his eyes have grandchildren, poor Hitch. In my opinion, it's our duty to catalogue the labor of opinions formulated by truly original voices like this great guy. Many people subscribe to ideals espoused on Instagram, Twitter, etc from, in some cases, actual robots - muppets with no real voice because its EASY. These 'influencers' gain popularity by echoing nonsense these poor people already believe! They're not gaining followers as a result of acting bold and exposing their own ideas. They just say what the masses want and expect them to say; constructive, original ideas lead to disagreement/conflict which produces a compromised, more-accurate picture of whatever is being discussed. A machine that doesn't exist in social media fantasy land.
I find the caller's comment that there is no way to "find love" in a socialist system pretty fascinating. It makes me want to delve further (pardon me if he does, I paused at the end of his comment) and have him define love and how it is attained or realized in what I presume to be his idealistic economic model, capitalism. I always felt nearly the opposite. How can you understand the individual and their true desire in a partner if an economic system puts a constraint on who those potential partners may be? In a more equitable society I can imagine a woman not needing a wealthy man and thus widening her options for a potential lifelong companion. The opposite may also be viable as a man would no longer feel the burden of being the "bread winner" and supporting an entire family. Every individual would be freer to explore their own personal desires and needs in a partner. People of all different backgrounds would be able to find love from a much more diverse pool of people. That seems like a win for everyone...unless you are a filthy rich, repugnant asshole with no other means to find a mate than to have someone need your money and support. Of course, people looking for money in exchange for love would still be viable. It just would not be the status quo.
thatcher made serious long-lasting mistakes in selling off public housing and cutting taxes that then starved public services, I do not know if the miners had a viable argument about keeping all mines open but some could /might have been turned into Public(go'vt), labour, private owner partnerships, there were too many publicaly owned and mis-managed corporations but private entrpeneurs have stripped assets & relocated their capital to low-wage, no union environments, how is that better?
Britain has many more deep, long-term, structural deficiencies now because of her than existed when she took over. A very capable and intelligent individual but, like her fellow fenlander Cromwell blinded by her own sense of righteousness. Missing something as a human being, which was ultimately her downfall.
I think that, with regards to Christopher's last point in the video, he fails to consider the state of technological advancement as one of the primary reasons why many people in the past did not have tertiary education - compared to current times. We are now much more technologically advanced than we were after WW2 and as a result of that, in order to have the same wage a highschool graduate would have had in the 50s let's say, one now needs at least a bachelor's degree.. it is the competitive nature of society which raises the bar gradually.
I don’t think that’s true. Look at the efforts by the state to ensure people could and did receive a decent education which was either affordable, or at least cost effective. Sure, I think the demands of society will always direct the way in which people are educated to some extent. But I think if you look at the numbers, the biggest shift in numbers of people receiving a “higher” education will have happened once the state became involved.
It's also important to look at what that education now costs. University prices are incredibly high and the bank loans to afford it are borderline predatory. People continue to avoid or drop out of college because they can't afford it. Left unchecked and in the free market, higher education is just not an option for people. My cousin is a neuro scientist part of a team working to discover the cause for alzheimer's cure it. He delivers pizza on weekends because his student loans are so massive that he cannot afford to provide for his wife and child. Even with his wife working. This story is not unique. I believe the pursuit of higher education is more of a right and should be protected. No one should be too poor to get a higher education. But how can that happen when universities are run like a business. Sure we got over a technological hurdle but the same thing is happening. The lower class citizens are effectively being denied higher education simply because they were born poor. Sorry about pinging you 4 months later! I appreciated your point of view and wanted to respond with my own. Hope you're having a grand day.
2022 now and the Tories are still trying, in public at least, to bring about equality and failing badly... just as Thatcher did, the current effort is "levelling up" lots of slogans and a few half hearted policy ideas but little else.
Equality of opportunity is a must in any healthy democracy, and that's the point Hitchens is making. Glad he didn't try to make any case for equality of outcome, but I'm not sure he ever truly believed in that, anyway. I've watched countless hours of him on youtube and have yet to hear him make that assertion. In his early years, such as this seen here, I'm not sure he was truly a communist. His main concern seemed to be about access to opportunity, which -- as stated -- not only has tremendous utility in a democracy but it keeps things working and functioning. Distribution of wealth is still a problem, but it's not clear how to solve that one, and the 'power law distribution' theory seems to assert that it's an inevitability, not that we still shouldn't try to solve it.
Bucketheadhead Bc, of course, they’re anything but... actual, realized socialism is, in part, a radical realization of democracy, and an ending to the elite class’s stranglehold on democracy, which seemingly gets worse and worse every year. As far as the OP, it’s quite interesting to me... One could go on about this “equality of opportunity” vs “equality of outcome”, which I initially thought was a clever distinction when I first heard Jordan Peterson going on about it circa late 2016 or so, but then I sort of had an intellectual renaissance of sorts (I started actually reading and educating myself on political history, and the political and moral philosophy, basically from the Enlightenment onward, as opposed to taking certain public figures at their word), and ever since I’ve not really been able to put my finger on what this distinction even is outside of some completely theoretical thing that seems to primarily inhabit the minds of, well, conservatives who are not well educated at all on leftist politic history or philosophy. I’m not going to dive deeply into it, but I think some pretty interesting, problematizing points have been made, regarding this opportunity/outcome distinction (a little bit of a false dichotomy, really), and by some far more intelligent persons than myself, which I’d really recommend looking up to anyone who’s really convinced by this distinction, and the, frankly, extremely weak “arguments” that I typically hear from those who think this distinction is the difference between the leftist (outcome) and the liberal (opportunity). For the sake of brevity, I’ll just say that I know David Pakman has spoken to the absurdity of that distinction (.....), but for anyone who reads this and is really wanting more, I’ll be glad to at least point you in the right direction as far as what I think is good reading/viewing material for showing flaws in the logic, etc, of said distinction/dichotomy. As far as Hitch’s never being an actual socialist, or communist, for anyone who’s merely attempting to infer just what was the truth about Christopher’s politics by watching hours on end of video, I’d recommend reading Hitch’s actual books, essays/essay collections, and even some of his articles, bc you can get an actual idea based on what the man said on that very issue, instead of trying to infer it, which one could go on at length why that may be a bit of an issue (eg, maybe you’ll be contradicting what he actually said in print, also, there’s a lot of potential bias in watching videos that, for the most part, largely come from the last decade of his life, and then attempting to infer what his political beliefs “must have always been”, etc.. Hopefully, one needn’t elaborate on that, but if someone doesn’t understand the potential issue there, I can go on... My question is why does it actually matter so much to some folks for Christopher to have “never been a socialist”, or “have at least seen the light by the end of his life”, etc? I’ve seen so many comments regarding this issue(s), and I’m not trying to put anyone down or be overly critical, but oftentimes it just screams of something like religious ideology, and often times there’s a lot of projection coming from folks who really seem to just not want to accept that Christopher was primarily a leftist, and/or for most of his life identified as a socialist, and it seems really clear that this is coming from a place of being completely ignorant of what any of that implies, or what it “must imply”, etc... And look, I’ve spent my fair share of time trying to understand the full breadth and depth of the man’s politics, and especially spent time trying to understand his ideological shifts, and why some of it happened as it did, etc, so I’m not saying that’s an issue, and you are wasting time wading into that territory, but *I have tried to examine things as they actually were, as far as that can even be done,* and one has to be careful to not project onto a dead man what they want him to represent, or be his ideological foundation(s), etc. Also, I should add that much of my time spent on trying to understand these aspects of Hitch has been for the purposes of defending Hitch from folks who I know definitely do not understand him, particularly his last decade, whether they be from the right or left... The reality, however, no matter what we project onto a dead man or not, is that he was REALLY a socialist, as he repeatedly said in print, on television, and on other media. Hitch openly admitted to being a socialist up until around 2008 (give or take a year, I can’t remember the exact year), so even in that last decade, long after he was already being slandered as a neocon (for admittedly understandable reasons), he considered himself a socialist, and even up to his last year (and I’m assuming till the end), he admitted that Marxist dialectical materialism was the basis for his leaning to think critically about the world (or something to the same effect), and that while he might not have claimed the title of a Marxist any longer, he still largely thought in those terms (dialectical materialism), and likely always would. That’s not me inferring or projecting anything, I’m just recalling what the man actually said. If your conception of socialism and/or leftism is “opportunity of outcome” or any number of (weird and inaccurate) cultural signifiers that are attached to these things these days (eg, political correctness, postmodernist, etc), then I absolutely understand where the cognitive dissonance would be coming from, and why such a person might need to project so much, bc such conceptions of socialism/leftism are just completely removed from reality, and are some sort of boogie man, and my god, if I believed such a thing, I wouldn’t want figures I respect to have any association with such a thing either. Now, maybe I’m misunderstanding and/or misattributing some things here, as I’m now the one making inferences off of comments like the OP (and I’ve seen quite a lot of them), and trying to understand “why” people are using pretzel logic to disassociate Hitch from X, Y, Z (whatever one doesn’t like, but especially the left/socialism), but I think that I’m basically on the right path. I’m happy to dialogue with someone if they come from such a position, and think I’m totally confused as to “why”, etc, some people approach Hitch like this, and happy to hear folks out, but what I’m not interested in is an explanation as to why you think Hitch wasn’t a leftist and/or socialist, when I can just appeal to what he said during his own lifetime (again, if you’re unaware of this, you might want to read his work, or even listen on audiobook, if you prefer, bc it’s not something that’s up for debate, really). Cheers! ✌🏼❤️🏴♾
Lukav The main problem is uneducated people think socialism is the same as communism and that that is the same as thinking Marx had some good ideas. Socialism is nothing more or less than worker owned production, these enterprises exist all around the world, worker run enterprises they are called. Everybody gets paid the same wage in the company, everyone has an equal say and a vote in the company and any hierarchy is a group decision. Has absolutely nothing to do with not being able to make money or products. It’s a purely democratic business, not one guy who decides what you can and can’t do, when you can take a shit, how much each of you get paid and how much he deserves to skim off the top for having a good idea. Plus it has absolutely nothing to do with the state or government.
Always on the money this man. Now in 2017 we still have these thick toffs running our country into the ground. At least thatcher would never have let the UK leave the EU with sound reason.
The UK economy has grown faster than that of most other Western countries since 1987 and is enormously richer per capita (though it still hasn't caught up with the best of the others). London has become a major centre of capitalism and is celebrated for having recaptured the freewheeling spirit that made it great in the 18th century. This is substantially due to what the Thatcher government understood and did, but which Hitchens didn't understand. The inequality only grows though; here and elsewhere. It's not because of lack of opportunity. Poor immigrants with good cultural values routinely propel either themselves or their children into the well off "class".
If you strip out asset inflation (mostly rising house prices - which is funded by speculative borrowing - not greater productivity), and cash windfalls from selling off public assets, UK GDP has in fact been pretty much flat since 1980. In fact if you take it region by region, the whole of the UK with the exception of London and the South East, has been in recession since 1980. In many ways the last 10 years has been worse than the 1970s. We've seen the longest and most severe drop in living standards since the beginning of the 1800s. Inflation has been historically low -and while we've been programmed to think inflation is always bad, it isn't. Inflation hurts creditors, but is great news for people who owe money (i.e just about all of us) as it eats away the value of the debt. Inflation in the 1970s was fuelled by rising wages - we have now traded inflation for price stability - so while no one gets a pay rise any more, prices remain stable - except in the one key area that makes a difference in increasing the wealth of ordinary people - Assets - like shares and particularly in housing, which is now inflated beyond the reach of most ordinary working people.
Asset prices and cash from selling public assets aren't part of what's measured by GDP! No, the country outside of London and the South East has not been in recession since 1980 and no, we haven't seen a drop in living standards over the last 10 years, just no rise. No one thinks inflation is always bad. In Japan they've taken drastic measures to try and make it increase.
Christopher’s intellect is just incredible. I wish I had 1/10th of his ability to discuss. We as a society are dumber now and the left have killed debate.
I am a Yorkshireman, who Hitchen admitted to not liking but we’ll gloss over that fact, and his comment still resonates to this day. If you have a gruff northern accent you simply have no chance of making it to the top in Britain. The only occasional ones that do make are comedians and actors. Basically we are saying to kids, being brought up in north, that the only way to get respect is to become a figure of fun
Once again Hitch employs his powers of prescience at 3:10 Then, as now, tax welfare for the rich and corporate welfare for businesses does not result in greater investment. And why would it? why should the criticisms of the welfare state, that it provides a disincentive to work, not apply equally to any other sector that sucks off the government teat?
Hitchens was brilliant but he was hopeless with economics. Tax breaks aren't sucking off the government's teats. It's government getting out of the way. Subsidies though are an absolute bollocks. You're also misunderstanding your own point.
@@pauliewalnuts100: "Tax breaks aren't sucking off the government's teats. It's government getting out of the way." That's patent nonsense. Tax breaks are just a euphemism for subsidies.
@@musiclover9361 No, they aren't. Subsidies are money GIVEN, Tax breaks are money NOT TAKEN. This is first day of economics class stuff, but which is clearly utterly beyond your understanding yet you still feel qualified to pontificate on economic theory. Extraordinary arrogance.
Mike L So if I have an economy in year 2000, in which we have $2000 from taxes. Then let’s say I implement a tax where the wealthier citizens pay less and I collect $1985. What exactly is the difference between starting from year $2000, and instead of implementing that tax break, I decide to give (subsidise) $15 to help the poor to survive, in terms of overall budget?
My top button broke the other day at work and you'd think I was trying to molest everyone in the place based on the reactions I got....so much mans aping these days it seems like many ppl have nvr seen a real man with chest hair
As long as we stop the worship of the poor and the rich and the middle, and focus on the processing of materials from extraterrestrial resources...then everything will eventually work out. That's what I find depressing about all of this talk. The end goal is space, clearly pure selfish disgusting greed has aided in this, and cross governmental competition,. AND basic publically funded Research and construction.
eternity...where will you spend it......one of 2 places...Heaven or Hell......trust in Jesus and repent....you will be saved and can have the assurance of salvation
When people talk about self medicating as an excuse for drink and drugs .., I personally have been medicating for years but I call it getting pissed and off my trolley on drugs , lol
The problem with privatisation of public services was that it never went far enough. The assets were sold off to people who were controlled by government, both local and national levels, so there has never been any kind of genuine competition. An example is my local bus services. There are 2 bus companies in the city, one operates within the boundary city centre and the other in the suburbs. They basically fix whatever price they wish because it is agreed that they will not run the same routes. It’s a disgrace.
Holly Bennett Can you imagine the chaos of having 10 different bus providers though? Areas of public life which are natural monopolies or oligarchies should be in public hands. Don’t get me wrong, public ownership doesn’t lead to perfection or anywhere near it, but it’s better than allowing avaricious scoundrels to fleece people.
No, the problem is things went too far. US healthcare should be among the most efficient in the world and should not leave anyone out. It is efficient, in extracting huge amounts of money out of the pockets of ordinary people. Why would an efficient system need to invent pre-existing conditions? Because money triumphs people, and the grabbing hands and their greed never have enough. As Hitchens said later in life, greed is not something that should be further encouraged.
@@Hirnlego999 US healthcare WOULD be the world's most efficient if it were truly capitalist. However, it is not. Insurance companies cannot compete across state lines, massive amounts of regulations including the Obamacare regulations are still in place, with limits on immigrant doctors and no foreign drugs due to the FDA. There is no free market in healthcare so your logic doesn't work.
@@mosesking2923 It is the most efficient system in sucking out capital out of the people, the main goal of capitalists. In Sweden we see that Stockholm has privatized more, the result is that some costs have gone up some 100%. Insurance companies should not be part of the equation at all. In Japan you can't allow just about anyone own a hospital, because that is downright retarded. A capitalist system ignores people without money, if they do not have healthcare they will find answers through alternative medicine (which does not work), find their coping mechanism in drugs, crime and religion. Result? A failing society. But who gives a damn. Let everyone have guns, it's another business that benefits the sociopaths and psychopaths without any care for which direction the society is headed. The market doesn't want the government to buy medicine from aboard for cheaper, that would harm the shareholders interests, which is also as said not to pay for patients which cost too much. The goal is profits, it's not healthcare for all or a great society. A sick society benefits rich cunts.
In 1917, Russia was a backward feudal society with almost no industrialisation to speak of, while the Western powers were on the cusp of changing from advanced industrial societies to post-industrial societies. In just seventy years, Russia and the other USSR territories nearly caught up with the level of advancement that had taken Western Europe centuries to achieve because of its inefficient private-capitalist system. Now, the USSR did not have a socialist system, but a system of non-competitive state capitalism, and the difference in efficiency is astonishing. Imagine how much better it would have been if the workers really were in control instead of the corrupt elite of the central committee. This extremely ignorant caller (he is extremely ignorant, as are most people, because he cannot even tell the difference between socialism and state capitalism) is really saying, despite his poor choice of words, that state capitalism has nothing to offer and has never succeeded, when the facts show the opposite. Even non-competitive state capitalism is better than competition-based private capitalism, let alone true socialism. Therefore, the state-capitalist system of the USSR did not fail, but rather succeeded in making the USSR nearly the equal of Western powers in just seventy years. Has Western-styled capitalism succeeded? The divide between rich and poor is ever greater, the production of pointless, harmful or luxurious consummer goods keeps increasing, while the vehicles to respond to societal needs, such as free access to high-quality education, healthcare, etc keep being dismantled; working conditions keep deteriorating, the planet is ever more polluted, the list goes on and on. To succeed and to last are not the same thing. Capitalism is a gigantic failure for most of the human population, but it's a failure that has stayed in effect by force and coercion. The successful, albeit still immoral, system of the USSR lasted a much shorter time, but produced far better results. There is nothing worse than willful ignorance. Lastly, I'm not advocating anything remotely similar to the Soviet system, which, all in all, was still a system of capitalist exploitation of the working class, this time by state bureaucrats instead of private capitalists. We anarchists don't want vanguard parties to "emancipate" the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves. Long live libertarian communism!
@Deos I don't consider myself a communist in any way, but it's certainly not the only system that relies on force. That's what all governments have to do in order to maintain any form of civilization. Private property doesn't just protect itself, so it requires force to preserve as well. The incarceration rate of the United States and militarization of its police force in recent decades would seem to demonstrate that it's not exactly sunshine and rainbows in the haven of capitalism.
'I dare say' the British economy was already 'short of a few bob' before the depressed Orwellian 'Maggie's farm' of grit Britain became like "Four Legs Good‼️⁉️ Two Legs Better‼️
God's Messenger: This is what I do Feed the poor, send money, smile and be nice with people, fight for justice and tap into the subconcious of the rich, the racists, the mysogenous, the homophobes by telling them that if they don't smarten up they will go to Hell for a moment of eternal terror. And before I forget work at getting out of the way those that try to invalidate God's message of Love A: You call that love ?GM: Trying to get food for the hungry and prevent haters from spreading hate. And your telling me this is not love ? You're not playing with a full deck· A: Trying to save people from a hell that u can’t · GM: You miss the part Taping into their subconscious. A: Here the food but if u don’t believe in Jesus your going to hell thats love.Your better off not to help them GM: Who cares about Jesus. As long as the needy get what they need and haters stop hating.A: You are not God's Messenger. I feel sorry for u real I do.Am glad your not trying to help me out · GM: The message applies to you too. There is a lot of sufferance on this planet. But you are like the rich, like many in rich countries, disconnected and ruthless. A: U still need to prove there’s a god and a hell and u haven’t done that·. GM: It is in your subconscious now. · A: I will alway fight against people like you GM: That is way you will be scared out of your wits for what will seem like an eternity in Hell . Now you know
His transformation near the end of his life to a reactionary war apologist was pretty gross. But he was undeniably brilliant and contributed a lot to the intellectual sphere and probably the greatest polemicist of our generation. Youd have to be either really brave or really stupid to debate the Hitch in his prime, because hes read all the books on the topic, those for and against his position, and would find a weak spot on even the most solid of arguments. I'll always love him for that, and his contribution to secular thought critical of religious zealotry.
Hitch is so wrong about Thatcher it hurts. The FACT is that the UK before Thatcher was in terminal decline and the political CONSENSUS was the only way forward was managed decline with eventual integration into Europe. UK manufacturing was big but it was inefficient, CONTROLLED by the unions, produced products that were poor quality, outdated and over priced and that is why it failed.Thatchers economic reforms were so spectacularly successful that they were reproduced around the world. Hitch unfortunately was a socialist and socialists live inside their ideological bubble and cannot stray outside it as the whole pack of cards would come crashing down. Hitch was so right on many things but he was as most socialists are clueless about economics, business and how capitalism works
You won't see capitalists supporting pure capitalism, it would be a disaster. Instead you see capitalists in favor of the Chinese system because the people are controlled. US wages are largely stagnant for decades, this is quite heavily connected to anti-union rhetoric and politics. The general population is to become weaker and fight each other instead of demanding more when the productivity rises with their hard work. It's a sham from the rich, and the rich have never historically given a bloody damn about the rights and liberties of others. Btw, since unions are so damn weak in USA now, why does USA not for instance produce good cars? Certainly it should by now be at the top of pretty much everything. It's not, because it's a damn sham.
To flip that comment on its head, maybe he wasn't misguided? Maybe it was this same intelligence and education that guided him to this political view point.
Why was Einstein a socialist? Why was Orwell? Pure capitalism puts the power quite instantly in the hands of the few, we see it now in USA more and more as the power resides with the rich. College is becoming so expensive that some look for sugar daddies and produce webcam porn to have a chance to finance it. The general population dies younger, drug use is up, they work harder and borrow money to sustain a lifestyle. This cannot hold in the long run. And why do capitalists love China? Precisely because it controls the population to a high degree. Be productive, and do not demand a lot.
Typical of Hitchens dissing the Unions. And why are peoples lives 'squandered' if they work for a living? Maybe Hitchens squandered his life on being a gadfly and a drunk.
No they didn't. They funded the Labour Party that produced education and health for all. And by getting their own members higher wages, which by and large they deserved - they created more union dues and more money for the Labour Party. It's called the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx was in full agreement.
@@Bucketheadhead from the planet's perspective, animals are no lesser than humans. we're just animals with some advanced abilities. both were strong, charismatic leaders.
In the UK, you are born into power and money and groomed to the top. I say that knowledge is power, always has been and the elite have hoarded it for centuries. The only exception is the internet, which has made the proliferation of knowledge and information availible to many who would have never had a chance to access it, were it not invented.
So now, with internet's immense help, the earth is flat :) And I have seen so many data scientist wannabees who sign up on forums just to ask for easy help on their exam questions or ask "please sir, where can I find free dataset" instead of googling "free dataset" etc. But still, I agree with you. The state controlled TV had this educating role or at least ambition many years ago. And "the free word by local tv" was a british experiment with a mobile studio, painstakingly tried in the late 70's I think. Now everybody easily has their own echo chamber. Will the interwebs fail like tv did and turn into something Gibson-dystopic, "full of virus"? (Nah, forget that, let's stick to Hitchens, he IS the best edutainment! Cheers :)
intelligent ppl discussing in a civilised manner WITHOUT a click-bait title. LIKE!
I love the smile playing on his lips while listening to ppl. Even wen talking. It shows how comfortable he was in what he did.
Lizmol Antony grandmaster vs checkers :)
It shows that Hitchens is listening closely to the question.
The best of his generation
Wow. It is 2018 and Hitch is still drawing them in. He's still the man! He was and still is greatly loved.
He got the Iraq war wrong.
imagine a 3 hour Rogan podcast with Hitchens
@@popefrancis1629 That would be annoying as fuck - hearing Joe try to insert his half-baked opinions when the Hitch is doing his thing
@@popefrancis1629 wahey an overly long discussion about the most unimportant points Hitchens has made where they smoke weed half way through. Hooray for that...
@@ThatGingerCuntFromTerminator2 "...on the most consequential political issue of the last decade of his life, the bullshit got him." - The Economist -
Finding a Hitchens interview like this is like finding that unexpected five dollar bill in your pants lol
Sharath SH The entire CSPAN episode is somewhere on TH-cam. Let me know if you want a link to it and I’ll have a search for it.
@@Bucketheadhead nah, I'll find it myself. Thanks though.
Chad Bundy Disgusting. Grow up.
$100 bill**
@@chadbundy4156 wtf?
Polemicist extraordinaire. Hitch could with ease reach back centuries to bolster his case. He was so well spoken and well grounded that he could take nearly any side of any issue and make a case so compelling as to part waters.
The best of the last century. Still resonates today
@@arriuscalpurniuspiso He was a true heavyweight ..Amazing guy ,,Didnt agree with everything he said ,but I,m a big fan ..I would hate being the victim in a debate against him . Cannon fodder..
Mr. Hitchens must have made 500,000 appearances on C-SPAN.
Slightly exaggerated i think....though you may have watched them all and be 100% correct kind sir.😂🇬🇧
He has 101 appearances. They’re all in the span library
For which I'm grateful! I miss him dearly.
Yup. If, when I had cable, I'd have known about Hitchens as I do now, I'd have always been on C-SPAN looking for him, and only flipping away to another channel if I didn't see him.
Did he live next door to the studio or something?
What I would give to listen to the legend giving his view on 2019, we miss you Christopher.
I’m a simple man, I hear C.Hitch’s voice, and I click “like”.
Jay McDanieL not quite sure what you on about fella.
Never heard someone say that before.
@Jay McDanieL I'm a simple man. I just stabbed myself in the eye with a knitting needle.
Goddamn it i wish hitchens was alive today
I would kill to have his commentary on current media/news, current politics etc.
Who doesen't?
The death of this lion truly marked the end of an era - the man is irreplaceable
Just as he could roar, he could recite poetry that could melt most jaded of hearts:
th-cam.com/video/ABsd5WssVS0/w-d-xo.html
SJW hypersensitive cancel culture would just break down and claim his reason and facts were a form of mental abuse
One year on and I wonder what he would have made of things today.
Christopher never let society change him at all. Same person in 1987 as he was in 2011 despite some shifts in his views.
Fokko Hindriks that is not so great lol. If he has the evidence he can defend his views and that's okay, but if he doesn't he's just a fan.
@@lol9334 The same problems remain today, 50 years of trickle down economics has not worked. The millennials are a lot poorer then many previous generations before them.
Higher GDP, wages stagnant...it's a bad deal overall. People are still getting screwed by the system.
Not entirely true. His views on things did change after 9/11. He was much more hawkish. He would always say he wasn't a socialist anymore but still fancied himself a Marxist (his words not mine). He was still very much a socialist in this clip, which is always great to see.
So not the same person 🧐
Young Hitchens...He always looked good but I liked him better in his 50s and up till the end. His voice stayed the same though. I would always recognize his voice.
Atheist LeftComment . We all know. We all agree. One Hitch.
That incredible voice ..... Hitch we need you now ....
They really allowed a good amt of time for the caller and Hitchens to express their thoughts. It's nice the host didn't insist they keep it to a sentence or two.
Agreed. Good observation.
We had longer attention spans in the times before the infinite scroll.
@@jonathanrivlin6248 No not longer attention spans, just more time for content and less time for commercials. Now every second spent talking is seconds spent not collecting $$$
Seventy years is long enough. What an asinine statement; there's more literature on economics in the last 70 years than in the last 700.
70 years in 1987. More like 100 now.
Wow. That first caller actually did not sound like a moron or a lunatic, like every other caller on these shows.
He did
'Why am i the first generation of my family to go to university? Why is my wife?'
Good question.
@Antediluvian Atheist
In the next US election a Democrat candidate was criticised by the US media for copying the same speech word for word, the same problems are worldwide.
@@thomaswhittaker4137 yes. Joe Biden - it completely derailed his first run for the White House.
@@thomaswhittaker4137 US elections are a clown show.
What is the answer?
Because, until the introduction of improved education, life chances and free university grants, all of which Labour introduced, University was inaccessible to the vast majority of Britons due to the sheer cost involved. My dad, for example, was the first person in his family to go to Uni from his family.
We so easily forget how much Labour, and social welfare, gave us, that now we're blithely letting the Tories take it all away, because they think only rich people should be afforded any opportunities in life.
Hitchens, as ever, succinctly outlining his argument in a few sentences - in this case, how Thatcher turned the so-called post-war consensus on its head. Wish we still had him with us.
Love how when the caller he describes why he is against socialism he describes active capitalism
"active capitalism"...is this your joke?
The only man on Earth capable of making a mullet look "smart".
Damn good looking man.
Hitchens had an ineffable sexual charisma.
@@lavillablanca He knew it! Lol
The Hitch voice pitch was undergoing natural selection.
hypergrooming his appearance in order to landscape paint the blahblahblah of void his words.
@@Charlesputnam-bn9zy
Using words that sound like they should go together to cover up the fact that you have no idea what you're talking about.
I don't care who says otherwise, "landscape paint" is not a verb, and "of void his words" makes zero sense in this sentence.
However, I still thank you, because the irony is thick and sweet.
Fascinating as always to listen to Hitchens. He had a sense of humour and was quite funny at times which I like him. It always makes me want to listen to someone when they can make me laugh as well.
In the UK, you are born into power and money and groomed to the top. I
say that knowledge is power, always has been and the elite have hoarded
it for centuries. The only exception is the internet, which has made the proliferation of knowledge and information availible to many who would have never had a chance to access it, were it not invented.
How do you explain that the education act of 1840 in the UK stipulated that every child has a right to an education...knowledge hasn't been hoarded....its the raquetring that's the problem
@@dancespav Regardless class is a huge thing in the U.K., worse than before. Inequality had massively increased as well. Only difference now is the middle class dress like tramped and like to act working class out of their own insecurities for being rich.
@@KingKhan20000 Class is Fluid and defined by those who haven't got what someone else has. My ol man is working Class but is classier than many so called Upper Class and with more money because as the name stipulates he 'works' up the Class system. The problem is that I may have delusions of granduer being next generation from a successful working class parent. Not forgetting that of people with money are from the baby boom era where a house for 30k is now 600k so there are more deluded working Class people than there are upper class.
What is wrong with Ineqaulity? Everyone starts off with a plot of land the same size and grow the same crop. So we are equal to begin with. My land happens to be more fertile than yours. I have more carrots than you to take to the market. And now you complain about inequality when we started off the same. Bonkers
And Regardless of what I said, you don't have a cohesive response to.the what I asked. You dismissed that the Upper Class have offered the same education to everyone and that lower classes, with access to this, may not be as clever or maybe just can't be arsed. Education is key and education is free as well as classless
@@dancespav My mother, born in 1920, had to leave school at the age of 14. Compulsory education in the UK ended at the age of 15 up until around 1970. Many secondary modern school pupils left at that age with no formal qualifications.
old TV was just brilliant
It is 2022 and Hitchens is still relevant
His work is going to be relevant and interesting for generations, like any great writer / intellectual is :)
He is alot more likeable than his snooty brother, Peter.
Snootier.
His brother is detestable
His square boring brother who has never been invited to a party 😂
@James Richards Peter has an annoying whistle when he talks....
His brother is pretty smart, just is awkward.
So what was the question? I fell asleep during it being asked🥱
Moronic babbling by the caller. Inarticulate
I'd like to congratulate Jim for his casting as Napoleon in the live action version of Animal Farm.
Jesus, this phone caller is a well-spoken McCarthist...
His voice is so calming, he sounds right even when he’s wrong.
Amy Lorenzo Right? I like to listen to "God Is Not Great" with his real voice before I go to sleep, it calms me down.
The person asked a good question: why is there no better alternative.
The answer, of course, is Georgism. A system of private capital and enterprise in which we compensate society for our externalities, especially that of denying other people access to good land we hold for our exclusive use.
William Navarre The Georgist has yet to justify why the state has rights to tax that no other organization does.
@@KeithKnightDontTreadonAnyone I think it's hard to justify the idea that the state has the authority to collect rent in any absolute sense.
But I think it's pretty evident that the state should have the authority to collect ground rents **to the extent the state is authorized to enforce the landowner's right to exclusive use of the land.**
@@williamnavarre8169 Why is it hard to justify? State builds roads, schools, hospitals, that's a pretty easy justification
@@taurtue It is literally the cost of civilization
No there’s no good ideas because our so called intellectuals are useless. Low intelligence cretins who got to where they were because of their privilege and being good at being told what to do.
It's a shame that most people waste their time tuning in to the punditry on corporate cable news networks. I once saw Hitchens on Fox talking to Hannity but Hannity was a complete ass interrupting Hitchens constantly, trying to prevent him from speaking some truth to their brainwashed viewers. I'm grateful for C-Span that provides a platform for intelligent conversation.
Christopher Hitchens didn't sleep........he would wait and watch and listen and read. And maybe have a drink n smoke or 2. Love the man still.❤👍🇬🇧
We really only have about 70 year sample size of capitalism vs. socialism. Before that the global economy was mostly a colonial/monarchist economy. In fact it's very hard to find any examples in world history of pure capitalism or pure socialism. Generally most national economies are hybrid economies.
Absolute sense 👆
Just look at the miracle of chile, the best example of pure capitalism in the world (under a dictatorship no less). The notion that you always have to meet people in the middle is bullshit. Capitalism works. Period. Socialism exists purely because of human greed and laziness.
Moses King you try to defend capitalism and Chile is your example? The people of child are rioting because conditions are getting so bad.
Moses king. The dictatorship you believe worked was a US backed coup of the democratically elected leader, Allende. That was exactly what has just happened in Bolivia in 2019/2020
@@dunny61a That's a completely separate issue. The question is: does capitalism work better than socialist/hybrid economies? The answer is yes. Chile, during the 80's, was the wealthiest country in Latin America, surpassing all the other socialist/hybrid countries. If you want to debate the US foreign policy of the last 50 years, that is a separate issue.
What an intellectual brain. Much missed.
The bags under his eyes have grandchildren, poor Hitch.
In my opinion, it's our duty to catalogue the labor of opinions formulated by truly original voices like this great guy. Many people subscribe to ideals espoused on Instagram, Twitter, etc from, in some cases, actual robots - muppets with no real voice because its EASY. These 'influencers' gain popularity by echoing nonsense these poor people already believe! They're not gaining followers as a result of acting bold and exposing their own ideas. They just say what the masses want and expect them to say; constructive, original ideas lead to disagreement/conflict which produces a compromised, more-accurate picture of whatever is being discussed. A machine that doesn't exist in social media fantasy land.
I find the caller's comment that there is no way to "find love" in a socialist system pretty fascinating. It makes me want to delve further (pardon me if he does, I paused at the end of his comment) and have him define love and how it is attained or realized in what I presume to be his idealistic economic model, capitalism. I always felt nearly the opposite. How can you understand the individual and their true desire in a partner if an economic system puts a constraint on who those potential partners may be? In a more equitable society I can imagine a woman not needing a wealthy man and thus widening her options for a potential lifelong companion. The opposite may also be viable as a man would no longer feel the burden of being the "bread winner" and supporting an entire family. Every individual would be freer to explore their own personal desires and needs in a partner. People of all different backgrounds would be able to find love from a much more diverse pool of people. That seems like a win for everyone...unless you are a filthy rich, repugnant asshole with no other means to find a mate than to have someone need your money and support. Of course, people looking for money in exchange for love would still be viable. It just would not be the status quo.
Guy on the phone sounds like Kubrick.
July 2020
What a beautiful young man
His intelligence is so damned attractive. Ugh. ..lol
Good looking, orotund, and fitted with an English accent too.
I'm told he was a lousy lay though. You can no doubt deduce why.
@@trollop_7 oh now I need to know where you heard that. Lol
thatcher made serious long-lasting mistakes in selling off public housing and cutting taxes that then starved public services, I do not know if the miners had a viable argument about keeping all mines open but some could /might have been turned into Public(go'vt), labour, private owner partnerships, there were too many publicaly owned and mis-managed corporations but private entrpeneurs have stripped assets & relocated their capital to low-wage, no union environments, how is that better?
Britain has many more deep, long-term, structural deficiencies now because of her than existed when she took over. A very capable and intelligent individual but, like her fellow fenlander Cromwell blinded by her own sense of righteousness. Missing something as a human being, which was ultimately her downfall.
@@GreenMorningDragonProductions Yeah because Britain was going so well before Thatcher came along.
Nice clip from the larger show, isn't funny how the smarter questions often lack a question itself?
What would do if he was here to see Donald Trump actually won the Presidency and this coronavirus pandemic I can’t imagine what he would be thinking
Boy those callers are just as unhinged as those we have today.
I think that, with regards to Christopher's last point in the video, he fails to consider the state of technological advancement as one of the primary reasons why many people in the past did not have tertiary education - compared to current times. We are now much more technologically advanced than we were after WW2 and as a result of that, in order to have the same wage a highschool graduate would have had in the 50s let's say, one now needs at least a bachelor's degree.. it is the competitive nature of society which raises the bar gradually.
I don’t think that’s true. Look at the efforts by the state to ensure people could and did receive a decent education which was either affordable, or at least cost effective. Sure, I think the demands of society will always direct the way in which people are educated to some extent. But I think if you look at the numbers, the biggest shift in numbers of people receiving a “higher” education will have happened once the state became involved.
It's also important to look at what that education now costs. University prices are incredibly high and the bank loans to afford it are borderline predatory. People continue to avoid or drop out of college because they can't afford it. Left unchecked and in the free market, higher education is just not an option for people. My cousin is a neuro scientist part of a team working to discover the cause for alzheimer's cure it. He delivers pizza on weekends because his student loans are so massive that he cannot afford to provide for his wife and child. Even with his wife working. This story is not unique. I believe the pursuit of higher education is more of a right and should be protected. No one should be too poor to get a higher education. But how can that happen when universities are run like a business. Sure we got over a technological hurdle but the same thing is happening. The lower class citizens are effectively being denied higher education simply because they were born poor. Sorry about pinging you 4 months later! I appreciated your point of view and wanted to respond with my own. Hope you're having a grand day.
2022 now and the Tories are still trying, in public at least, to bring about equality and failing badly... just as Thatcher did, the current effort is "levelling up" lots of slogans and a few half hearted policy ideas but little else.
Equality of opportunity is a must in any healthy democracy, and that's the point Hitchens is making. Glad he didn't try to make any case for equality of outcome, but I'm not sure he ever truly believed in that, anyway. I've watched countless hours of him on youtube and have yet to hear him make that assertion. In his early years, such as this seen here, I'm not sure he was truly a communist. His main concern seemed to be about access to opportunity, which -- as stated -- not only has tremendous utility in a democracy but it keeps things working and functioning. Distribution of wealth is still a problem, but it's not clear how to solve that one, and the 'power law distribution' theory seems to assert that it's an inevitability, not that we still shouldn't try to solve it.
I don’t think he saw socialism and democracy as opposing ideas.
Bucketheadhead Bc, of course, they’re anything but... actual, realized socialism is, in part, a radical realization of democracy, and an ending to the elite class’s stranglehold on democracy, which seemingly gets worse and worse every year.
As far as the OP, it’s quite interesting to me... One could go on about this “equality of opportunity” vs “equality of outcome”, which I initially thought was a clever distinction when I first heard Jordan Peterson going on about it circa late 2016 or so, but then I sort of had an intellectual renaissance of sorts (I started actually reading and educating myself on political history, and the political and moral philosophy, basically from the Enlightenment onward, as opposed to taking certain public figures at their word), and ever since I’ve not really been able to put my finger on what this distinction even is outside of some completely theoretical thing that seems to primarily inhabit the minds of, well, conservatives who are not well educated at all on leftist politic history or philosophy. I’m not going to dive deeply into it, but I think some pretty interesting, problematizing points have been made, regarding this opportunity/outcome distinction (a little bit of a false dichotomy, really), and by some far more intelligent persons than myself, which I’d really recommend looking up to anyone who’s really convinced by this distinction, and the, frankly, extremely weak “arguments” that I typically hear from those who think this distinction is the difference between the leftist (outcome) and the liberal (opportunity). For the sake of brevity, I’ll just say that I know David Pakman has spoken to the absurdity of that distinction (.....), but for anyone who reads this and is really wanting more, I’ll be glad to at least point you in the right direction as far as what I think is good reading/viewing material for showing flaws in the logic, etc, of said distinction/dichotomy.
As far as Hitch’s never being an actual socialist, or communist, for anyone who’s merely attempting to infer just what was the truth about Christopher’s politics by watching hours on end of video, I’d recommend reading Hitch’s actual books, essays/essay collections, and even some of his articles, bc you can get an actual idea based on what the man said on that very issue, instead of trying to infer it, which one could go on at length why that may be a bit of an issue (eg, maybe you’ll be contradicting what he actually said in print, also, there’s a lot of potential bias in watching videos that, for the most part, largely come from the last decade of his life, and then attempting to infer what his political beliefs “must have always been”, etc.. Hopefully, one needn’t elaborate on that, but if someone doesn’t understand the potential issue there, I can go on...
My question is why does it actually matter so much to some folks for Christopher to have “never been a socialist”, or “have at least seen the light by the end of his life”, etc? I’ve seen so many comments regarding this issue(s), and I’m not trying to put anyone down or be overly critical, but oftentimes it just screams of something like religious ideology, and often times there’s a lot of projection coming from folks who really seem to just not want to accept that Christopher was primarily a leftist, and/or for most of his life identified as a socialist, and it seems really clear that this is coming from a place of being completely ignorant of what any of that implies, or what it “must imply”, etc... And look, I’ve spent my fair share of time trying to understand the full breadth and depth of the man’s politics, and especially spent time trying to understand his ideological shifts, and why some of it happened as it did, etc, so I’m not saying that’s an issue, and you are wasting time wading into that territory, but *I have tried to examine things as they actually were, as far as that can even be done,* and one has to be careful to not project onto a dead man what they want him to represent, or be his ideological foundation(s), etc. Also, I should add that much of my time spent on trying to understand these aspects of Hitch has been for the purposes of defending Hitch from folks who I know definitely do not understand him, particularly his last decade, whether they be from the right or left...
The reality, however, no matter what we project onto a dead man or not, is that he was REALLY a socialist, as he repeatedly said in print, on television, and on other media. Hitch openly admitted to being a socialist up until around 2008 (give or take a year, I can’t remember the exact year), so even in that last decade, long after he was already being slandered as a neocon (for admittedly understandable reasons), he considered himself a socialist, and even up to his last year (and I’m assuming till the end), he admitted that Marxist dialectical materialism was the basis for his leaning to think critically about the world (or something to the same effect), and that while he might not have claimed the title of a Marxist any longer, he still largely thought in those terms (dialectical materialism), and likely always would. That’s not me inferring or projecting anything, I’m just recalling what the man actually said.
If your conception of socialism and/or leftism is “opportunity of outcome” or any number of (weird and inaccurate) cultural signifiers that are attached to these things these days (eg, political correctness, postmodernist, etc), then I absolutely understand where the cognitive dissonance would be coming from, and why such a person might need to project so much, bc such conceptions of socialism/leftism are just completely removed from reality, and are some sort of boogie man, and my god, if I believed such a thing, I wouldn’t want figures I respect to have any association with such a thing either. Now, maybe I’m misunderstanding and/or misattributing some things here, as I’m now the one making inferences off of comments like the OP (and I’ve seen quite a lot of them), and trying to understand “why” people are using pretzel logic to disassociate Hitch from X, Y, Z (whatever one doesn’t like, but especially the left/socialism), but I think that I’m basically on the right path. I’m happy to dialogue with someone if they come from such a position, and think I’m totally confused as to “why”, etc, some people approach Hitch like this, and happy to hear folks out, but what I’m not interested in is an explanation as to why you think Hitch wasn’t a leftist and/or socialist, when I can just appeal to what he said during his own lifetime (again, if you’re unaware of this, you might want to read his work, or even listen on audiobook, if you prefer, bc it’s not something that’s up for debate, really).
Cheers! ✌🏼❤️🏴♾
Lukav The main problem is uneducated people think socialism is the same as communism and that that is the same as thinking Marx had some good ideas. Socialism is nothing more or less than worker owned production, these enterprises exist all around the world, worker run enterprises they are called. Everybody gets paid the same wage in the company, everyone has an equal say and a vote in the company and any hierarchy is a group decision. Has absolutely nothing to do with not being able to make money or products. It’s a purely democratic business, not one guy who decides what you can and can’t do, when you can take a shit, how much each of you get paid and how much he deserves to skim off the top for having a good idea. Plus it has absolutely nothing to do with the state or government.
Communism has nothing to do with equality of outcome. No idea where people get this idea from.
I would have asked you about the reasoning behind your invocation of a theory of “equality of outcome”, but @NikolaDemetri got there before me!
Christopher Hitchens back when there was something to punch up about. When activists had something to get angry about.
Hitchens is a very attractive man, both physically and intellectually
Always on the money this man. Now in 2017 we still have these thick toffs running our country into the ground. At least thatcher would never have let the UK leave the EU with sound reason.
karim Tabrizi she was a dog,she said there is no such thing as community.p.s.best friend with saville.
The UK economy has grown faster than that of most other Western countries since 1987 and is enormously richer per capita (though it still hasn't caught up with the best of the others). London has become a major centre of capitalism and is celebrated for having recaptured the freewheeling spirit that made it great in the 18th century. This is substantially due to what the Thatcher government understood and did, but which Hitchens didn't understand. The inequality only grows though; here and elsewhere. It's not because of lack of opportunity. Poor immigrants with good cultural values routinely propel either themselves or their children into the well off "class".
If you strip out asset inflation (mostly rising house prices - which is funded by speculative borrowing - not greater productivity), and cash windfalls from selling off public assets, UK GDP has in fact been pretty much flat since 1980.
In fact if you take it region by region, the whole of the UK with the exception of London and the South East, has been in recession since 1980.
In many ways the last 10 years has been worse than the 1970s.
We've seen the longest and most severe drop in living standards since the beginning of the 1800s.
Inflation has been historically low -and while we've been programmed to think inflation is always bad, it isn't.
Inflation hurts creditors, but is great news for people who owe money (i.e just about all of us) as it eats away the value of the debt.
Inflation in the 1970s was fuelled by rising wages - we have now traded inflation for price stability - so while no one gets a pay rise any more, prices remain stable - except in the one key area that makes a difference in increasing the wealth of ordinary people - Assets - like shares and particularly in housing, which is now inflated beyond the reach of most ordinary working people.
Asset prices and cash from selling public assets aren't part of what's measured by GDP! No, the country outside of London and the South East has not been in recession since 1980 and no, we haven't seen a drop in living standards over the last 10 years, just no rise. No one thinks inflation is always bad. In Japan they've taken drastic measures to try and make it increase.
2020 and fuck all has changed
True, sad
good to see a Buckethead fan who also likes hitch
Likewise! Pleasure
@@Bucketheadhead thank you my g
Hitch is younger than I am now in this video...
SierraSierraFoxtrot What a revelation.
Sean ...Twelve likes. Less likes than i am old.
New kind of economic system? Geonomics.
What's geonomics?
If the system "worked" the rich wouldn't get richer.
What an erudite, classy intellectual presence!
Christopher Hitchens : ALL MAN. WOOF. RIP
Christopher’s intellect is just incredible. I wish I had 1/10th of his ability to discuss. We as a society are dumber now and the left have killed debate.
Congratulations; your comment here is part of the problem; not the solution.
"Killed" how?
Love it but look at Hitch...the alcohol taking over. Still one of the brightest minds ever.❤️
Hitch……😂
"Maggie what have you done?"- Roger Waters.
The best
I am a Yorkshireman, who Hitchen admitted to not liking but we’ll gloss over that fact, and his comment still resonates to this day. If you have a gruff northern accent you simply have no chance of making it to the top in Britain. The only occasional ones that do make are comedians and actors. Basically we are saying to kids, being brought up in north, that the only way to get respect is to become a figure of fun
David French I think you’re right. Out of interest, when did you meet Hitchens?
So a southern accent then.
The Southern Dictatorship strikes again
It’s mostly class. Same here in south. Except middle class nowadays dress like tramps and pretend to be poor.
How the fuck did he go on to champion the Iraq War?
Once again Hitch employs his powers of prescience at 3:10
Then, as now, tax welfare for the rich and corporate welfare for businesses does not result in greater investment.
And why would it? why should the criticisms of the welfare state, that it provides a disincentive to work, not apply equally to any other sector that sucks off the government teat?
Hitchens was brilliant but he was hopeless with economics. Tax breaks aren't sucking off the government's teats. It's government getting out of the way. Subsidies though are an absolute bollocks. You're also misunderstanding your own point.
@@pauliewalnuts100: "Tax breaks aren't sucking off the government's teats. It's government getting out of the way."
That's patent nonsense. Tax breaks are just a euphemism for subsidies.
@@musiclover9361 No, they aren't. Subsidies are money GIVEN, Tax breaks are money NOT TAKEN. This is first day of economics class stuff, but which is clearly utterly beyond your understanding yet you still feel qualified to pontificate on economic theory. Extraordinary arrogance.
Mike L, my goodness! What an object lesson in equivocation you just delivered!
Mike L
So if I have an economy in year 2000, in which we have $2000 from taxes.
Then let’s say I implement a tax where the wealthier citizens pay less and I collect $1985.
What exactly is the difference between starting from year $2000, and instead of implementing that tax break, I decide to give (subsidise) $15 to help the poor to survive, in terms of overall budget?
Thatcher=Dame Hilda Trenchfoot.
Damn Chris was a good lookin’ young man.
He almost sounds posesed by his own voice
Sounds like Orson Welles
I just entered to watch this video because of the hairy chest, I wasn't disappointed.
My top button broke the other day at work and you'd think I was trying to molest everyone in the place based on the reactions I got....so much mans aping these days it seems like many ppl have nvr seen a real man with chest hair
Sergio.lol love it!!
I don't like it , but I cannot argue with this. Amen (for want of a better fraze lol )
As long as we stop the worship of the poor and the rich and the middle, and focus on the processing of materials from extraterrestrial resources...then everything will eventually work out.
That's what I find depressing about all of this talk. The end goal is space, clearly pure selfish disgusting greed has aided in this, and cross governmental competition,. AND basic publically funded Research and construction.
5:20 I wonder if Biden saw this live and ripped off Kinnock’s speech
eternity...where will you spend it......one of 2 places...Heaven or Hell......trust in Jesus and repent....you will be saved and can have the assurance of salvation
The Kinnock speech was the one Biden plagaris many years ago
I believe this was the fuckboi period of hitchen‘s life.....
I think Hitch's ability to attract the opposite sex was closer to real magic than the parlor tricks employed by fuckbois
He was a smoker oh yeah
Who is the other guy debating with Hitchens?
Jeremy Shearmur, I believe.
he's not even 40 here....
He looks totally hung over here too :)
He looks 35
I believe he was 38 here.
When people talk about self medicating as an excuse for drink and drugs .., I personally have been medicating for years but I call it getting pissed and off my trolley on drugs , lol
The problem with privatisation of public services was that it never went far enough. The assets were sold off to people who were controlled by government, both local and national levels, so there has never been any kind of genuine competition. An example is my local bus services. There are 2 bus companies in the city, one operates within the boundary city centre and the other in the suburbs. They basically fix whatever price they wish because it is agreed that they will not run the same routes. It’s a disgrace.
Holly Bennett Can you imagine the chaos of having 10 different bus providers though? Areas of public life which are natural monopolies or oligarchies should be in public hands. Don’t get me wrong, public ownership doesn’t lead to perfection or anywhere near it, but it’s better than allowing avaricious scoundrels to fleece people.
@@Bucketheadhead Competition would bring prices down for everyone, dumbass. Works perfectly everywhere else it's tried.
No, the problem is things went too far. US healthcare should be among the most efficient in the world and should not leave anyone out.
It is efficient, in extracting huge amounts of money out of the pockets of ordinary people. Why would an efficient system need to invent pre-existing conditions? Because money triumphs people, and the grabbing hands and their greed never have enough. As Hitchens said later in life, greed is not something that should be further encouraged.
@@Hirnlego999 US healthcare WOULD be the world's most efficient if it were truly capitalist. However, it is not. Insurance companies cannot compete across state lines, massive amounts of regulations including the Obamacare regulations are still in place, with limits on immigrant doctors and no foreign drugs due to the FDA. There is no free market in healthcare so your logic doesn't work.
@@mosesking2923 It is the most efficient system in sucking out capital out of the people, the main goal of capitalists. In Sweden we see that Stockholm has privatized more, the result is that some costs have gone up some 100%.
Insurance companies should not be part of the equation at all. In Japan you can't allow just about anyone own a hospital, because that is downright retarded.
A capitalist system ignores people without money, if they do not have healthcare they will find answers through alternative medicine (which does not work), find their coping mechanism in drugs, crime and religion. Result? A failing society.
But who gives a damn. Let everyone have guns, it's another business that benefits the sociopaths and psychopaths without any care for which direction the society is headed.
The market doesn't want the government to buy medicine from aboard for cheaper, that would harm the shareholders interests, which is also as said not to pay for patients which cost too much. The goal is profits, it's not healthcare for all or a great society. A sick society benefits rich cunts.
In 1917, Russia was a backward feudal society with almost no industrialisation to speak of, while the Western powers were on the cusp of changing from advanced industrial societies to post-industrial societies. In just seventy years, Russia and the other USSR territories nearly caught up with the level of advancement that had taken Western Europe centuries to achieve because of its inefficient private-capitalist system. Now, the USSR did not have a socialist system, but a system of non-competitive state capitalism, and the difference in efficiency is astonishing. Imagine how much better it would have been if the workers really were in control instead of the corrupt elite of the central committee. This extremely ignorant caller (he is extremely ignorant, as are most people, because he cannot even tell the difference between socialism and state capitalism) is really saying, despite his poor choice of words, that state capitalism has nothing to offer and has never succeeded, when the facts show the opposite. Even non-competitive state capitalism is better than competition-based private capitalism, let alone true socialism. Therefore, the state-capitalist system of the USSR did not fail, but rather succeeded in making the USSR nearly the equal of Western powers in just seventy years. Has Western-styled capitalism succeeded? The divide between rich and poor is ever greater, the production of pointless, harmful or luxurious consummer goods keeps increasing, while the vehicles to respond to societal needs, such as free access to high-quality education, healthcare, etc keep being dismantled; working conditions keep deteriorating, the planet is ever more polluted, the list goes on and on. To succeed and to last are not the same thing. Capitalism is a gigantic failure for most of the human population, but it's a failure that has stayed in effect by force and coercion. The successful, albeit still immoral, system of the USSR lasted a much shorter time, but produced far better results. There is nothing worse than willful ignorance. Lastly, I'm not advocating anything remotely similar to the Soviet system, which, all in all, was still a system of capitalist exploitation of the working class, this time by state bureaucrats instead of private capitalists. We anarchists don't want vanguard parties to "emancipate" the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves. Long live libertarian communism!
@Deos I don't consider myself a communist in any way, but it's certainly not the only system that relies on force. That's what all governments have to do in order to maintain any form of civilization. Private property doesn't just protect itself, so it requires force to preserve as well. The incarceration rate of the United States and militarization of its police force in recent decades would seem to demonstrate that it's not exactly sunshine and rainbows in the haven of capitalism.
His choice of friends is weird ,to my mind .Disc jockeys in track suits for god's sake.
'I dare say' the British economy was already
'short of a few bob' before the depressed Orwellian 'Maggie's farm' of grit Britain became like
"Four Legs Good‼️⁉️
Two Legs Better‼️
God's Messenger: This is what I do Feed the poor, send money, smile and be nice with people, fight for justice and tap into the subconcious of the rich, the racists, the mysogenous, the homophobes by telling them that if they don't smarten up they will go to Hell for a moment of eternal terror. And before I forget work at getting out of the way those that try to invalidate God's message of Love A: You call that love ?GM: Trying to get food for the hungry and prevent haters from spreading hate. And your telling me this is not love ? You're not playing with a full deck· A: Trying to save people from a hell that u can’t · GM: You miss the part Taping into their subconscious. A: Here the food but if u don’t believe in Jesus your going to hell thats love.Your better off not to help them GM: Who cares about Jesus. As long as the needy get what they need and haters stop hating.A: You are not God's Messenger. I feel sorry for u real I do.Am glad your not trying to help me out · GM: The message applies to you too. There is a lot of sufferance on this planet. But you are like the rich, like many in rich countries, disconnected and ruthless. A: U still need to prove there’s a god and a hell and u haven’t done that·. GM: It is in your subconscious now. · A: I will alway fight against people like you GM: That is way you will be scared out of your wits for what will seem like an eternity in Hell . Now you know
it's too bad you became a psychotic neocon. i am writing this out of love, i grew up watching you with my mom. RIP. missed.
His transformation near the end of his life to a reactionary war apologist was pretty gross. But he was undeniably brilliant and contributed a lot to the intellectual sphere and probably the greatest polemicist of our generation. Youd have to be either really brave or really stupid to debate the Hitch in his prime, because hes read all the books on the topic, those for and against his position, and would find a weak spot on even the most solid of arguments. I'll always love him for that, and his contribution to secular thought critical of religious zealotry.
@@ElectricLadyland87 When you hang out with the ‘elites’ long enough your views become like there’s.
When he was great and not a drunken neocon
Hitch is so wrong about Thatcher it hurts. The FACT is that the UK before Thatcher was in terminal decline and the political CONSENSUS was the only way forward was managed decline with eventual integration into Europe. UK manufacturing was big but it was inefficient, CONTROLLED by the unions, produced products that were poor quality, outdated and over priced and that is why it failed.Thatchers economic reforms were so spectacularly successful that they were reproduced around the world. Hitch unfortunately was a socialist and socialists live inside their ideological bubble and cannot stray outside it as the whole pack of cards would come crashing down. Hitch was so right on many things but he was as most socialists are clueless about economics, business and how capitalism works
Cobra Action1 random capitalisation of unimportant words is an indicator of weak intellect. Must try harder.
The witch certainly reformed her, and her son's , economic position. Between the two of them they were worth in excess of £ 600,000,000.00.
You won't see capitalists supporting pure capitalism, it would be a disaster. Instead you see capitalists in favor of the Chinese system because the people are controlled.
US wages are largely stagnant for decades, this is quite heavily connected to anti-union rhetoric and politics. The general population is to become weaker and fight each other instead of demanding more when the productivity rises with their hard work. It's a sham from the rich, and the rich have never historically given a bloody damn about the rights and liberties of others.
Btw, since unions are so damn weak in USA now, why does USA not for instance produce good cars? Certainly it should by now be at the top of pretty much everything. It's not, because it's a damn sham.
That sounded Marxist.
He was a Marxist.
Hitch dummy flexing with that mullet
Hitchens wrong again
Tara
Thank God I am not an Atheist.
Cookie Trophy for ya
Never seen Hitchens without a big FAT beard before. Looks absolutely surreal.
Hitch is a double of Paul Weller.
Storm Blacklock bollocks.
There's some resemblance, but he's far from a double.
He never answered the question. The callers point was made by this failure to answer the question.
The caller was horrendously inarticulate
As smart and as well-educated as Hitchens was, how come he was so misguided to be a Trotskyite socialist?
To flip that comment on its head, maybe he wasn't misguided? Maybe it was this same intelligence and education that guided him to this political view point.
Why was Einstein a socialist? Why was Orwell?
Pure capitalism puts the power quite instantly in the hands of the few, we see it now in USA more and more as the power resides with the rich. College is becoming so expensive that some look for sugar daddies and produce webcam porn to have a chance to finance it.
The general population dies younger, drug use is up, they work harder and borrow money to sustain a lifestyle. This cannot hold in the long run.
And why do capitalists love China? Precisely because it controls the population to a high degree. Be productive, and do not demand a lot.
Typical of Hitchens dissing the Unions. And why are peoples lives 'squandered' if they work for a living? Maybe Hitchens squandered his life on being a gadfly and a drunk.
Was he still alive when he popped your balloon?
What do you mean exactly?
The Unions did only their own members any favours. That isn't what Marx envisioned.
No they didn't. They funded the Labour Party that produced education and health for all.
And by getting their own members higher wages, which by and large they deserved - they created more union dues and more money for the Labour Party.
It's called the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx was in full agreement.
I'm assuming you don't really give a fuck about the unions.
maggie wasn't all bad, unfortunately for lefties.
Even Hitler loved animals
@@Bucketheadhead from the planet's perspective, animals are no lesser than humans. we're just animals with some advanced abilities. both were strong, charismatic leaders.
In the UK, you are born into power and money and groomed to the top. I
say that knowledge is power, always has been and the elite have hoarded
it for centuries. The only exception is the internet, which has made the proliferation of knowledge and information availible to many who would have never had a chance to access it, were it not invented.
So now, with internet's immense help, the earth is flat :) And I have seen so many data scientist wannabees who sign up on forums just to ask for easy help on their exam questions or ask "please sir, where can I find free dataset" instead of googling "free dataset" etc. But still, I agree with you. The state controlled TV had this educating role or at least ambition many years ago. And "the free word by local tv" was a british experiment with a mobile studio, painstakingly tried in the late 70's I think. Now everybody easily has their own echo chamber.
Will the interwebs fail like tv did and turn into something Gibson-dystopic, "full of virus"? (Nah, forget that, let's stick to Hitchens, he IS the best edutainment! Cheers :)