Stephen Hicks: From the Falsification of Marxism to Post-Modernism
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.ค. 2017
- Stephen Ronald Craig Hicks is a Canadian-American philosopher who teaches at Rockford University, where he also directs the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship.
In 2004 he wrote a book named "Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault" which was e.g. recommended by Jordan Peterson for understanding postmodernism (cf. • Jordan Peterson: Why Y... )
Full clip, quoted under fair use: • "Postmodernismens förk...
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Breaking News: The comment section encounters a high infestation of Marxism. You may encounter fact denial and confusion. However, I am sure, the next time their failed system will work, because all others where not real socialism. In the meanwhile try not to end up in a gulag. peace.
No offense, but comments like this don't really help. I have read through the comments and up to now no one has said anything that makes them a socialist as you characterize them, and saying that Hicks' arguments are poor doesn't make you a socialist.
+Sean S
Sadly, he is not trying to help, he is trying to win.
sean thejack no theres plenty of socialists on this page lol and he didnt write it to "help" commies he wrote it to mock them for the confused idiots that they are. because sometimes it doesnt matter how much actual evidence you have for something people will still believe what they want.
Comments like that show you are not the right person to have a channel with the word insight in it. You are giving intellectualism a bad name...may as well have a provocateur like Milo or a radical right or left wing media commentator hosting it spouting their punditry.
Breaking News: anyone who disagrees with me is a Marxist!!! Lol...
A skeptical Polish colleague commented that during the time of Soviet control of Poland - "They pretended to pay us, we pretended to work". Perfectly sums up the economical result of Post Modernism.
I worked with a Polish immigrant in the seventies. He told me that his family came from the Polish/Soviet border area and that the arbitrary border drawn after the war left some of his family on the Soviet side of that border. He told me about how the workers on the Soviet collective farms would fill the seed drills with seed in the morning and then just drive around in the fields without refilling all day. They couldn't be bothered to fill the machinery when it ran empty. That is a real example of what you're talking about. The Post Modernists have never worked a real, blue collar job in their lives and they don't want to, either.
Postmodernism = the denial of mountains of evidence when evidence disproves ones beloved ideals = "Everything is subjective. There's no objective truth. Words make reality."
@@JackHaveman52 Its kinda hard to work a lathe with glass of wine in one hand and a quiche in the other...
@@NathanJennings1222 In the Beginning was the Turd.
@@JackHaveman52
But why do you believe that they didn't refill the seed drills?
One of the best analysis of the Marxist mindset that I have heard so far. He is spot on comparing Marxism to a faith based religion.
Yeah it really is a non-theistic religion. This is why, no matter how badly it always turns out when it's implemented, they keep defending it. Also psychopaths. Psychopaths know that they can use it to manipulate people and get into the higher eschelons of the marxist government, where they are able to get away with just about anything they want.
Hicks is an absolute genius of message delivery.
I have found it interesting that many lefties I have personally known - who became very successful, stopped ragging for and with their former fellow lefties, and, to boot, make sure
that their kids go to "the best" schools possible...
john m what the fuck are you idiots talking about? The idea is that leftists would be likely to think social mobility is not that great. A smart person would realize that their particular success is linked to many factors and is just an anecdote. If you care about truth and objectivity in life (I know you don't) then you would recognize that an anecdote doesn't disprove the trends and data.
Yup, it's all just envy.
I've found they double down due to some trendy rich guilt thing, ....while sending their kids to private schools.
Marxist are well educated extortionist. Most of them, despite their education, are incapable of creating the wealth they covet. Therefore, they use immoral tactics to forcefully extract wealth and power from the people they envy. They’re incorrigible people.
@@SJM6791 That is a great observation.
I have been trying to get people to read Hicks' book.
I have been contending with postmodernists all my life, without knowing what I was up against. There was no name for what was happening to me, except for injustice.
Imagine trying to reason with people who don't beleive in it? How can you present facts to change people, when they don't believe in facts.
Postmodernism is the END of Western society.
I will spread the word, and I hope all you guys do too.
The problem we have within the US, is primary education feeding a lie to malleable young minds about Marxism and capitalism. Prof. Mary Grabar, Ph.D., from the University of Georgia, in 2002, wrote this:
"Bill Ayers likens a traditional school to prison because it requires students adhere to dress codes, schedules, and rules of discipline. But he has had captive audiences and has used his power as a professor to indoctrinate future teachers. His education philosophy is based on anarchism, progressivism, and Marxism. It’s all about radicalizing children in social justice lessons, and making them see themselves as victims of an evil capitalistic system."
"I want to show that although Ayers was a failed bomber, he was successful in helping to transform and destroy education. And he did it at taxpayers’ expense. He has trained hundreds of teachers. He worked closely with Obama and [U.S. Secretary of Education] Arne Duncan in Chicago in funding programs aimed at radicalizing students. One of his closest colleagues, Linda Darling-Hammond, was on Obama’s education transition team, and was in charge of developing one of the two Common Core tests. And Bill Ayers has appeared at conferences with Duncan and other officials in organizations that devised Common Core."
"What Bill Ayers would have in the classroom extends the 1960s agenda of smashing monogamy, ending the bourgeois family and its values, destroying the work ethic, [and] patriotism. So what we have is kids indoctrinated with lessons about the police-the 1960s narrative about the “pigs”-fatherless, rootless, joining gangs, and looting in the streets. It’s a Marxist’s dream come true. Those like Bill Ayers don’t have to do the dangerous work of setting bombs any more. They can watch the Crips and the Bloods unite against the police, as we’ve been seeing on the streets of Baltimore. They can watch from the comfort of their homes in nice gentrified neighborhoods, as they collect retirement checks and honoraria for speaking gigs."[sic]
Thank you for exposing these people. All people need to understand this.
5:45, "So when your constructions fail, you start to be a Deconstructionist."
The first time I hear "alternative facts" I thought the term was completely useless. Steven Hicks is living proof otherwise.
An alternative fact is a different observation. A fact is an observation.
Awesome video,Keep it up!
Hicks' book "Explaining Postmoderism" is a must read if you want to understand the dynamics at play in the world today.
If communism and cancer had a lovechild, it'd be this comment section.
Educating Ignorant/Intolerant Leftists Shut up you racist bigot, you're worse than Hitler! :-D
That sounds incestuous.
Too late for flattery.
This speech actually was held here in Sweden. He visited Sweden when his book "Explaining Postmodernism" was released in swedish translation. "Postmodernismens förklaring"
Erik Wedin hmm, intressant. Vet du om han fick några slags bakslag eller konsekvenser av etablissemanget?
Ayn Rand and Mises and Hayek and Rothbard were correct about almost everything.
soapbxprod BAHAHAHAHAHA good one
Only insofar as to deconstruct communism. The faults of soulless capitalism are becoming more apparent as the populous degenerates into consumerist automatons. The free market should be a tool to serve humanity not humanity serving free markets.
The same people who drive for communism by any means necessary are also the people who wear the greedy capitalist robber Barron costume . The Jews control everything about you.
@@racerx5379 So you posted while controlled?
@@TeaParty1776 "Mans soul is his independent mind, not mindless social approval."
Do you possess the independent mind to think beyond milquetoast libertarianism?
Excellent lecture, thanks for the post.
His movie Nietzsche and the Nazis, the part breaking down Nietzsche's philosophy, had the biggest impact on my life. Jordan Peterson is also another great mind.
Rumple 4_Skin Oh god you know Nietzsche was outspoken against anti-semetism, his sister took some of Nietzsche's writings and edited it to be pro-Nazi. If you have actually read Nietzsche you understand he would never have supported Hitler. Or you can follow this guy like a little lamb...
Napalm6b what are you talking about. I'm sure anyone that knows about Nietzsche, at least more than face value, knows he wasn't a founding father of Nazism.
His documentary/lecture even goes into it.
Again, what are you talking about?
The Nazi's used Nietzsche's work a bit. Great minds are complex and can easily be taken out of context especially when the one interpreting is possessed by a rigid ideology.
You really don't know what you are talking about Rumple4_skin...
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/7018535/Criminal-manipulation-of-Nietzsche-by-sister-to-make-him-look-anti-Semitic.html
It doesn't hurt that Nietzsche's own sister was Nazi, and re-edited his work to support Nazi ideology.
Having watched many philosophy videos, especially ones on the subject of Postmodernism, I now think that truth (in metaphysical matters) is, finally - one's own satisfaction and safety, and that staying comfortably clear of those who disagree - is the only practical answer to living in a world that is yielding to an "all values are equal" mentality. The best of the past: what made the world we now enjoy
possible - I am afraid will be lost in an effort to placate the ever lowering sensibility of an ever growing populace.
Is there a second part to this somewhere?
It would be interesting to see the talk in its entirety. A ten minute slice on a complex subject leaves little room for an informative opinion to be offered.
It was such a problem that Herbert Marcuse found 1940's Santa Monica California to be unbearably depressing.. I think what depressed him most was that it was a living breathing example that his critical theory was total and utter dog shit..
Just listening to the first few minutes where the lecturer is refuting Marx prediction of "rich getting richer etc" and the middle class is temporary and will be squeezed. I find it unbelievable that this is said with a straight face. Anybody with a pair of eyes can discover the 1% is real and the middle class is disappearing and could be further negated with automation. This guy has a book deal and a job at a university. Now, those are the mad notes which send my passions soaring.
The rich is getting richer but so is the poor. Your claims are ridiculous.
I have come across a different explanation for the rise of postmodernism. It says the immediate desperation created by the enormity of the costs of the world wars created new thinking. The success of the West and failure of the USSR became more clear in the 1960s. So there is some time gap. Do the two phenomena reinforce each other or are they separate? In addition one must take into account the sheer desire and pressure on academics to be novel.
Thank you, voices of reason is the best side to a cup of coffee.
2:00 This is an erroneous comment. The fact that we have more rich people at the top of today's society has everything to do with the fact that we have grown the (neoliberal) capitalist model of society to encompass a much larger global population thus increasing the total of people within the system. As a percentage of people who exist within the global capitalist sphere a much smaller number of individuals control more and more of the wealth and this is a fact. As a comment on the direction of capitalism I would say Marx was pretty much spot on with predicting that this would happen. People being lifted out of poverty is definitely happening and I would argue that this has as much to do with the advance of technology (fueled by capitalism) as it does with the success of capitalism itself. 2:30 - The middle class being squeezed out I would simply point out does happen when we subsidize (socialize?) corporate capitalism and privitaze public commons. 4:30 Please lets discuss the evidence, the studies, the methods of this. - If anyone has the links please reply I would like to read them. I don't disagree with the overall lecture however I feel that his opening arguments are undercut by a somewhat limited perspective and a lack of facts, figures, and sources to back up his assertions. I think the debate over post-modernism vs whatever as I see it being on the TH-cams is a somewhat trite and limited view of the world and of human beings in general.
>a much smaller number of individuals control more and more of the wealth
THats the cause of increasing wealth to increasing numbers or people. I prefer to have Exxon Mobile, rather than me, extract oil from under the ocean.
Speaking of ignoring evidence, I think he is ignoring the rise of the super-rich.
you mean crony-capitalists? Those are a direct result of subsidizing businesses (a marxist ideal at its root).
rodylermglez This is a function of increasing population. Outliers become greater over a higher sample size.
In any case, this is of no detriment to regular people. Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos being super rich in no way hurts me.
rody yes and with capitalism you have the opportunity to in fact become one of the super-rich yourself someday.
Never mind all the people that aren't though? Besides the possibility of that happening are so slim its laughable...
What about the reduction in global poverty? ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty/
Respect to Timbro for translating his book to Swedish! I read it!
I have found society acknowledges that humans are rational/calculable in one sense and idealistic, incalculable, and ever more complex, imperially intellectual in another sense. One of them is active quality (requiring much effort) and other is relatively passive quality (requiring very little effort). People want to get control mathematically or express themselves verbally they can express themselves in a complex manner or in a simple manner. It is harder to get the same amount of control (or quantify a position or a quality of a substance) with less words and yet have the same control as complex structures. This all gets to my opinion that social sciences are better a reaction and not a prediction. Predictions are a long chain of events. (Sadly predictions can be predictable). Reactions tend to be a finite table. That socialism also has moved from being an attempt at prediction to be a form of reaction. That evidence has gutted the main tenants of socialism but people want to go back because of complex words and ideology. Complexity of socialism gives a hope of a more idealistic control. (the intellectually addictive reason) Socialism is intellectually pleasing and we are three days off the sauce. Like a cat with a laser pointer, so to do intellects have an issue. Which was why we had the 60 and catnip to take off the edge. I am not a proponent of catnip or mary jane but... i have been to college and had to be a sober ride home. it is is a theory...
Marx: “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”
Strange. Under his economics, that’s exactly what happens.
I'm highly uneducated - Is that why what he says makes so much sense....
Maybe you are highly educated on a very specific education and you are not aware of it.
I'd highly recommend Dr Richard Wolff. A professor of economics who also finds Marxist critiques of capitalism rather reasonable. He graduated from multiple prestigious universities in the USA. He explains all of it in an astonishingly simple way. Without economic jargon.
Thank God we are hearing more and more people saying the left and far left, instead of democrat and liberal. Just like with radical Islam, we have needed to call it what it is. Leftism entails so much, from centrist modern liberalism, to socialism, communism, progressiveism, etc, it needed to be called out as leftism. I hope we find a better name for it one day, to encompass everything it includes, but for now, I am glad we are seeing leftism named, because a few years ago it wasn't as prevalent.
Really want to see this guy come onto the Waking Up Podcast.
Isn't this a rather lazy analysis?
Certainly I believe in free markets, but how free are modern markets? I submit that a form of Monopsony is developing where there are limited suppliers and excessively complex skeins of information making analysis to arrive at optimum consumer decisions is difficult, perhaps impossible. This is coupled with a decrease in the value of labour which has had the effects predicted by the Marxists, middle-class decline and increasing poverty.
Those who argue that free markets always get optimum results tend to over estimate their capacity to deal with discontinuities, for example, Churchill didn't go for free markets to buy planes, he set-up the Ministry of Aircraft Production and he made its "dictator" that arch capitalist, Lord Beaverbrook.
Understandably, much thinking today is promulgated by those for whom the current system is working well, unfortunately, by ignoring the growing groundswell of discontent, they risk alienating a sufficiently large proportion of society that disruption will eventually result. Thereby we all lose.
There may be some discontent but globally everyone is more rich now because than they have ever been in history. This is if you compound all of the little things like access to food and water, cell phones, cars, bicycles, medicine even people in the amazon have iphones rofl
I think people are discontented because of Marxist propaganda.
The reason we have monopolies developing today is because of government-sanctioning of said monopolies. AT&T for example was a government-sanctioned monopoly. After the government disbanded its sanctions, the telecommunications industry exploded with dozens of new companies starting up, and we went from dial telephones to smart phones over the course of about 50 years.
Dar Eis - If enough people in one country feel that they are worse off because of deregulation, they will vote for more regulation, even if the global economy is restricted as a result. The evidence, the last American election. Fair, balanced and properly administered regulation is good. One of those criteria at least, failed in the Grenfell Tower disaster in West London.
Where is the Marxist propaganda in those thoughts, please?
GreyWolfLeaderTW The term 'government-sanctioned' bothers me. Governments over time are always trying to grow and accumulate power, at all levels. At various time governments have sanctioned and broken monopolies. The most egregious monopoly was government-sanctioned at a time when monopolies, eg. Carnegie's vertical monopolies, were being disbanded by the government of the day. I am talking about the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States. This has probably stolen more wealth from productive individuals than any monopoly ever. Furthermore it has become a template for Central Banks worldwide. Governments will bend to any group with power to achieve their own goal, ie growth. Be wary of any government action and do not assume they act in the common interest. Politicians need to be curbed, rotated and made accountable.
Life did not stop in the 1960's, did it? It was followed by the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00's and 10's. Why does'nt Mr Hicks tell us more about the state of the world under capitalism during those decades?
because that's when the west became much more socialist, the full welfare state in '65
I repeat, why not tell us about the state of the world under capitalism since the 1970s?
Yes, socialism happened. Great society, unions, and now we cannot repair a road without 20 guys watching one guy do some minimum work, and the Big Digs are always massively over budget and late. Read "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy". Penetrating foresight indeed.
Is capitalism working?
Francois de klerk You mean how billions were taken out of poverty and how technology advanced fastest than ever?
Please see “The Myth of Religious Neutrality” by Roy Clouser.
The market in the 50s was still heavily influenced by the state because of wwII. Keynesian economics involved government intervention. The large numbers of middle class were born out of that. Deregulation of large sectors of the economy e.g the banking sectors and others have brought the system back to being more capitalist. The result is the erosion of the middle class and huge increases in poverty and crime. Not to mention the growing welth divide. If you understand this then classical Marxism works just fine. The more capitalist the more class divide. The less capitalist (Keynes) less class divide. Last thing. The 50s had the most amount of unions.
What a bunch of BS. The trends toward monopoly are exactly what happened in our capitalist society before the adoption of Keynesian economics in the 30s and have resumed since their abandonment in the 80s. Marx was exactly right on that particular criticism.
tyler keynesian economics works with capitalism. the theory of keynesian economics simply says that an economy will benefit from having a reduction of interest rates, and an increase in government investment in infrastructure. both things capitalists are all for. and what was marxs critique exactly? because the term keynesian economics wasnt coined until the 1930s, 50 years after marxs death.
It doesn't surprise me that a marxist or marx sympathizer doesn't know economics.
Keynesian economics hasn't stopped, it's thy most dominate economic system globally. The bailouts, stimulus, and low interest rates seen in the US were all examples of Keynesian economic practices and are entirely designed to reduce savings and to increase expenditure to keep the money flowing to circumvent the paradox of thrift by having government bodies spend where society would otherwise be afraid to do so, which Keynes called Animal Spirits. This was the central premise of what Keynesian economics was about, the circular flow and balancing out economic cycles.
Most monopolies nowadays are government created, be they railroad, telecom, and other public utilities and other things deemed, better if centralized. The Scandinavian countries for example also have quite a few state sanctioned monopolies over things like alcohol and gambling. This doesn't also include patent created monopolies which I agree with as it rewards innovation, let alone economics of scale situations which arise especially with local energy companies.
Marx was not Right, you don't know what Keynesian economics entails if you think it ended in the 80's. If you take the US in the 30's or 50's and compare the US to now, we have a lot more resources and goods that people have which were not affordable then. In the 70's, few people in poverty had TV's, in the 2010's, it's common for most people in poverty to have more than 1 TV in the house, along with video game systems for those TVs. The trajectory for people in poverty in regards to quality of life has been going up in terms of material goods and wealth. Most of this was brought about by innovation within Markets rather than any specific policy, which has made products more affordable and better overall.
1234 5678,
I'm no fan of Keynesian Economics, even as practiced in the US. Keynesian Economics only works if a country has Savings, and politicians using Keynesian ideology use it to burn through every ounce a country has, Japan had it's lost decade due to Keynesian economics, and the US will too. Funny enough Keynesian economics takes Marx's crisis of capitalism to heart and was an adaptation of Marx, just how Fascism was an adaptation from Marx as well.
Europe just sucks at it because they have been mixing Expansionary Fiscal Contraction with Expansionary policies. This was due to the fact that Germany benefited from EFC policies, but at the sharp expense of other countries while other countries were wanting to blow up their deficits. Europe's contradicting strategies were effectively worse than doing nothing at all and was once again about Germans putting themselves over all other Europeans.
So the EU's problem is that the EU isn't a good single entity / can't unify economic policy.
I don't have a problem with monopolies as long as they attained monopoly status by providing a good or service that is universally favoured, rather than through coercion. If someone else later comes along with a better/cheaper version of the good or service, then the monopoly will be naturally destroyed. For the benefit of the totalitarians out there, this is called FREEDOM.
Although monopolies could potentially surface in a free market (highly unlikely), the bulk of monopolies we have today are due to direct state involvement vis-a-vis lobbied protective regulation, forced employment benefits, insanely complicated tax systems that the 1% can exploit with accounting loopholes, legislation that requires a legal team to even launch a business in a protected industry. All barriers to entry for your average Joe. It's government meddling in economics that maintains this disparity. If you doubt this, go start a business. If you want to shake your fist at anything, it should be the bloated ever expanding state - not capitalism.
This man is a genius.
I'm willing to believe that people can ascend to a level of high prosperity with a new business if they fill a niche market.
Markus Persson developed a video game independantly and got filthy rich. If you make a special kind of drink, or food item, or niche interest merchandise like t shirts, and special interest paraphernalia, it's not impossible to make it.
The cold, harsh fact is that without capital, you will not become that rich. If you are born into a family that owns 20 houses, and the correlating monetary wealth associated with property ownership, you can quintuple the number of houses you own. You have the capital, the contacts, and the customs to do that. If you are born into a family that has 1 house, you MIGHT be able to afford a second house sometime, if you work hard, get a good education and are successful. If you are born into a family that rents an apartment, even getting 1 house is the ordeal of a lifetime. How many people spend their life just paying off their mortgages?
After the Second Punic War, when the patricians and nobles of Rome bought up the farmlands ruined by the ravages of that war, forcing the everyday farmer to move to Rome and become unemployed or force him to become a slave due to debt. Property, wealth, and power was massively consolated by the already rich. People were forced to live off the state benefits or be enslaved.
Marxism as a solution to political problems is inconceivable, reprehensible, vile. We have seen how it fails. But the descriptions that Marx gave about economic developments of capital and capitalism hold up. Who here would seriously think opening a small business with capital and beginning resources and competing with big companies like Monsanto, Coca Cola, Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, FedEx, McDonalds or Disney is a good idea? Your market will be cornered, bought up, and cartellised.
The main reason for the flip from Marxism to Cultural-Marxism was the prediction that if a great was where to start, the workers will band t
The economic failure of Marxism may have been a factor...
In my experience Freud and psycho analytic theory plays a much more significant role as a precursor to Post Modernism - for it not to be mentioned and the guy teaches at a University - wow
What do you think of Aristotle’s distinction between experience and knowing causes?
Hence the need for unfettered "growth"...
Youre in Cuba or North Korea?
Envy, the worst emotion if not controlled.
Aristocratic rule will forever be amorphous as aristocracy and proper society no long belong to a class but to an ideation and vision. The aristocratic emphasis in terms of attitude has become a means of wielding your health as wealth and vice versa, aka to match as best you can what used to be only for a certain kind of person within a class. “It’s only proper that the blue collar working shape laws around alcohol availability.”
Socialised insanity
I’m a transistorized, transgenederized, modernized transhuman.
A corporatized, commercialized, industrial-strength consumer
A goal setting, gym sweating, debt fretting freak
A social climbing networker that’s always on heat
I got my education, majoring in indoctrination
Where they taught me to comply, to never question why
And so I’m chasing an illusion, of success that’s a delusion
That is sending me insane, exploding my brain
Because there is no greater profanity, than treating your humanity
As a mere commodity, its depraved insanity
And so as we teeter on the brink, soon to be extinct
I always wear a smile, cos I’m living in denial
Indoctrinated zombies
Yes. Ignore the salesman and read the label purely to compare its claims to the more trustworthy customer reviews.
I want to elaborate a bit on Mr. Hicks notion of Marxism being a kind of religion. It's also a means of fostering self-esteem at a very low cost. The german-speaking peoples call them "Gutmenschen" (literal translation: good or moral people), meaning that they pose as ethically superior to others. Of course, from such a pose, claims to power can be deduced (how practical!). You don't have to distribute your own wealth to the poor, you just have to demand this from others, in order to belong to this group of "morally high-standing" people. It's just a wonderful tool to feel superior to others. -
And Marxists have developped a nice little tactic to minimize the relevance of their clash with reality: They belittle wide-spread welfare in capitalist countries as "consumerism". If you can't deny reality, you can still denounce it.
The german brownshirt term Gutmenschen is attributed to sorts of middle class behaviour that has nothing in common with marxism and is considered dogwhistling vocabulary by an overwhelming majority of germans.
Alas incorrect - Marx did not say "The poor get poorer", he did say "The rich get rich faster than the poor through accumulation" - the iron law of immiseration is refuted in both Grundrisse and Theories of Surplus Value.
Concentration of wealth is at its highest in human history, is that not a legitimation of Marx's claim that the wealth gap has a tendency to increase under capitalism? Capital in the 21st century has given a scientific, data-based grounding to this notion.
yeah....right
Being deeply religious and intellectual doesn't require someone to lie to themselves. The practice of a religion, like scientific knowledge, can evolve and be compartmentalized. In the end, none of us will ever fully understand how the universe exists no matter what, and our human existence, fortunately, doesn't require it.
The problem I have with people who question religion, in broad edicts, is that they tend to oversimplify their understanding of its place in the world. Just like socialists that never take into account the reality of human nature, some people forget the positive effects that religion has given us and only see the negatives.
Right, right, right right right
The trouble about socialism is it’s really enamoured with the revolution. Not so much on the day to day after the revolution.
"offensive against reason" / "nobody really knows the truth" (just past the 5 minute mark)
This sound like Immanuel Kant in a nutshell, and the whole Marxism/postmodernism thing began in earnest right there.
Philosophy is the intellectual discipline that underlies all others. The central question in philosophy is, How do we know what we know? The question has been addressed by thinkers throughout history, but in the 18th century Kant claimed that we could never truly know anything, because our tools were limited: the "thing in itself" was not necessarily the thing as we humans saw it. Unfortunately, this amounted to divorcing reason from reality, the most tragic philosophical blunder in history. It led people to believe they had to choose one side or the other -- reason or reality. Basically Kant's viewpoint is a whine that we humans are not God.
Next, G. W. F. Hegel claimed to take the side of "reason", but was mostly talking about things that did not even exist in reality. He went on at length about "Spirit" or "Idea", as if it were a real entity, rather than (at best) a metaphor. He also placed excessive importance on "dialectic", or thesis / antithesis / synthesis, which is a very marginal concept in epistemology. His philosophy was essentially a religion dressed up in secularized clothes. Hegel was merely the L. Ron Hubbard of his day.
Karl Marx famously "stood Hegel on his feet", as he said in response to critics. His philosophy was "materialistic" where Hegel's was "idealistic". But these are the two sides of the false mind-body dichotomy exacerbated by Kant. And Marx made several mistakes.
Perhaps most importantly, he didn't understand capitalism or the nature of trade. He certainly didn't understand profit -- he thought there was a fixed amount of wealth in existence, and therefore that one man's profit necessarily was another's loss. He did not clue in that people act to create (as well as consume or destroy) wealth every day, and that people trade because they both believe they are better off making the deal.
Marx seemed to operate as though everyone was essentially just like himself, i. e., an intellectual who preferred to (and who had the brainpower to) focus his thoughts elsewhere than on the day-to-day aspects of existence.
He also misconstrued the concept of alienation, although this is an issue of psychology, a field had yet to take off, so he was "winging it". Perhaps he had an attention deficit disorder of some sort; the comment that one should be able, if one desired, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening and criticize after dinner gives credence to the possibility. As a rule it is not possible to work like this; farming, for instance, is generally considered to be a nearly 24/7 job. The division of labour is one of the major reasons for the rising standard of living.
Marx knew work was important but didn't come to the correct conclusion as to why -- namely that pride in the successful completion of productive work one enjoys is a major component of one's happiness in being alive.
After the First World War, Marxists in Europe wondered why the working class was in no hurry to overthrow capitalism, which is what Marx had predicted (even though this was nothing more than "magical thinking"). Living standards were rising under capitalism, and advances in science were making life decidedly easier.
One early twentieth-century Marxist thinker, Antonio Gramsci, thought revolution via infiltration of societal institutions and the culture might be more successful than an attempt at their violent overthrow (a notion dubbed "the long march through the institutions” by Sixties radical Rudi Dutschke). This effectively identifies how philosophical ideas spread -- be they good or bad.
Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School hit upon the idea of recruiting the underclasses -- minorities, the poor and downtrodden, immigrants, victims of discrimination, the psychologically unstable and the disaffected in general -- as a substitute working class for the purpose of overthrowing capitalism. This strategy is still highly active today, and in fact it has achieved prominence in western culture, as the continuous denunciations of “racism” (sometimes real but very often imagined) make quite clear.
Marcuse's is as thuggish and malevolent a philosophy as has ever been formulated. "Tolerance" is for those who adhere to it alone. Dissenters can be fobbed off by accusations of "false consciousness". Freedom is called "violence" and violence is sometimes called "democracy". The deliberate mis-labeling of concepts is rampant in Marxism today, being one of numerous tactics in its struggle to seize power.
Since the goal is to destroy capitalism, a vigorous defense of the system is necessary. If the average person clearly understood why free market capitalism raises his standard of living while government intervention lowers it, it would be much easier to get him onside.
The most fundamental concept in economics is trade. Everything one consumes, and trades for, must be produced first. The economy consists of all acts of voluntary trade between individuals for mutual benefit -- i. e., profit. Progress -- a rising standard of living -- arises from the efforts of those who find ways to make more or better goods and services at the same or lower cost. The consumer saves while the businessman makes a profit (much of which is reinvested in future production). That's a win-win scenario.
Capitalism is the economic system in which government does not interfere with individual decisions regarding what to produce and trade and what to ask in return. It brought an enormous rise in the standard of living following the Industrial Revolution. That meant a shorter work-week, more leisure, and earlier retirement. But a vast and still growing array of interventionist measures has brought this progress to a near-standstill in recent decades - all of it, sadly, implemented by democratically-elected governments. People have been throwing away thousands of dollars in foregone wealth creation and remuneration through their votes. The rise of part-time, contract and "precarious" work, with an attendant increase in stress on the individual, is fully the result of these interventionist measures.
Government intervention usually causes people to choose not to produce and trade at the same level that they would have done in its absence, thus lowering their standard of living. It often distorts the economy by making bad decisions look good, and usually rewards the least productive at the expense of the most. It can cause a nation to consume more than it produces, making the standard of living plummet: see Zimbabwe or Venezuela. The cohort of bureaucrats and consultants who grow fat off government programs will go down with the ship in that event.
There is no central authority that "runs the economy" under capitalism, which consists of a multitude of individual voluntary trading decisions. The only incentive to business should be the desire to make a profit by providing consumers with products they want. The detrimental effects of government interference in individual trade decision-making cannot be blamed on capitalism.
Three characteristics of government should always be borne in mind.
First, the obvious: government is coercive; it can push people around under certain circumstances. These must be strictly defined and limited. Government is supposed to be an agent of self-defence that helps to protect individual rights, not a force for "social engineering", based on statistical studies that are challenged and often refuted a few years later anyway. Coercive measures cannot improve the production of goods and services or aid the discovery of scientific knowledge; they are destructive. "Social engineering" must be ended.
Second, government officials do not gain special insight into economic, social or any other kind of problems by virtue of their position. In particular, they cannot replace the millions of individual economic value-judgments that people make every day. Governments do not have magic wands to solve problems; if they had, they would have been waved long ago. Government usually just makes a mess. Read any Auditor-General's report (this is the official who tracks the effectiveness of government spending in Canada and many provinces). There are two things one can read in the press almost daily: reports of the incompetence of politicians and others in government, and loud calls from "progressives" to have practically everything turned over to politicians and others in government. This is clear evidence that they are interested only in ruling the masses, not in helping them.
Third, government officials are often protected from the detrimental consequences of their actions. When a private business is failing, bankruptcy can be declared, losses cut, the mis-allocation of resources stopped. When a government initiative squanders money or reduces productivity, the depredations can go on much longer because of government's powers to tax and to legislate. Coercion, in the guise of taxes and regulation, is the penny in the economic fusebox that prevents dangerous situations from being corrected, or even acknowledged. And when the public education system decides to adopt methods to teach reading that fail miserably, it may take decades to correct.
It is savings -- unconsumed production -- that gives people the time and resources to find ways to further raise their productivity. But all coercive government measures impair savings. The Keynesian emphasis on spending marks his economic theories as largely fraudulent. In particular, his comment that to pay a person to dig a ditch and fill it in is beneficial to the economy was preposterous. Nothing is being produced, but resources are being consumed. This is obviously detrimental to the standard of living.
Much of the opposition to capitalism comes from persons who have no interest in the world of business. This is not a failing; there is a place in the world for the likes of artists, scientists and professionals. There is great variety among people; some will do just about anything they can be trained for, happy to be busy, while others have a strong preference for a limited number of fields, perhaps only one, and would be miserable doing anything else. This split in attitude is sometimes described as "work to live" versus "live to work". But all should remember that the high standard of living brought by free market capitalism gives artists and intellectuals a greater chance to work in their desired profession and to succeed in it. Therefore they should not bite the hand that helps feed them, and should have some respect for the "suits", even though they may have no desire to join them.
Some opponents of capitalism have taken issue with the division of labour, perhaps not realizing the enormous efficiency gains in having each person specialize in one task. Another prominent objection focuses on profit. But there is not a fixed amount of wealth in existence, where one person's gain must be another's loss. Wealth is created, traded and consumed; trades are made for mutual benefit. There is no conflict between people and profit, nor between capital and labour. Real wages rise in proportion to capital investment per worker. A person pushing buttons on a machine can produce far more there than he could by his own brute force in the wilds of nature. He benefits immensely from similar technological advancement in other industries.
Finally, worldwide peace can only be attained under capitalism.
"the rich get richer and the poor get... children!" please tell me someone else gets this.
The last I heard was the communist state of China is growing at 6% a year. Like classical Marxism there is no private ownership of land in China. So on the basis of evidence should we conclude a blend of state communism/open markets works just fine?
The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else Paperback - July 9, 2003
by Hernando De Soto (Author)
A lot is rooted in the ideological Atheism, because with our some idea of God you surrender objectivity and embrace subjectivity.
Communism in 1920 “we didn’t lose, we simply failed to win.”
R.i.p. Canada
Does this guy take a look at evidence ? It seems he lives in a marvelous world, meanwhile here in third world countries we live in a parallel world.
Similar insights on the falsification of Marxism (and someone going the route of “changing their religion”) can be found in János Kornai’s autobiography “By Force of Thought”; when Marxism didn’t work the way he expected, he analyzed it, critiqued it and explained why he thought it was better to create market economies with democratic institutions; sadly, not many are willing to “change their religion” when reality doesn’t match the facts
A couple of points: Marxism did not become postmodernism, in fact they have often been enemies (Habermas-Lyotard for example). Some scholars even see the postmodern turn as a conservative movement. Second, it is easy for arm chair critics today to simply claim that Marxism, socialism etc was and is nothing but trouble, however, you should consider that without all those nasty workers movements and socialists there would be no middle class, no 8 hour work day and your kid would still work in a mine. It's simply historically incorrect to claim otherwise. Read up on what capitalism looked like during Marx' days and get absolutely horrified by how absolutely terrifying it was. Stop viewing Marxism through the prism of the 20th century and understand that a free market system only creates the possibility of material wealth, but that without democracy and regulation it leads to oligarchy, not prosperity. Third, the middle class (especially in the US) has been shrinking in the last decades while the rich get richer, so in the long run (if the trend continues) Marx was absolutely right. Communism both in theory and practice is not desirable at all, however, our current wealth and comfort is not the result of 19th century unbridled capitalism. It is the result of the democratization of the free market.
Ojdå, is he holding that speech in Sweden? No bloody way
Godel's incompleteness theorem does have implications regarding truth though (see Tarski).
You dont bump into trees when you walk, do you? When you start inside Kants head, dont be surprised if you find nothing complete.
Capitalism was backed up by imperialism and colonialism, this doesn't seem to be mentioned when we consider the flourishing of free market economies
Yeah, sure. 4 -10 people in the USA 2018 owning the same that the other 50% of the country. And similar situation globally wise. Marx is not dead, the guy seems rather healthier than before.
I'm not a Marxist and I pretty much agree with what he says here, but it's pretty much conjecture and the fact that he leans heavily into the religous analogy I think is a mistep, I think you could totally pick it to pieces using Kante as the basis of your argument. I'm not a particularly religous man, but science definitely does not disprove religion and the people who think it does, in my experience, seem to be both arrogant and have not given it enough thought. Ironically the leap of faith required to be an aetheist is just as big if not bigger than the one required to be a believer, so much so in fact that it is basically a religion in itself, but it lacks the positive elements of religion.
How can poor get more poor? That's like when people say common sense, it's not that common!
I've never encountered Hicks before this moment, and I don't know if there's a more elaborate version of what he says in this video, but then again who ever did serious research before posting a fucking TH-cam comment?
Preceding the rhetorical circle-jerk that ensued because of the fellow to the left of the audience, Hicks basically asserts that Marx's original formulation of capitalism's end-game has not come to pass. To me, this seems positively untrue. Does the West not have a 1%? Do we not have an increasingly oligarchical model in the areas of the economy that actually matter, i.e. energy, technology, and media? I would like to know his thoughts on Neoliberalism, which I believe (and correct me if I'm wrong) to be the newly realized end-game of late-Capitalism. That's another thing: who the fuck deals with classical Marx anymore? Classical Marx is no longer relevant - rather, go after his later, more relevant derivations.
edit: I'm adding a comment I saw by hal900x, which resonated with my complaint...
"This guy basically describes our current fiscal situation (increased economic stratification, monolithic corporatism, shrinking middle class) and then says "it's just the opposite!" with no sources whatsoever."
He's behind the data on the possible existence of a personal God. The intelligent design hypothesis gains steam with advances in contemporary science, almost at the pace that science challenged religion 150 years ago.
People who cling to the idea of capitalism being a success restrict themselves to a myopic worldview. They tend to see success in purely material terms and are willing to deny that capitalism depends on compound growth which in a world with finite resources is a logical impossibility. They also often reject any scientific evidence about anthropogenic climate change because it disturbs their romantic vision of the future. They tend to regard those who point out these problems as scientifically illiterate. ln a child like way they also like to accuse anyone who suggests the possibility of a less unequal and more sustainable future of simply being jealous of the amount of stuff they own, and even the attractiveness of their wives.
As far as his thoughts on religion are concerned he is correct as far as he goes. However, he fails to understand what faith is since he has never believed in anything outside himself. (my personal opinion after reading his writings.)But faith is very simple. I believe that if I flip a switching electricity will create light. I don't have to know how, only that it will.
Personally, I believe and agree with 2 quotes: That Christianity is both Faith and Reason… reason alone leads to relativism and faith alone leads to superstition. You're going to need both.
Pope John Paul
I you live life as a Christian and God exists, then when you die what have you lost? But if you deny God and he does exist, then when you die you have lost everything."
CS Lewis (I believe)
bigd95822 yea brother, blessed be the tech priests of the cult mechanicus, for the omnissah grants us light and i question it not.
oh sorry wrong made up fantasy world.
You're wearing a costume of a spam can and your criticizing me?
Proverbs 26:11 As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness.
Not the capitalists who made more people richer, fewer poorer. That is due to political decisions and reforms.
So does Mr. Hicks ever site any sources for his assertion that the exact opposite of Marxist predictions have all come true? Because it sounds diametrically opposed to reality. For example, he says that we are becoming less class-stratified, less concentration of wealth, etc. Every study and report I've been exposed to, as well as my subjective experience, says that wealth inequality has steadily increased. Where do his facts come from?
Not those he made up for his uneducated sermon, but Lenin did indeed recognize that Marx' predictions regarding the stock market's behaviour were wrong.
5:12 yyyup
Capitalism is antifragile - it occurs spontaneously in any environment at any scale and is adaptive - it is resilient in very hash conditions. Even the Soviets could not stamp it out fully. Marxism/Socialism is not antifragile and the fact some who advocate for it say we have never had it to argue against it's proven failure in Russia, China and elsewhere is to conseed this point. So it's 10 - 0 to Capitalism before a ball is even kicked. Marx never understood this antifragile attribute of capitalism, yet it is so powerful and so fundamental. Marxism is basically like astrology except astrology is more accurate - unevudenced and based on personal dogmas.
Why do critics of Marx's political theory equate socialism with communism? I feel like that is sort of a major misunderstanding.
Also, I'm here for discussion. Please don't begin labeling me and acting in antagonizing ways.
Americans, is the American middle-class dying?
Ryungun Rie sorry sir, but the condition is terminal.
Ryungun Rie sorta. Stagnation grips the ballz.
Postmodernism is a time period, not a philosophy. A necessary consecuence of capitalism I might add. Postmodern philosophers are describing postmodernism. This been going on since late seventies. I am all for passing to another time period, but this retreat is not going anywhere. Assume that there is no territory anymore, see the emptiness behind the representations, and start working with that. If you can, of course. It takes some great deal of cojones to do that.
no, its a cultural logic term. describes the mode of thought that produces certain literary or art forms, which can be analyzed with contiguity. but the era itself doesn't describe the system of thought itself. Its interesting because post modernism is still defining itself, yet also running out of fire.
Not only "literary or art forms", but all communication. And everything is communication.
Time period, not an era. And durka dance party is right, more precisely is a cultural logic term. A cultural logic term that is trying to define a time period. Or rather, the system of thought that molds that time period. Until you understand that, no conversation is posible.
Another darling of the mega rich
Stop claiming that propaganda is philosophy.
Not even ten seconds into this, and already this prof is wrong. Marx PREDICTED that what would follow capitalism would be ways that factory owners could maintain a reserve supply of future factory workers. If temporarily laid off, these past and sure-to-be future workers need to be kept in shape so they can jump right back into the fray when needed. And somebody has to pay for their upkeep and training while they prep to become workers, or wait to be needed again.
In other words Marx predicted in the middle of the 19th Century that some elements of socialism would be needed by factory owners in the 20th and 21st Centuries, perhaps even after that.
Marx predicted correctly, and now he's blamed for a few of those in training to be future factory workers seemingly milking their learning time, milking it for a lifetime. The vast majority of those who get trained to be workers, or are temporarily not workers and receive unemployment benefits, eventually spend almost their entire lives working for the man and paying taxes!!
So because Marx predicted the role of socialism quite accurately, that means he invented socialism? To mentally challenged people, yes: the answer is yes.
It's insane ideological differences result in violence. We've been here before and gulags should teach us about what Marxism really is. Most people don't know that Karl Marx wasn't a supporter of Marxism
Scholarship is the delight in having caught a worm.
-Nietzsche
People don’t think about their future selves let alone the past, especially those in self destructive mode
@@07wrxtr1 Innate ideas are impossible.
Stalinism is not Marxism Stalin had those who believed in Marxism killed the ignorance of Soviet history in this channel is incredible
Although I agree with virtually everything he said, I don't like how he tried to create a strawman of religious zealots who avoid reason as if there is conclusive evidence to against God, or against ALL religions... Being religious doesn't inhibit from reasonable thinking if anything it empowers it. So aside from that strawman fallacy assertion that all religious people are religious despite direct evidence against their faith, I would agree with him on all points regarding the left.
I think he gives them FAR too much credit. He presents them as going through some kind of epistemological crisis, but that assumes they ever cared about epistemology in the first place. The Left has taken a "by any means necessary" approach to politics for long before the 1950's. Marx's chutzpah in calling his ideas "scientific" suggests he was always willing to justify the means for the ends. He may have cared about epistemology, but not enough to let it get in the way of his agenda.
And I think his followers care much less. It wasn't an epistemological crisis that led to post-modernism. It was a credibility crisis. They used facts and well-constructed arguments for as long as they served them well. In the 1950's, when facts and well-constructed arguments failed them, they switched to obscurantism and the denial of reality. They'd get their way "by any means necessary."
Where on earth today is the middle class growing???
Almost everywhere in the world where Marxism has been abandoned.
China
Just call it marxism for hells sake. In fact feck it with all the emerging terms and definitions lets all speak Latin again
PhilosophyInsights, If you don't want ideas and coments that run counter to what your videos tell, then do not upload any, as simple as that. Why is the point of uploading videos if you get offended by ideas and comments different to those you like? Have you heard of freeedom of thought?
World pobrrty report saysotherwise
they did socialism wrong again in venezuela . oh well ... they get it right next time im sure.
This channel is probably funded by the Atlas Network
agree on Marx in general but the social analysis is outdated inequality is on the rise today the data are clear about it
All Americans are bred to despise marx so it's not your fault I guess that you are unable to see past that
couldnt the left argue that while free market capitalism has indeed produced great wealth, left wing social policies in those societies have helped to balance out the distribution of said wealth more fairly thereby elevating the weak and poor ? in other words they embrace a "middle way"?
is it not a bigger and more important endeavor to analyze why our current generation has so embraced these false ideologies, esp when there is so much information available?- as stated the denial goes deep- one non theological reason worth theorizing upon, I believe, might be the adoption into western society in the fifties till present of the child centered rearing model- or child empowerment, where no rules, boundaries, or limitations that would ruin the child's creative growth into all they can be is highly espoused and practiced in our educational system and at home; but its really producing rebellion, entitlement, narcissism, and the adoption of destructive ideologies.mmm??mm
Postmodernism isn't marxism. Simple. Pomos rejected marxism. And marxists were still around when pomo was popular. Theres a history of conflict between pomo and marxism. Stating otherwise is ignorance.
A lot of intelligence here, BUT as often is the case a hazy and somewhat dishonest linking of Communism and Socialism. Has he, for example, ever heard of Christian Socialism?
This argument is moot. Automation is going to eliminate roughly half of all jobs in the near future. Time to leave this old debate behind and start looking at a completely different reality with completely different questions. One reality is going to be that the barrier to entry in most fields is going to be so high that the only competition will be between enormous multinational corporations. For example GM is getting into the ride share business with autonomous cars. There is about to be a clash of the Titans for the entire transportation industry. The 2 or so winners will probably lobby to make private ownership of automobiles illegal and force you to use their service. You think some schmuck is going to invent something in his garage that can compete? Those big corporations now have engineering departments that patent every new technology imaginable to stop anyone from competing with them. I obviously can't address everything here, but the old Socialism v Capitalism is as outdated as who makes the best brand of typewriter.
Respectfully, I disagree with Stephen Hicks concerning, "What they really want to believe"? Many don`t fit the latter straw man example. They don`t "want" to believe they already believe! Conversely, many people believe because as individuals they know that profound religious experiences transcend logic and reason. They may question the experience but the profoundness of it is so radical and life changing that no logical criticism can move them from their truth claim buttressed by personal faith based upon a meta narrative. An example would be where scripture indicates that man`s reason is unable to comprehend the things and motives of God concerning wisdom, knowledge and revelation.
Faith, then, sustains and explains the unexplained. This is a common protestant default position. Faith then is built on the latter principle, not by reason and logic alone, but rather, by revelation as well. Stephen Hicks is wrong about the two choices only available when confronted with doubt based on reason and logic as he asserts at 5:16. Having said this, free thinking and subjective experience is not a slave to the collective and mandatory group think mentality and still considered a value of the conservative Christian intellect as one who clings to the biblical world view--even when they are educated and critical thinkers. The danger of liberal thinking, even though I respect it, is the deification of human intellect. Faith steers the adherent away from this because deity is ultimately God and the concept of God requires faith at the end of the day.
> profound religious experiences transcend logic and reason.
Focus your mind.