Fundamentals of Marx: Historical Materialism
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 พ.ย. 2019
- What is historical materialism? How does it relate to the Marxist dialectic and what makes it "materialist"?
This installment in the Fundamentals of Marx series looks at the basics of historical materialism. The second half of the video also considers what historical materialism is *not*.
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I am 100% convinced historical materialism is the correct tool to use to understand history and what goes on today. The mainstream left seems to have abandoned it though.
It's definitely the most accurate way to understand history in the context of the economy, labor, and class struggle, but it shouldn't be used to explain history as a whole, as it lacks intersectionality and can't explain history outside of class struggle.
Marx and Engels themselves were very irritated by people trying their work to explain history outside of the economy (i.e. economic determinism). Historical Materialism only truly pertains to the transformation of labor, commerce, and the social structures surrounding them (as in, the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat).
Historical Materialism should be taught in schools, but it's important to not base one's understanding of history on it alone.
@@djrocksgaming6255 What is human history outside of class struggle when everything is a product of it? Its not like hunter gatherer society anymore.
@@djrocksgaming6255 while I agree that economic determinism is bad, materialism is the way to go. How does intersectionalith contradict with materialism.
@@djrocksgaming6255 are you saying that their analysis was class reductionist?
@@Nobody-fb7ni lol
Yes but didn't Stalin drink all the water in Afghanistan
With but a straw
Damn! Foiled again by impeccable logic and facts!
Democratic People’s Republic Of Denmark. The straw ran from Kabul to Moscow
@@Tribute7373 It was a silly straw
yet not the last straw
Maybe because this is the best topic yet...but this is the best video you did so far! Especially the later part with a criticism of Marx' eurocentrism and also the notion of linear progression of history (which is widespread in the internet due to the simplified graphs that people made from slave society to communism and so on).
I can't wait for my order of Cockshott's book "How the world worked" to arrive, I already read an earlier free version and the explanations for the rise of slave trade as a component in the development of all continents was very enlightening. Looking at economic incentives (if the difference in development is huge conquest and enslavement are cheap ways to expand one's own economy), physical (i.e. real) conditions that give rise to this (the transatlantic winds gave rise to the transatlantic slave trade) and the non-linear way in which the economic systems of this world affected each other (you probably have seen Cockshott drawing his Venn diagrams for the modes of production before) make up a scientific understanding of the world that is only provided by historical materialism.
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it!
I see this reduction a lot. Sometimes I see it made by unknowing opponents of Marxism. Sometimes I see it made as a deliberate attack on Marx. Worse yet, I see a number of Marxists reduce historical materialism to some kind of two-dimensional ladder. At that point Marxism is turned into some kind of odd mysticism and abandons its scientific nature. It also becomes a dangerous form of determinism, misleadingly suggesting that capitalism will simply end itself because that is the "law" of history, and that the system that follows will necessarily be socialism. Naturally, that creates a pretty problematic praxis, or more precisely, the complete absence of one.
I'll need to put that Cockshott book on my list, sounds interesting!!
Nice to see you hear...a much needed break from that...other guy
Marx was explicitly BUT.NOT exclusively
West Euro FOCUSED, but he analyzed,
to some extent, E Europe, S + E Asia,
Mid E + N Africa, rest of Africa, Pacific
Native Americans of N + S?.Americas
etc. in lesser known writings--- articles
letters, NOT whole books, some.more
recently translated? Monthly Review Press in its articles + books on Marx
+ ecology discuss many of his writings
on societies outside of W Europe.
Walter Rodney was the first author I read that finally made the lightbulb turn on and showed me what historical materialism is. Such an amazing and approachable thinker. RIP
any book of his in particular?
@@jamiehg6211 How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is essential.
I'm gonna check this out. Thank you
Historical Materialism can help us keep facts over feelings, unlike liberals and fascists.
My brain is still in recovery mode from taking in so many high level ideas TMP, great vid:)
Keep dissing other isms, see what happens with yours. All isms are stupid, read all books, not just the ones in front of you.
Feelings have merrit too, and I don't think marxists care about ALL the facts, just the ones they care about (because fit the narrative).
@@andredeketeleastutecomplex i would agree feelings have merit too. like the alienation, depression, isolation we see from capitalism is significant. the strife of minorities is significant.
to leave them out of the discussion is arguably even vulgar materialism. you’re making everything about matter when the human experience matters too.
even if you want to go there - science has in many ways expanded since marx, like for example psychological science can definitely play a role in marxist analysis today.
love the dave rubin quote
@@andredeketeleastutecomplex well said.
Although imo a proper communist understands human beings' essence is first and foremost material. With basic needs that need to be fulfilled. A socialist project starts from acknowledging the poverty under capitalism in this matter. Socialism, based on its understanding, creates that priority. Feelings are important, true, but materialist has scientific validity. You need food, water, sleep, shelter, hygiëne. In a socialist economy those are more important than profit, in capitalism profit is seen as no. 1 and the is magically believed to follow (so that you don't have to pay for it lol).
Taking practical, historical materialism which recognises freedom and the need for action is where science and philosophy meet. It is the proper communist spirit.
facts over feelings? Why are feelings worse than facts?
I love your videos so much, I've never had theory so well laid out for me! Thank you, comrade
Happy revolution day comrades
What day?
@@DC-wg1cr 7th of November
The left: Materialism, dialectics, hardcore socio-economic science.
The right: Muuuh bankers illuminati
@Jesus él McNuggetCunt "right-wing intellectuals"
such as?
Government has never been at the top of the locus of power. *“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations* that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -Thomas Jefferson
“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” -Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23
“I own it to be my opinion, *that good will arise from the destruction of our credit. I see nothing else which can restrain our disposition to luxury, and to the change of those manners which alone can preserve republican government* . As it is impossible to prevent credit, the best way would be to cure its ill effects by giving an instantaneous recovery to the creditor. This would be reducing purchases on credit to purchases for ready money. A man would then see a prison painted on everything he wished, but had not ready money to pay for.” -Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1786. ME 5:259
*“If the debt which the banking companies owe be a blessing to anybody, it is to themselves alone, who are realizing a solid interest of eight or ten per cent on it. As to the public, these companies have banished all our gold and silver medium, which, before their institution, we had without interest, which never could have perished in our hands,* and would have been our salvation now in the hour of war; instead of which they have given us two hundred million of froth and bubble, on which we are to pay them heavy interest, until it shall vanish into air… We are warranted, then, in affirming that this parody on the principle of ‘a public debt being a public blessing,’ and its mutation into the blessing of private instead of public debts, is as ridiculous as the original principle itself. In both cases, the truth is, that capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated by economy; but jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain tricks with paper.” -Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813. ME 13:423
Source: www.whitlockco.com/thomas-jeffersons-top-10-quotes-on-money-and-banking/
"The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation". -Vladimir Lenin
"under the gold standard, a free banking system stands as the protector of an economy's stability and balanced growth... The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit... In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation” - Alan Greenspan
"The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is *slave* to the lender. -Book of Proverbs 22:7
We have all been pledged as collateral chattel by _"our_ government to the banks and bond holders as every measure of what we own; our labor, our property, our income, our resources are taxed to pay interest on government debts to the sum of $84,000 per every man, woman, and our *children too* ! Source: www.usdebtclock.org/
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” -Frederick Douglass *Stefan Molyneux The Story of Your Enslavement* 51,112 views•Feb 25, 2012 th-cam.com/video/eq3jjzI8Gdo/w-d-xo.html *The Cultural Consequences of Fiat Money Jörg Guido Hülsmann* 17,735 views•Aug 4, 2014 th-cam.com/video/SAN5CKbZnD0/w-d-xo.html *Money vs Currency Hidden Secrets Of Money Episode 1 Mike Maloney*
4,785,705 views•Feb 26, 2013 th-cam.com/video/DyV0OfU3-FU/w-d-xo.html *The Money Masters notes history of of fractional-reserve banking, monetary policy, and taxes Bill Still* 23,587 views•May 4, 2013 th-cam.com/video/jkKwcXSbDK4/w-d-xo.html *'The Welfare-Warfare State is Anti-American': LP Presidential Hopeful Jacob Hornberger * 11,445 views•May 21, 2020 **th-cam.com/video/Ytw5nDZchwQ/w-d-xo.html** *How A Secret Society Created The Federal Reserve At Jekyll Island Valuetainment Patrick Bet David* 194,162 views•Oct 7, 2020 th-cam.com/video/4RCJGr2XQh8/w-d-xo.html *BookTV: G. Edward Griffin, "The Creature from Jekyll Island"*
14,141 views•Aug 27, 2012 th-cam.com/video/pqhxzN0PMeg/w-d-xo.html *Currency's connection to income tax NBC interview with Merrill Jenkins 1978* 947 views•Sep 19, 2017 th-cam.com/video/nwKLulXs2Bk/w-d-xo.html *WATCH How you're being ripped off* ! 9,133 views•Dec 13, 2013 th-cam.com/video/sGsFK52L0lk/w-d-xo.html *August 15, 1971 Richard Nixon Closes the Gold Window* th-cam.com/video/7_Xw5tWsOQo/w-d-xo.html *The Collapse of The American Dream Explained in Animation* 9,308,363 views•Jan 11, 2011 th-cam.com/video/mII9NZ8MMVM/w-d-xo.html
Vulgar economism is but an attempt of quantifying and rationally deciphering a fundamentally irrational system. The Mont-Pelerin society is a group of bourgeois apologists who emerged to as a result of late-stage capitalism as the Keynesian consensus inevitable fell apart due to the contradictions of capitalism. Not to mention the criminal ways these free market theories were applied with electric shock therapy with various fascist regimes such as Pinochet’s Chile. The Chicago school of Economic imperialism should burn for crimes against humanity.
@Jesus él McNuggetCunt Party Comrade 1992's comment is ofcourse nonsense; ofcourse the right wing is more than just the MAGA fanatics. Also Dutch Kosmonaut acting as if there can't be a right winged intellectual is childish.
But calling Ricardo, Kant and Locke right-winged is really ridiculous. There is a weird tradition on the right of calling classical economists like Ricardo and Locke right winged, even though they believed in labour value. At least I'm happy to see you didn't name Smith, because that would be embarrasing.
The others of your list as far as I know them I barely consider intellectuals (yes, not even Hobbes). I also don't think we can consider neoliberal economists intellectuals in 2021.
Lol what an imbecile comment, a classic appeal to my side SMART and FACTS and LOGIC, other side FEELING
Literally i could say the right is idealism, hiearchy as grounded in human nature, socio-economic science (???????, what is this clownery lol, modern economic science is no where near communism lol)
The left: blue haired SJW feelings boohooo
Do you see how intellectually dishonest this is
I've been watching your videos and they are really good and big concepts are presented in beautiful and compact way, I liked you video on surplus labor, and this one was best, in the end when you explained linear notion of progression of society I liked that part especially. Your channel is best on youtube.
Thank you for making a better video on this than I ever could! Great job comrade!
one of the few actual- factual videos on marx i can use to study for my philosophy class. thank you
thanks for this. appreciate how you broke it down in the first two minutes to a level that I actually finally understood this concept. Now I can use this understanding to further understand history and the approaches to history that I and others have taken in the past and how to analyze it going forward. I need to deepen my understanding of this to have a firm grasp in order to always be clear on this approach.
Can i expect a series on DAS CAPITAL??? Discussing all the chapters???
Perhaps some day! Some of the channel's videos already cover part of Capital (commodities, commodity fetishism, surplus value).
@@themarxistproject yes make one
All 4 volumes?!
Thank you for these videos. They're a great help.
While never working in America Marx wrote for the New York Tribune in the 1850's as a European correspondent and has some pretty cool takes on America
Thank you for these videos. Very helpful
I now understand Historical Materialism way better! Thank you
Another great video comrade, I love this topic!
This was such an insightful video and a clear summary of historical materialism and how it can be be used as scientific tool of analyses to effect change of our complex dynamics. I also liked how you explained possibility of historical materialism applying both the qual and quan when analyzing a phenomena. I am strong believer that its impossible to separate them. Thank you so much.
Excellent presentation comrade.
Very illuminating. Grateful that you point out how the material conditions do not determine the political structure. While they do influence social organization, it’s important to remember that ideas act back upon material conditions. Reminds me that Marxist analysis needs to be introduced into the working class and does not spawn directly from it.
Can you say more about this notion of Marxist’s analysis being Eurocentric? Or rather, what other social formations have you seen unidentified by Marx and Engels In applying the historical materialist method? Thanks so much, your videos are a wealth of information and deserve multiple listens on my behalf.
marx had wrongly analysed that the indian society does not have motion and thus is stagnative.
a mistake he revised in the last couple of years of his life
Atharv Shinde what text are you referring to?
Marx' s writings on areas outside of W Europe are in articles, rather than books.
Some are perhaps more recently translated. Monthly Review Press
has many articles + books, especially
on ecology, that discuss areas outside
of W Europe.
There's a minor mistake in the video.
Church/religion mentioned twice in the triangles of basis and superstructure
Good catch comrade!
But we need to.remember that in many organized religions that churches, temples, etc..often had farms, workshops, etc. economic production.
In W Europe, Catholic Church faction of
Christians was largest landowner, so
some societies had religious sectors
within their economies..Even now, some
Catholic monasteries + nunneries produce farm.products like bread. cheese, wine. etc. What about other Christian factions?.Other religions?
Thanks dude this really helped me.
⚜️ Materialistic interpretation for me is like a relaxing state, calm state, like drinking remedie for all relaxation of mind and body.
I guess me being nocturnal is is useful for once hehe
I do bellive historical materialism is awsome so yeee
hi, great video. i would appreciate it a lot if you could give me some sources to marx and engels stating that the base and superstructure don't have a one-sided relationship and influence each other.
Great Channel!
what is the background music
pausing only a minute in to say this reminds me of Marshall McLuhan and "the media is the message" regarding how the medium and context of the world is of more influential meaning than the content of the media. If a great idea does come to change the world, the world must materially change to adapt it.
What were the first two? I've seen dialectics and contradictions
Thanks very impressive.
thank you good video
Nice video
Historical materialism is not a narrative, as you said. Yet there are many who say post-modernism cannot be Marxism because the former rejects metanarratives while the latter requires a metanarrative. Is a metanarrative actually a feature of Marxism (perhaps found in the claim that history can be scientifically analyzed)? Or were the postmodernists simply responding to a revisionist trend in Marxism in France that turned it into a narrative?
What do you think of G.A. Cohen's interpretation of historical materialism? It seems to be more stagist than your presentation of historical materialism, as it postulates that the development of the productive forces necessarily causes production relations to pass through primitive communism -> pre-capitalist class society -> capitalist class society -> communism. Is this correct in your view?
My fruitration is just that marx was pretty clear about the preconditions under which the revolution would need to actually occur, and I mean we have whole passages of him euphoric about everything the capitalist have done precisely BECAUSE it's so useful to the revolution- not because he's a huge fan of capitalism but because he sees the potential of their inventions for the marxist cause.
MaoistRebelnews and me disagree about Pre Revolution Soviet russia, he's been adamant that the country was already industrialized before the revolution ever occured and was under capitalism but I beg to differ, russia at the dawn of the 20th century was only in the most urban spaces of all industrialized and had large pockets of the country under Fuedalism in fact before the revoluton was ALMOST ENTIRELY fuedal.
historical materialism is pretty blunt about the need for the country to be under Capitalism and pretty much entirely for the revolution to actually occur and now the world knows because of what happened in the Soviet Russia what it looks like when communist succeed in overthrowing a government to start a revolution far before they were ever ready for it.
I will say though Thank Stallin that we aren't speaking German.
Truly unique content; akin to a book that introduced groundbreaking perspectives. "The Joy of Less: A Minimalist Living Guide" by Matthew Cove
thanks
What is the main difference between Economic Determinism and Historical Materialism
Economic Determinism: The Economic structure is the sole factor of changing of society
Historical Materialism: The Economic structure is the necessity of the change of society, but it is not the cause of it. The change of society is always determined by the superstructure (Ideology, Politics, Arts, Education, etc.) and the change of economic structure (High level of productivity)
I'm surprised that it's been 3 months and no one replied to you
Thanks
How does historical materialism explain the transition from a primal to a feudal society
Short answer: productity determines relation of production.
The long answer: the increase in productity allows human society to produce more agricultural surplus, like rice and wheat thanks to the adoption of agriculture. This increase in food surplus allow more people to not perform the role of farmer to feed themselves, which create a group of people that has nothing to do all day long.
Now, the society can feed some idle population, what can those people do? Art, government, entertainment, you name it. Diversification of vocations starts to happen. Human society first saw the rise of city in indus valley. But, I still didn't answer your question on how we transfer from tribal to feudal society. Because I myself is still a student of materilism, hope you get inspired by my post and see the history from the angle of historical materialism.
How does the state of production explain the first stone tools? Stone tools came about accidentally not by an economic state.
Didn't stone tools come about as a necessity to hunt animals for food and pelts?
Instead of a state, it was communities.
Hey, are there any secondary sources that similarly claim that historical materialism is NOT Marx's theory of history, but rather a far more dynamic analytic? I would expect that Althusser does in "For Marx," but more often than not I hear Marxists and Marxist literature claim that historical materialism is in fact a theory of history. This then leads to economist and Eurocentric assumptions in applying Marxist thought to certain historical and contemporary conditions, the type of "Marxist" analyses that Marx and Engels blatantly rejected as a butchering of their work.
Be nice if examples could be provided
Was the Netherlands one example
Was the Glorious Revolution another
Interesting. I always thought that it was a good tool to analyse society. However, I think that the use of the word ‘scientific’ is misleading and should be replaced by ‘philosophic’. Real science is based on the scientific method: hypothesis, followed by experimentation, followed by analysis of the experimental result to see whether it proves or disproves the initial hypothesis. Social sciences don’t often allow for real experimentation. Therefore, we are limited to using reasoning and observation. But this is often open to bias, whether or not this is acknowledged by the observer. This is shown by how marxists departed from a solid analysis of history up to the industrial revolution when they moved into political activism. But the fact that they continued to use the word ‘scientific’ to described their political project blinded them and others and ultimately contributed to discredit Historical Materialism as a tool to understand the wold we live in. And that’s too bad.
I think it's important to understand the context of the term "science" as used by people in the 19th Century. They don't mean science in the sense of the scientific method, but rather "science" as a catch-all term referring to the application of logic and study of observations (E.g. events on history). That's my understanding anyway.
@@AccordionThis You are probably right and your point deserves due consideration. Yet, as this term is still used today, I believe it may mislead poeple who are new to the marxist analysis. It may easily be used, and I think it has been so, by proponents of socialism to drap themselves in an aura of respectability above that of other ways of thinking politics.
absolutely
@serge girard the social sciences are almost completely based on science. Science prioritizes observation and experimentation over reason. Social sciences utilize observation and not reason. Expirementation, though not as common, is present in psychology and sociology.
@@maryallen1002 I agree. As a Political Science graduate myself, I have no argument against what you say here. However, I was witness to incalculable situations where students (or even Professors) of social sciences, arguing that total objectivity was impossible, would throw themselves with abandon in totally biased rants. In social sciences, remaining scientific is always a struggle. And, to go back to my initial point, when you leave the realm of observation-explanation to rather go into that of political project, calling this scientific is certainly misleading.
4:15 How can historical materialism be used to explain the event of slave labor appearing within the system of capitalism? The diagram at 415 makes it seem as if these different types of class societies do not overlap. Does a society (US for example) not contain characteristics of different class societies (slave, serfdom, capitalist)?
I'm not an American, so i'm not fully knowledgeable on the history of slavery, but to my knowledge it preceded capitalism, by the time of the U.S civil war it was essentially an an outdated mode of production with outdated class relations in contradiction to the Northern industrial mop and class relations, hence the civil war was the transformation which caused the end of said contradiction. Different class societies can overlap, in the sense that a previous class attempting to hold on to its outdated status is in conflict with a new class, and yes, capitalist societies do still have the vestiges of previous societies, just as a socialist country would have vestiges of capitalist societies.
@@skepticmonkey6923 thank you 👌🏾
In previous periods existed a thing called day-laborer (altrough other names are used), it refers to people that sell their workforce to any one that could pay them, they will work, receive a payment, and leave. They are exacly like the Proletariat of the present world, but they lived in the slavery and the feudal systems. This shows that even trough there is a MAIN economic system, there could be other kinds of people. Even trough lords and serfs where the majority during feudalism, there was still the day-laborers, artisans and other types of people. In capitalism, the MAIN classes are the bourgeoise and proletariat, but still exist slaves, and the petty-bourgoise (people that dont have a industry, but have their own business), etc. So in capitalism slavery can still exist (and exist), but slavery will never be the main force to the capitalist system, because this role is assumed by the proletariat.
I think it’s important to note that as mentioned in the video, historical materialism isn’t linear, it doesn’t treat each specific system as its own thing, that’s why you can find slavery in a capitalist system despite them being 2 separate systems in history, material conditions are what lead to the end of slavery in the US because it wasn’t favorable to either the slaves or the US as a whole.
@@skepticmonkey6923 socialism is putting almost everyone into a single level of wealth with no rewards and promotes laziness. Then it leads to depression and negative population growth and many other things. Marxism is pretty much a pyramid with the 100 people with high power on top and then the rest underneath are slaves. You can get punished for not doing what you’re told. Which promotes and leads to anarchism.
If everything is in constant state of change, isn't then the constant state of change also in constant state of change?
Change is the one constant, though the change that occurs is always shifting ;)
Haha sure, I suppose. Can't really wrap my mind around what that implies.
My feet are on the ground. I think one of the major points of dialectical materialism is to appreciate how ideas speak to material conditions and vice versa. If we talk of change being in a constant state of change, I sense this falling in purely abstract realms and out of touch with material.
Ivan Rančić we don't know what the universe is expanding in to
Was Marx then just flat-out wrong when he described the implosion of Capitalism, and in turn, the rise of Communism, as “inevitable”? If historical materialism doesn’t necessarily hold that history moves through progressive stages of development, does that mean the dominant mode of production could regress into something more heinous than Capitalism? To be clear, these questions come from a place of genuine inquiry and are not meant to be accusatory or edgy. Thank you for your helpful videos!
Michel Jackowell definitely not. Think it’s more reflective of the notion that communism won’t be achieved without class struggle. Perhaps too, Marx being a revolutionary, he was painting a vision for the future which is part of winning people to your perspective. The theory of socialist revolution just as relevant today as it was in Marx’s time and does not seem to be going away.
I say yes, Marx understood that our society is always changing and socialism is one of the routes it may go, socialism and communism is ideal so I guess that's why he focuses on that, but fascism, anarchy and God knows what else are still very much options
I don’t think the nature of the contradictions change, each one becomes bad eventually because material conditions worsen it, so yes, something contradictory can replace capitalism, or perhaps not if there is something that allows socialism to take over. Also worth noting is that not every society will go forth like this, some might have completely different contradictory situations unlike Europe had Europe not taken them over.
so what I'm understanding is that, society changes because everything within society is constantly changing and what society looks like is based off the previous changes within that society. is that right? like if i look at why American society is so cruel to my people i can look back at history through the material conditions that allowed society to become so, idk sounds right to me.
please explain it to me like im 5 years old
What if Ai and robotics remove most workers from the work place? Would that affect capitalism leading to socialism?
still a bit confused but thanks?
To put it very bluntly:
History doesn’t move forward because of ideas people have that change society, it moves forward and progresses because of the material conditions of said society. Does that make any sense?
Hey there please answer me i think marx was wrong about the bottomline of current capitalistic flow becouse he couldnt predict the pscycholitical advertisements and multinational economic leviatans resembeling as corps which manipulate prespective of masses into surficial view of life and linear path and eventually everything including people would become commodities for rich people for having a "better" life or making new jobs to fill their belly and thereby i think its hardly gonna make things any diffrent for capitalists and i seriously ask you to tell me your opinion about this simplified prespective
Marx wrote.mjch about how.dominant class.dominates.economic.production
ideological.false.consciousness.ideas
to impose.both.on.all.classes in.a.society--- see German Ideogy. +.etc.
later works.
Or her later.thinkers.expanded.on.this,
like.Antonio.Gramsci,in.Prison.Notebook
Noam.Chomsky +.Edward.Herman.Manu
facturing.Comsent.. .etc
Guys, why do you have Russian Trotskyists such as Вестник Бури and Выход Есть! ?
They make really good content and they do not seem like Trotskyists to me. What makes you say that?
Even if they are, I don't agree with invalidating anyone's arguments/work on the grounds of an ideological label.
@@themarxistproject I am making that claim on the basis of their new movement that had been initianed on 7th of november that managed to unify with anarchists and more questionable characters such as Station Marx. In addition whilst I do think their videos are really good they do throw further Trotskyist rhetoric when discussing Stalin and old bolsheviks, that had been trialed for treason.
@@alexalfinson901 I had not heard of such an initiative. I think sometimes it's okay to have alliances with other leftist groups if it is strategically useful. I don't think Выход Есть or Вестник Бури are themselves anarchists.
Yeah they are critical of Stalin and somewhat critical of the Soviet Union. I dont agree with all of their positions but I think they are overall good comrades, doing good work.
@@themarxistproject I didnt say that they are anarchists, im saying their movement alligns a range of left movments such as anarchists. I was mostly talking about these two channels, because Russia is likely to have the pivotal moment in history that it had in 1917, since the class contradictions are soon bound to reach their peak and will likely spill out in the next great recession.
@@alexalfinson901 I understand. But I think even the Bolsheviks had to make strategic alliance with groups they didn't go hand in hand with (for example, the Mensheviks and SRs, and even some anarchists).
I'd really like to know if this theory has any predictive abilities. It would really set it appart from a pseudo science and prove that it's a science indeed.
No, it does not
Most of the time yes
Engels predicted both world wars decades before they occurred.
"Workers had better lives than serfs"
Citation needed. Workers spend more of their lives working than most serfs at least in Western Europe and were far less atomized and socially disconnected under Feudalism.
At least serfs got to spend their days achieving goals with their families. I'm so exhausted from hitting the goals my employer set that I have little left for my family.
You speak of late-feudalist serfs, with the advent of worker's guilds. You must look to earlier times, when, for example, the landlord had the right to the first copulation of a married serf couple.
@Random User "In other cases, an official
personage, the head of the tribe or the gens, cacique, shaman, priest, prince or whatever he may
be called, represents the community and exercises the right of the first night with the bride.
Despite all necromantic whitewashing, this jus prime noctis [Right of first night. - Ed.] still
persists today as a relic of group marriage among most of the natives of the Alaska region
(Bancroft, Native Races, I, p. 8i), the Tahus of North Mexico (Ibid., P. 584) and other peoples;
and at any rate in the countries originally Celtic, where it was handed down directly from group
marriage, it existed throughout the whole of the middle ages, for example, in Aragon. While in
Castile the peasants were never serfs, in Aragon there was serfdom of the most shameful kind
right up till the decree of Ferdinand the Catholic in 1486. This document states:
'We judge and declare that the aforementioned lords (senors, barons) ... when the peasant
takes himself a wife, shall neither sleep with her on the first night; nor shall they during the
wedding-night, when the wife has laid herself in her bed, step over it and the
aforementioned wife as a sign of lordship; nor shall the aforementioned lords use the
daughter or the son of the peasant, with payment or without payment, against their will.'
(Quoted in the original Catalan by Sugenheim,
Serfdom, Petersburg, 1861, p. 35)"
F. Engels in 'the origin of family, private property and the state' p. 28
@@mariussielcken 1) artisan guilds were mostly in ciries. mostly.men,
but some.women.
Did.serfs have.organizations?
Artisans lived in towns, usually not in
buildings that employers owned, +.
at least in W Europe. some cities.had.
legalized political.autonomymfro local
feudal.landowner. thus artisan guilds
were organizable in autonomous. merchant-- ruled towns.
So called.formal.right, of.1st night
has recently.newm.disproved by some
video.channel---formal right was a later
myth--- informal "right". or.power. was
the norm.
y
@@TheMightyShell Marx.said that all
political.economy different.versions are based on how different..lengths.of labor.times.are divided for which different.purposes.
Also you need to read the books (Williams, 1994) Capitalism and Slavery, and (Anievas, 2015) How the West Came To Rule The Origins of Capitalism. Both show that capitalism is NOT a Marxist stage but came from the drive for accumulation
Well, since I *need* to read them, they are now on my book list.
Though, I should say that you are not making a great case for your argument by implying you've read X book that I haven't. What's the point in doing that when you could just tell me the central premises of the argument? That would at least give me the opportunity to consider your point.
@@themarxistproject Because im just a youtuber, and nobody gets respect on youtube. The books are by experts and are empirically researched.
@@PoliticalEconomy101 that's understandable, and rest assured I will get to them eventually. In fact the Williams book was already on my list, as it turns out.
Still, it can't hurt to lay out your thoughts for me. I'm willing to respect and consider most perspectives if it they are adequately defended, regardless of the authority the person has on the subject.
@@themarxistproject Actually, if you want some better books to at least get you in the game i have 2 i could recommend.
Go for it. My list is ever-growing anyway
based
Part of me worries that we’re just going to cycle back through the varying modes of subjugation that dominated the past. It’s seeming more and more like we’ll be hurled into a neoliberal technocratic feudalism than into socialism.
Capitalism can only sustain itself through infinite growth which is an impossibilty with finite resources. We will either succumb to its destruction or advance to socialism. With the way things are going now, it looks like that this change will begin in this century.
Yet the idea that capitalism would transition or transform to socialism seems a bit deterministic. The USSR is a case in point. Neoliberalism asserted similar things about free markets. Its most notable child, Russia after the fall of the USSR demonstrates, just how misconstrued it is. Constructing a democratic workplace requires cultural knowledge only gained by doing. Outside of this the other pillar of exploitation is the financial and monetary system. Usury (in the archaic sense) as monetary management and the right to hoard the means of exchange drives a cycle of debt and wealth concentration that necessitates growth and therefore is a primary driver of exploitation, amongst many other ills.
A smooth progression was never the expectation, but the general trend is one of class struggle progressing
@@chrisgaming9567 I understand. My point is 'progress' was a rhetorical flourish of Darwin to pitch evolution by natural selection to his Victorian audience.
The concept of progress is trashed in biology: that humans are the 'peak' of it for instance. Similarly concepts of 'stages' in civilization also fell, when the historical arc of the Middle East of cultural and tech innovation was not recapitulated in South America.
Disabuse yourself that some utopia is an end point. The conditions we live in are our own to make,
Go to r/Americassocialists, r/asiansocialists or r/europeansocialists to meet some solid Marxist Leninist Comrades. We’re trying to organize on a three legged stool.
So what is historical materialism?
Poo poo 💩
Historical Capitalism is a powerful scientific tool (5:40). Scientific says who? Comrades?
Good explanations. The only defect is every time you say capitalism wanted this and capitalism wanted that, it’s as though someone let the capitalism bag out of the cat and it became a conscious being with wants and demands. I think your explanation fails in attributing capitalism as though it came from Mars (not Marx) and suddenly demanded its space on the Earth.
Whoa what? Transnational corporations aren't going to erase nation states and nor should they.
Everything else I'm on board with. But allow nations to remain sovereign.
Check out the latest video on geopolitical economy, it covers this issue in greater depth!
Please add subtitle English
People misinterpret this notion of Marxism being Eurocentric.
Because Capitalist colonialism tied the world together into one world economy, when Marxists mistakenly explain one part of that world economy and leave out the other, their explanation of the entire world is not only incomplete, inevitably it ends up being partially incorrect.
Marxis a very quick to concede that Marxism may be incomplete in terms of its understanding of the colonized world. But they very rarely can acknowledge that aspects of Marxism can be incorrect.
Marx's Foundational Tautology
Marx writes (Chapter 24, first paragraph, Capital, 1867), "Hitherto we have investigated how surplus-value emanates from capital; we have now to see how capital arises from surplus-value."
See the tautology? How did this tautology get past the initial reviews? How did this tautology survive the intervening 157 years without being discovered, except for this political scientist? This again illustrates the magnitude of the Marxist co-option of our institutions.
Let's analyze the sentence's tautology...
Surplus value is generated by capital, but capital is created by surplus value!
That's literally a transitional phrase between explanations. Both arise cyclically, that's the entire point. Surplus value can only arise from the framework of the capitalist mode of production, and waged labour. Capital also arises from surplus value as those are then the profits which are recycled into the means the production (capitalism).
Like how your body uses surplus energy from food to move your muscles for a few hours to go find more food to recycle the process and stay alive. A company does the same thing to stay alive, but with surplus value extraction to create capital, which can be recycled into the means of production to to create more surplus.
@@andrewferris8169 says, "Surplus value can only arise from the framework of the capitalist mode of production, and waged labour."
No, Marx said surplus value emanates from capital, not arises from capital. Huge difference. So, where did the capital come from so that surplus value can emanate from it, because Marx says capital arises from surplus value.
"Capital also arises from surplus value as those are then the profits which are recycled into the means the production (capitalism)."
Where did the initial capital come from to create the initial surplus value, since Marx tells us that capital arises from surplus value?
@brian78045 there is literally zero distinction between "eminates" and "arises from." Light eminates, and arises from a fire.
You are literally just asking the chicken or egg question. Idk, what creature ate the first food to move it's muscles to eat more food. It's a self sustaining system, just because you find the first transaction doesn't mean money doesnt exist.
@@andrewferris8169 says, "just because you find the first transaction doesn't mean money doesnt exist."
Money isn't capital! The fact you would equate capital with money identifies the tautological essence of Marx's jerry-rigged system, a tautology that is known to Marxist gate keepers, identifying the gate keepers as Satanists following Marx's 1843 directive for the "abolition of religion", and the destruction of those civilizations "whose spiritual aroma is religion"...
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Karl Marx (1843)
"The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion."
...and...
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions."
...and...
"It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world."
Now you know what Marxists are referring to when they utter the phrase, "The Struggle"...
"The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion."
@@brian78045 Jesus christ bro I wasn't saying capital was the same as money, just like in my last analogy I wasn't literally saying food was equal to capital, or chickens or eggs were equal to capital. Idk why you are accusing me of this on my 3rd analogy, but not the first 2 lol. This oddity leads me to be believe you are being intentionally dishonest instead of genuinely confused. Why didn't you accuse me of equating chickens to capital in the last response? Seems like you only became confused by analogies once your entire argument collapsed to just saying that capital and surplus value cannot create each other if we cannot determine which one came first. That's a ridiculous argument. But it seems you keep finding every opportunity to retreat back to your pre-rehreased satanist tautology rant. No one made a tautological error. You conveniently misunderstood the 3rd analogy, that's your error. I literally just explained to you that capitalism is a framework of recycling profits into the means of production, so I find it hard to believe you misunderstood me here.
Wait, was is this seething over his anti-theism? You ran straight from pretending to misunderstand my analogy to ranting about how Marx didn't like religion? Obviously he doesn't, he's an adult lol. We can't all be as terrified of death as you. I don't even know how to respond to these quotes because I agree with them 100%, and have no idea how they relate to surplus value emanating from capital and vice versa...
Hopefully in a classless society only qualified people would be in management
Unfortunately human nature wouldn't change
anything that denies eternal priciples and truths is already wrong.
"there are no absolute truths"
"is that an absolute truth?"
where do you go from there?
If historical materialism says that the world is a state of constant change, what comes after communism?
Wait; so Capitalism necessarily creates the conditions for an inevitable socialist revolution, but linear thinking is somehow not part of the historical materialistt method?
it creates the conditions for a socialist revolution, but the working class may or may not revolt. They may not revolt, (or all the revolutions could fail) and capitalism would drive the world to ecodisaster and collapse.
@@funkyskunk1those who revolted were funded by capitalists, that's the funny thing
Marx is actually a important source for a fruitful worldbuilding
True, I guess
No. Lol.
@@VeryHandsomeAndTall have you readed it?
man im gonna fail sociological theory!
did you pass?
So how did you do?
I'm an anarchist but i found this useful so thanks
fed
Why are you an anarchist?
@@pressftopayrespects6325 not op, but for me is several reasons. Do you have something specific in mind that you think means i shouldn't be one?
@@br2485 I was asking it as opposed to “why aren’t you a marxist?” I believe that anarchism isn’t dialectical or materialist.
You need to hash out the last part about how Marx concedes that ideas do indeed effect the world. A quick blurb saying "of course we recognize this reality" after explaining how material reality determines all structures and ideas for the entire rest of the video just... isn't sufficient. It sounds like Marxism trying to weasel out of being a entirely deterministic philosophy on its face (which means that Marxism really.... denies the existence of human beings and therefore abandons any claim to moral authority as morality doesn't apply to robots. ) This is a serious contradiction that deserves a lot of discussion to hash out.
Take Marx critique of capitalism, which tbh the summary is the same critique of all the social structures before. Essentially a structure that was given birth by past conditions created a new "game" that is a degenerating structure generation on generation due to the very fact that there will be winners. The tendency of profit to fall and so on. The end result is a system that is no longer productive in the way it has defined itself, meaning the very system undoes the conditions that created itself in the first place, the resulting new conditions creating the new system in the wake of the old system's collapse. Nowhere in this line of thinking is room for people and their ideas. It's just.... a machine, continually resetting and refining process throughout the centuries, a chemical reaction that results in another chemical reaction. Nothing in there leaves room for human agency it in fact denies human agency.
Marx.evenrually.dealt +.most.criiticisms. but.often I later.relaticely k secure articles. not in.whole. books. Some
articles.were.rather. recently translated.
Going by materialism, it doesn't really matter what Marxist theory says, what matters is what Marxism in the material world resulted into. And I agree.
Прощай TH-cam и привет RUTUBE
Mate, bad presentation. You need to start from the simple example, so even an idiot as I could comprehend, and then further elaborate suing more complex example.
Karl Marx was a loser.