Comments by "Aidan B" (@aidanb58) on "TIKhistory"
channel.
-
@postie48
Part 2
Mixed economies are, by definition, capitalist. The state may participate in the economy (most often to bolster it) and may set up its own systems to help or hurt the citizenry, but the economy is still without a doubt capitalists. Social democrats are still not socialists, which is, again, why they keep reminding people that their mixed economic system that is often praised by socialists is, in fact, capitalists. No, child, parts can't be both at the same time, if it is part of a private economy or in service to one, such as the policies you mention, it is capitalist. Health Services in a capitalist economy... are capitalist. None of these people are "fully socialist," or working in "socialist organizations," what you mean is that they're working in state-run organizations that exist for the benefit of a capitalist economy. But then again, you don't even care about your own definition of socialism, so why should I bother pointing out how liberally you flaunt the actual one?
So, deflection. When I bring up how the neo-nazis, fascists, ethnonationalists ect of today proudly march with the right, as they always have, your response is "but some called themselves socialists!" which isn't even true. No, child, most of them did not consider themselves socialists, Mussolini for example often wrote about his rejection of socialism and made clear his right-wing foundation of ideology, American fascists openly rejected socialism, liberalism, and the left in their alliances with capitalist industry and the old conservative guard, British fascists supported a deeply private system and accused arguments in favor of socialism of being part of the antisemetic conspiracy they supported, and fascist spain, again, openly rejected socialism and proudly declared its ideological war on socialists. In fact, really only one group (and its spin offs) labelled themselves as socialists, the nazis, and that was after hitler had opposed the inclusion of the word, privately stated his opposition to its usage to describe his ideology, and later purged those that included the word after they began to leave the party in huge numbers due to his anti-socialist policy and his attempted to redefine the term socialism to simply mean nationalism. So, no, fascists didn't call themselves socialists, it wasn't even "in the name." The reason your assertion isn't acceptable to those you call "revisionists" (likely historians) is because your assertion isn't true. The definition of socialism largely hasn't changed except in the rhetoric of conservatives that oppose it. You're trying to claim that all definitions change to get out of the fact that no definitions support your assertion, historical or otherwise. Also, Marx and Engels didn't advocate for government intervention but a stateless socially owned society, but that's a bit beyond you, isn't it. Just stop lying.
The fascists didn't claim to be socialist, openly rejected socialism, and did not fit the definition of socialism in any way. They praised private property, rejected state ownership/control/administration of the means of production and distribution in the strongest possible terms, and advocated for competition, private property, profit. Socialism is not defined as state ownership, control, or administration, but rather, social ownership. So, no, by the definitions of the time and current accepted definitions, they were not socialist, but far right conservative. They were thugs and murders that murdered people along conservative lines for right wing goals, but hey, here you are trying to defend them and minimize their crimes. So live with the fact that you've been proven wrong, and that no matter how complex and multi-faceted history is, it still has no place for revisionism.
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
@oaples8790 And i'm neither a capitalist nor a socialist, so yes, they have their problems, but some nuance must be applied. When the biggest issue of a rising socialist country isn't their own ideology, but the biggest industrial and militaristic superpower on the planet trying to invade them or whittle them down for the sake of "containment," of course you'd have a bad track record. Hell, you see similar things in the turning point of the end of absolute monarchism, where far more revolutions were crushed than ones that ever succeed. Those clearly didn't happen because the ideas were failures, because we live by those ideas today. That's where we apply nuance. Capitalism has worked better so far, of that I won't deny. But as it goes into the future, like a tool, it seems to be dulling, and rusting. Capitalism worked because it was an efficient way to divide limited resources among those who deserved it the most. But the resources are no longer so limited. We could feed the world, if we wanted to. We already make more than enough food. That is an issue, one of many, that capitalism cannot solve.
And you were proven wrong when it was pointed out to you that socialism is not simply nationalization for the sake of it, but rather can be done without nationalization entirely, and if things are nationalized, must be done in proper socialist principles that hitler obviously did not abide by.
2
-
2
-
@oaples8790 Yep, that's what it's meant for a good long while. There are different variations, of course. In some, the government manages the factory, and you just vote on how the government does it. In some, like you said, the government gives the workers control of their own factory. In some, the workers control it without any government. Sometimes the local community owns it, sometimes the entire nation can have a say in it. Different types of socialism, but all with the same goal of putting the means of production in the hands of the greater community, not just the state. So yes, the way you described it is pretty much socialism. The workers as a whole decide how the factory should be run, not the bosses. And you can find this in pretty much all socialist writings, from Marx to Proudhon. There's plenty of work on the subject, and many more specific complexities, but yes the way you described it certainly works as the end goal of socialism.
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
@VeaFlea You called "these people" "more greedy than anybody." I don't see that as much other than an insult. And again, i'll ask - why? Why can't we help people when we have the capability to? You realize that, besides just helping people, doing so would give us a lot of important allies? If we were to do this, that's less people starving. Less people starving means more development, more development means more countries trying their hand at science and technology. Imagine how advanced we'd be if even half of the currently developing countries were able to allocate resources to, say, curing cancer. That's hundreds more scientists, engineers, ect. And that's just what helps us in the long run. But that really shouldn't matter, because if we can help people, we should. That's a given. And we can help americans with this too, it's not like they would be exempt from free food.
2
-
2
-
@erictull2089 Do you also think that Buffalo wings are made of buffalo? It's in the name, after all. But you seem to be heavily mixing up your definitions. For one, taking down a statue is not destroying history, unless you really are so incredibly shortsighted that you need to see a historical figure to know they exist. If anything, it promotes the understanding of history, as people now have to delve into and justify why they should or should not be taken down. You wouldn't know about half these statues, besides the fact that they are being take down. Also, anti fascists pretty clearly do not take away speech "by force from anyone they don't like." There are literally tens of thousands of anti fascist groups and followers, and yet in the past years, you can usually only name 15-30 examples. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of examples of the pro-life movement killing people, kidnapping people, committing terrorist attacks on Planned Parenthood buildings, ect. Meanwhile, antifascists have at best a few dozen crimes to their name, are made up of people who already disagree with eachother, and tend not to attack more moderate political figures. So thats both parts of your "argument" debunked, and it looks like the right has the left beat there, especially considering 76% of all terror attacks in the past decade have been right wing. As for redefining words, that's quite literally what you're trying to do now, to call anarchists fascists. Black uniforms have nothing to do with fascism, if you want to see what fascist activities look like I can point you here. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/17/portland-protests-federal-arrests/
Oh, and kropotkin started out s a prince. Doesn't change the fact that fascists have always defined their ideology as right wing, and that they have always appealed in policy to conservatives far before leftists.
So it seems, ironically, that every mismatched and poorly thought out point you just tried to make has backfired. But it's ok, i'm sure you'll find a way to project the fascism of the modern right wing onto everyone who you would will to be a victim of that fascism. Ask yourself this - today, you justify armed men picking up innocent protesters. How long until they're knocking at your door?
First they came for the socialists...
Oh, I would also recommend reading a definition of fascism that's more than a sentence long, if you can handle it, from a man who survived fascist italy.
https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
@erictull2089 Gosh, it's like you actually don't have any proof at all. You call trying to understand basic historical fact "prejudice." I mean, you know the SNP isn't actually socialist, right? They're capitalist, special democratic specifically, and nationalist. The rest reads like the unhinged theories of a child, as usual. But trust me, if you want to get into connections, we can. We can go into how figures like Ford, an american capitalist, was praised by the nazis and even given a medal by them. Of course, ford was also joined by many other american capitalists and corporations in working with/praising the nazis, such as Koch Sr, IBM, GE, GM, ect. Do you like those comparisons? Oh, what about people like Franz Von Papen, a highly conservative figure that was one of the people instrumental in getting hitler elected, and even helped to make up Hitler's first cabinet? Or conservatives like Carl Schmitt, who spent his entire life praising the nazi cause, even long after they fell? Or capitalist libertarians like Alberto De Stefani, who helped to structure Mussolin's economy? Or Julius Evola, a conservative figure who helped to create fascism as a philosophy? Or figures like Rothbard and Mises, who both supported the nazis as a weapon to be used against socialism? You really don't know much about history, do you?
2
-
2
-
@VeaFlea Mate, that is so hilariously short sighted. The only countries "working to undermine the US" are places that have little to no power to actually do so. There is no broad anti-US conspiracy, mate, nobody really cares. We seem to be doing a good job destroying ourselves, really. And if they think something good would happen would happen because they attacked a country giving away free food, well then they would quickly be under attack/sanctions from all the countries benefiting from these programs. Also, it would obviously have to be an international effort, because we would actually have to get this food out. So that piece of "logic" is bunk. And that isn't what you said, is it? You said that the average socialist was more greedy, which is a bit funny because the whole ideology is built up around giving stuff away and equality. So yes, I would say that's just flinging meaningless insults. Furthermore, if we want to talk about systems that kill millions from starvation, or dictatorships that sit fat and happy while their country starves, well, welcome to capitalism. You have cases like the Bengal Famine, an artificial famine that killed millions, perhaps into the tens of millions, that was all the fault of the british refusing to send supplies, with the goals of eugenics in mind. We could go back to the Belgian Congo, and see millions of practically slaves get tortured, worked to death, and maimed, all while the camp owners and the home country profited. Hell, you can look at countries like Chile after Pinochet took over. The average level of nutrition for his people was lower than nazi concentration camp prisoners. Hell, capitalism broadly is a system that kills millions every year. Does all that sound like it's socialists who are being the murderous, greedy ones?
2
-
@VeaFlea First off, that eugenics thing doesn't at all cover the other examples I listed. At the same time, does something need to be done from a position of greed to be capitalist? They didn't want to give supplies away, i'd say that's pretty damn greedy. And yes, there are countries that certainly don't like us, but look at the places and examples you've given. Misinformation campaigns? Lying? Proxy war? For one, this is stuff the US has been doing to other countries, and even it's own citizens and territories, for years. For two, this is really all these countries can ever muster against us. They can't attack us, so the best they can hope for is trying to tiptoe around the issue and poke the bear, without waking it. I mean mate, we've done worse to ourselves. We literally spread drugs among our own population, is disproportionately black communities. As well as that, look at the countries. Russia is a second world dictatorship getting poorer by the day, North Korea is failing utterly, Cuba is under our thumb in terms of sanctions, ect. The only somewhat larger threat is china, but even then the populace is starving and unhappy. These countries are no substantial threat to us. So what's the issue with forming new alliances and helping people that need it? I mean, again, it would be hilariously easy to draw developing nations into our debt, and that's just doing it for selfish reasons. We can afford to do it just for the purpose of furthering humanity.
2
-
@KarakNornClansman Are you sure that you addressed this to the right person? You @-ed TIK, not someone who worked through stringent work and intellectual honestly.
I love how you guys all do the same thing. You can't bear to think for a single second that you are wrong, or show even a hint of self-awareness, so you always have to try to convince even yourselves that you are right. After all, you yourself pointed out many of the conservative commonalities the nazis had, but of course, you deflect from that because you cannot bear to handle the idea that perhaps you're wrong. That's what right-wingers of various branches continue to do, advocate a false history meant to distance their opponents from themselves by holding a fig leaf over their obvious and explicit right wing commonalities. Of course, you get more than that wrong. The nazis did actually use "socialist" as an attack, mostly because they themselves are not socialists, and called themselves socialists with an entirely different definition in mind. They used that term, alongside marxists, to berate anyone who didn't agree with them, which happened to be mostly socialists. The bolsheviks called the nazis fascists, because well, they were, and because they were not socialists, so why would they bother with that title? With the stalinists and trotskyists, they just accused eachother of betraying their ideals, not never following them. Jeez, you need a history lesson.
If it is a standalone video by TIK, i'm afraid like these ones it would only serve to spread much more intentional partisan propaganda-born confusion. But, then again, you would agree with it so it doesn't matter. But please, keep blaming all of recorded history on socialists, all while making a fool of yourself in a public forum. We get it, everyone you don't like is a socialist, and rather than give proof you'll give assertions and ask TIK to do the work for you. But you are right, the muddying of our language for the reasons of ideological struggle must be cleared up. Just practice before you preach.
Maybe next time say those words to someone who deserves it, not just someone who agrees with you.
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
@mitscientifica1569 Exactly, nice try trying to rewrite Orwell's work, but in reality Orwell said this of the nazis:
"For at that date Hitler was still respectable. He had crushed the German labour movement, and for that the property-owning classes were willing to forgive him almost anything. Both Left and Right concurred in the very shallow notion that National Socialism was merely a version of Conservatism."
George Orwell openly admitted that the nazis were no more than anti-socialist conservatives. Orwell contrasted you who want to distance the nazis from your own preferred form of anti-socialism
The quote you're talking about
This quote:
“National Socialism is a form of socialism, is emphatically revolutionary, does crush the property owner as surely as it crushes the worker.” [1]
In reality, in that very same book, Orwell proclaimed that "National Socialism was simply capitalism with the lid pulled off, Hitler was a dummy with Thyssen pulling the strings." The quote you mention is referencing the propaganda put out by stalin during their brief non-aggression pact.
Of course, even your own sources (copy pasted from another website) point out:
"Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and — this is the important point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathise with Fascism — generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution. "
He points out only that the state has some authority within the nazi regime, but critically, is only quoting the work of another author when he is naming these assertions, attributing them to their name and not agreeing with them. One must wonder if a pro-nazi individual like you would ever actually bother reading the source you copy and paste, but of course we know you would never dare to think an original thought.
Sources:
[1] George Orwell, Collected Works, vol. XII, p. 159.
[2] George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (1941), Part Two, Section 1.
//:/
2
-
@jameskrych7767 As I said before, (when you quoted the same passage) he called it a tool. A tool that, while he was no great fan of using it, he thought got its job of repressing the spread of socialism done well enough. Anyone who is in favor enough of fascism to praise it on those terms is someone with a bias worth being pointed out.
What I would like, perhaps, is for you to acknowledge what i've been saying. I also notice that you leave out his long career under/with Dolfuss in the pre-FSA. He didn't get that high in the Fatherland Front for no reason.
If you would like to go into differing accounts, we can easily find the writings of Oswald Spengler, or Julius "Super Fascist" Evola, or Carl Schmitt, or the work of Franz von Papen, or the dealings with various american capitalists the nazis had. Hell, we can go into many other followers of Mises praising similar authoritarian regimes and policies. Hell, we could listen to the conservatives of Churchill's own party, which likened the two. The ties between the fascists and the right are far more prolific than the few ties they have to left leaning economics, or socialism.
I say what I do, despite your refusal to acknowledge it, because it's a bias worth bringing up, and a history that puts it all into sweet perspective. For the nazis supposedly being such socialists, they had a lot of right wing support.
2
-
2
-
2
-
@jameskrych7767 Oh shut it with the buzzwords already, mate. Under what post-modernist cultural marxist worldview can the words "marxist" and "post-modernist" go together? Oh wait, they can't, they're diametrically opposed. Also, cultural marxism was a nazi conspiracy theory used to persecute jews. The connections just keep getting clearer.
Also, I notice how you don't even have the guts to quote Mises here. Because, as we've already gone over, he was fine with fascism as long as it held back socialism.
But sure, keep up with the strawmen. Do I call everyone fascist? No, that's TIK, he called youtube fascist for demonetizing his video. I call the people that fit the ideology fascist. If you can't make an argument without a strawman, you have no argument at all.
2
-
2
-
2
-
@jeremiahduran7238
How could it not? Of the historical sources cited, the vast majority of them remained consistent in the conclusion that the nazis did not fit the definition of socialist. It's on you to disprove the actual historians in the field.
"Hitler was never a socialist. But although he upheld private property, individual entrepreneurship, and economic competition, and disapproved of trade unions and workers’ interference in the freedom of owners and managers to run their concerns, the state, not the market, would determine the shape of economic development. Capitalism was, therefore, left in place. But in operation it was turned into an adjunct of the state. There is little point in inventing terms to describe such an economic ‘system’. Neither ‘state capitalism’, nor a ‘third way’ between capitalism and socialism suffices. Certainly, Hitler entertained notions of a prosperous German society, in which old class privileges had disappeared, exploiting the benefits of modern technology and a higher standard of living. But he thought essentially in terms of race, not class, of conquest, not economic modernization. Everything was consistently predicated on war to establish dominion. The new society in Germany would come about through struggle, its high standard of living on the backs of the slavery of conquered peoples. It was an imperialist concept from the nineteenth century adapted to the technological potential of the twentieth" (Ian Kershaw "Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris" 1998, digital: loc. 10,031).
2
-
2
-
@colebehnke7767
Let's tackle this one by one. By "nationalize the trade unions," you mean "abolished the trade unions in favor of an organization weighted heavily towards private interests and which had, as a stated goal and political reality, heavy involvement by said private owners in regulating the workers." By "strict price controls" you mean "temporary wartime measures condemned both before and after implementation, used as a last resort common in other western countries." By "created bureaucracy to command the distribution of resources," you mean "ran a country in war, with a substantial amount of private contracting." By "suspended private property" you mean "privatized to such a degree that it funded huge parts of the war effort, forged new relationships with private owners, and bolstered the political and economic power of said private owners." To top it off, not only are none of the policies you stated accurate, none are inherent to socialism either, and had been proposed in varying quantities by conservatives in Germany (and Europe broadly) for years prior to that point. Further, your statement that "The only difference is that his ideology didn’t require killing off the rich, instead they picked another group to kill off," is not only false (this was far from the "only difference" between contradictory ideologies, socialism doesn't require the killing of the rich, killing isn't a necessity of socialism, ect) you also appear to think that just "picking another group to kill off" is how ideologies work. I hate to break it to you but if an ideology advocates for fundamentally opposed or different things, it is a different ideology. What you said is like attempting to call capitalists socialists because they want power to be in the hands of private owners, which is "just another group" instead of the workers.
Yes, Marx and Darwin were acquainted, but Social Darwinism is an ideology not even directly connected to Darwinism, but is more a bastardization of his ideas of evolution transposed where they had no right being, by conservatives eager to justify their varying brands of nationalism and xenophobia. Socialism is inherently opposed to Social Darwinism, as the entire founding idea of Social Darwinism is that society, economics and nations are subject to the same rules of "survival of the fittest" as the animal kingdom, and thus some individuals were just more fit to lead, more fit to prosper, more fit to punish, and any opposition to this was fundamentally unnatural. Socialism, an ideology that aims at a fundamental level to showcase and embody the idea that society is best understood as a cooperative, collective effort, is entirely incompatible with Social Darwinism. So no, a group of socialists somehow rejecting all of their views just to take on a random right wing ideology doesn't make any sense at all, especially given how the right had already monopolized it for years prior. Why would you assume that a bunch of socialists would "continue developing" an idea incompatible with their own "until they arrived at nazism," when a clear historical record of the Nazi's inspirations in terms of nationalistic, social darwinistic rhetoric exists among the german right, especially within the Volkisch movement. It's like assuming a squirrel turned into a frog when you're looking at a pond of tadpoles. Worse, probably, because you're essentially implying that socialists reinvented modern conservatism, and this is still somehow socialism's fault.
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2