Over the month of March we talked about Karl Marx so let's look at some comments. Before we start though,
one quick announcement, something quite exciting has happened with the channel, and at
time of recording I'm not allowed to tell you about it, which is frustrating because by the time this
episode comes out I think I would be allowed to, but I'm not sure... But next week there might be some extra videos
/video, or maybe in the weeks after? Next week there'll be a normal video at the usual
time on Friday but there might also be some extra stuff happening around the sides of that, and that's all I can really tell you about right now.
But I'm really excited about it; it's a really big deal, and if you follow me on the Twitters and the Facebooks then you'll find out all the
details as soon as I am contractually allowed to tell you. Anyway, let's look at comments.
In part 1 of the series we talked about Marx's labour theory of value and why he thinks capitalism
is exploitative, and Qwenter33 asked, "Well,
if you're working in capitalist
production and you're happy, are you really being exploited?
And yeah, that's something that I thought about too when I read Marx as well, and I think it's fair
to push him on what the content of that exploitation is, especially if we're saying it
makes people's lives worse. Marx lived in Victorian England where a lot of people
were very very unhappy with their jobs, just like now a lot of people are very unhappy with their jobs. So I think he could start
replying by saying that if you are happy working in capitalist production you're probably one of the lucky ones.
You're probably the exception rather than the rule. I think he could also say that even if you're happy under capitalism, because
he thinks you are always being paid less than the true value of what your labour is worth you could
always be better off under a different system. So you might be Ok but if you were under a different system you would actaually be even better.
And I think he would also say that tendency of capitalism to try and screw people over, and not have any brakes like we talked about in Part 2, and try and nickel and
dime a little bit more labour out of people - I think he would say that that tendency is always there. So even if you're happy he would say you're
probably not very secure in that happiness.
So I think he could begin to make some replies to that idea but yes I think you're right to bring that up and it is an important discussion worth having.
In Part 2 we looked at what Marx thinks the consequences of capitalism are, including
Alienation, and apparently I absolutely butchered the German pronunciation of "Gattungswesen?"
That's probably still incorrect? In my defence, that word is rated 5/5 difficulty on howtopronounce.com.
I'm sorry to everyone who watches the show from Germany.
Roland xB said that capitalism means freedom whereas the kind of system that Marx has in
mind does not. And you are certainly not the only person in history to say that!
I just wanna present the other side of that to you though and argue a different side,
maybe you'll hear something interesting, or something to think about; you can take it or leave it. I think a Marxist could definately
say that they too value freedom, both for the individual and generally, and that they want to live in a democratic society. There are democratic Marxists.
I think they would just say that screwing over other people should not included in your freedoms.
All of the Marxists that I know personally; none of them are against democracy, all of them want to live in a democratic society. And I think
all of the Marxists I know personally are actually more liberal than what in politics is called liberalism.
I think they might also challenge you and say that capitalism doesn't really offer people true freedom: a
lot of people have to work jobs that they don't like making profit for somebody else that they are prevented from sharing in, and they have to do that or they end up
on the streets. And a Marxist might say to you, "Well that's not really freedom. We think that's freedom because we're can choose what colour underpants
we wear and what we have for lunch but that's not a free society at all."
People brought up atrocities that have been committed by Marxist societies, and yes we rightly remember
the gulags and the famines of Stalinist Russia. But again I wanna
present to you the other side of that and say that well, we see atrocities being committed by capitalist societies too. And those atrocities are more
often overlooked or minimised, or not tied back to
capitalism as often as
the crimes of regimes that call themselves Marxist are
tied back to Karl Marx. Are we as keen to tie the United State's interfering
in Latin American democracies to capitalism - the protection of profits for US companies - as we are to tie the gulags to Stalin's version of Marxism? I don't think we are.
That's absolutely not to sideline the crimes of Marxist regimes and I'm not saying that we should forget about those at all,
I'm just saying, my point is, I think to say that capitalism means freedom and Marxism means
not-freedom is a hasty move there. Like I said there's two sides to that, you can take that or leave it.
In Part 3 of the series we talked about the history and use of term Cultural Marxism, and a lot of people came
over from 4chan's politics board to..."discuss" things in the comments, which was...interesting.
Some people suggested that Cultural Marxism could mean taking class conflict theory and saying,
"Ok rather than societies being divided into classes that are determined by their relations
to the means of production like Marx said, Cultural Marxism means saying that society is divided into classes and these are determined by their race, and their gender and so on.
And yeeaaaahhh... I can kindof see where you're coming from there, certainly some very interesting work has been
done modelling race, gender, and other groups like that as class, and certainly there's interesting things we could talk about there; we've talked about some of them on this channel before,
when we note that wealth is distributed unevenly
across those groups and that social and political engagement is restricted
to different degrees across those groups. So yyeeeahhh I can kindof see where those people were coming from. I still think that the term is used a little bit more widely than that,
and that's why I still think it's kindof vague. Like William Lind, the person who really drove this idea that it's linked to political correctness, used it a bit more widely than that.
used it a little bit more widely than that, and I still see it used as a negative thing as well, rather than just a
descriptor. But yeah that is an interesting use of it and something cool to talk about.
I'll have to bring that up at my next Feminist Jewish Illuminati SJW Secret World Order meeting. They'll be interested to hear about that.
And in Part 4 we talked about the possible future of capitalism and how information technology might make it difficult
for capitalism to endure. Quite a few people pointed out that information technology does not have zero production
costs; if you copy a computer program or you distribute it on the internet it does take a tiny amount of electricity and a tiny amount of virtual storage
space to do that, and yes you are quite right, but that also kindof
misses the point, because Paul Mason, the economist we were talking about, doesn't
need the cost of production for software to be zero, he just needs it to approach zero. And as we use information technology,
in production more and more, it will cause everything else's value to shrink and approach zero. He doesn't need it to actually hit zero for, he thinks, capitalism
to find it impossible to turn a profit without using the kind of backhanded safety measures that we were talking about last time.
Similarly, a lot of people said that writing a computer program does take labour, and yes
you are absolutely correct, but once you've got it you can can copy it and distribute it for almost no labour. So if you're got 1,000 computer
programs, yes it took a lot of labour to produce that first one, but in those 1,000 computer programs the value gets diluted, if you like. So each one can only pass on a negligible amount of value to any products that it makes,
which will cause those products' value to shrink, Mason says. So yes those are very true points that a lot of people brought up, but value doesn't need to actually hit zero for Mason to be correct.
He just needs it to start moving towards zero very rapidly.
Speaking of rapidly changing value, I think people must really have enjoyed the Marx series because
it's been an amazing month for me on Patreon: I've got a whole bunch more patrons to say thank you to! All your rewards are in progress,
don't worry: I've emailed you all about them. So thank you to
Jesse Austin, Samuel Woods, Ilinca Cristea, Joshua Bessent, Michael Hill, Kurt Yost, D.J.
MacIsaac, Lydia and Nate Thorn, Thomas Zei, Courtney, Jeffrey Peckham, Bobby, Glenn Murphy,
Emiliano Heyns and Horatio Cordero! Whoa! I think I'm gonna have to start putting people's
names up as text at the end of the episode and just reading out the new names every time I get a new patron, because honestly we're gonna be here all day otherwise!
There's over 100 backers now on Patreon and your names are all in the description! So thank you to everyone who supports the show; I really, really appreciate it - I'm touched!
That's all the time I've got this week, thanks very much for watching. Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't done already, and do stay tuned on the Facetweets
and all the other social media feeds and keep your eyes peeled next week for exciting stuff happening.