Comments by "Post-Scarcity Writing" (@DemigodoftheSea) on "Ryan Chapman"
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I was really surprised to come back to this video only days after my comment and see some of the things I brought up actually addressed, I appreciate you putting it forth in a comment that everyone can see and offering a genuine defense of your positions instead of just "Shut up, you're wrong".
I do agree with what you said in your first section, about Marxism being defined a variety of different ways, but do you not think then it would be fair to represent all different interpretations of Marx? Both Democratic and Authoritarian? Or at the very least acknowledge that the two are not a binary? After all, America today is "democratic" in certain views, while being expressly authoritarian in others; we restrict the rights of individuals, their choices, what they can put in their bodies, or what they can do with their bodies. We offer more freedoms to religion than we do to gender or sexuality, so on, and so forth. Things are not simply "Democratic or Not", it is a scale, or a spectrum.
As for Marx's own comments, on the matter, you profess that Marx's words are used by dictators to say they are "Speaking for the will of the people", but the fact is, those dictators came after Marx, and parrot his words to give themselves legitimacy, not the other way around. If you want specific comments on Democracy, here's a solid quote right here, albeit from Engels.
"Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat."
~ Friedrich Engels, Principles of Communism
And Marx himself said the following in a variety of places.
"the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle for democracy"
~ Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
And your third paragraph addresses a very common criticism, but if I may, it distracts from the flowery and often inflammatory language that Marx uses. In his view, a vast majority of society is on the side of the Proletariat because it is in their best interest. This is one of the things he was wrong about, underestimating the reactionary forces of right-wing Fascism, but let's recognize for a moment that from his perspective, it was the oppressed worker vs the Capitalist. That was it during this period of time. Take this, combine it with what was said about Democracy, and we recognize that in practice, it becomes very clear that Marx is not just saying "No, you don't get to participate at all", he is saying "You can participate, but prepare to be constantly outvoted".
Now, all of this is largely irrelevant to my point, though I wanted to give you some precedence for it. Simply put, you can offer a stance of which you think is more likely, but you neglected offering the democratic viewpoint at all, and thus delegitimized it. You framed the video as though there's no real counter-argument, even if you think it's wrong. It's fair to disagree, but it's not fair to not offer the other side a voice. You just claimed that you think every side, including Fascists, deserve a voice.
However I'm troubled by your use of the word "Minority" in this case. The word invokes a gut response, especially in America, in reference to blacks, gays, etc... but the fact of the matter is that the minorities you speak of, are the minorities which currently oppress the masses. In plain, uncompromising terms, if you are less than 1% of the population, you do not deserve to drown out the voices of 99 other people in the room. This is a lot like how news networks presence pro and anti-climate scientists as equals, that is a ridiculous prospect. As humans beings, yes, their rights will be observed, but bluntly speaking and in no uncertain terms, they do not have the "right" to practice Capitalism and oppress others. Nobody ever has the right to oppress others, and if that is your goal, no, you do not have that right, period.
And yes, we understood exactly what you were saying about Marxism, we think you are wrong and there are modern economists who think you are wrong. It is not outdated any more than The Theory of Moral Sentiments is outdated to a Capitalist. It is a first draft of what has become a very widespread economic theory, and while it has been challenged by its successors, still remains a very prominent and well-supported model. The issue here is that your tone is dismissive and your attitude takes a very obvious stance on "Yeah Marxism is wrong", and simply saying "Economists" when there are economists who agree with Marx. Even if you don't think you are, you are taking a political position by dismissing an ideology that a growing number of people attach themselves too. You didn't need to dive into the theory at all; I, a Marxist, would have openly and plainly accepted if you said "His economics are controversial amongst economists, and are a little aside for the purposes of this video, but I can recommend some good summaries of Marxism and its theories on economics" and then point us to some secondary (hopefully less wordy) sources.
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"To constrain freedom, in any way..." comes across as what I suspect to be poor word choice; to constrain freedom in this context would be like to say you are constraining the freedom of a nudist by enforcing public decency laws, or in modern context, it would be like saying you are constraining the freedom of businesses to do what they want by regulating them. To frame it like you did seems to imply that what they are doing is inherently bad, in the broader cultural context of "Freedom=Good" being the default.
And to a lesser point, your statement of modern economists feels out of place, as there are still modern economists who support Marxism, or even just parts of it; Richard Wolff is one. Besides, it's a bit unfair to say capitalist economists disagree with Marxism when they, by definition, support thing Marx is criticizing. They aren't an authority nor have they totally debunked it and it comes across as though you're saying they have.
And then you go to the totalitarianism description of Marxism which just isn't true. You even bring up yourself that the Communist Manifesto is propaganda, meant to inspire others, Marx explicitly says the worker is necessarily socialist, and you even bring up Marx's support of democracy. Your conclusion of authoritarianism is based solely on the fact that capitalism won't be allowed in the society, but how is that any different from making it unconstitutional to strip people of their rights? We don't give the beliefs of say, eugenics a platform in America politically, that is not oppression, that is protecting the rights they have as humans. Or hell, how is that different from a nation like Germany banning fascism or Fascist parties?
More importantly, your argument seems to dismiss the idea that democracy can exist under such a system, and treat the system as binary authoritarian or democratic, which is a fallacious stance to take. The system intended is very clearly meant to be democratic, a rule of the people or proletariat. They don't go too deep into how those democratic processes would be handled, no, but that's not the point of the work written and you are instead making assumptions about it.
As for news and education being controlled by a one-party system, this is where you have to understand that even within a party, there can be divisions of thought, and there lays room for multiple, simultaneous Communist parties. There can be cultural progressives and conservatives, and we saw this in the USSR, not to mention modern Marxists who openly advocate for the opposite policies. We can even point to modern examples of public broadcasting like the BBC, which is known to be fairly neutral. Not to mention Capitalist TV is just as bad, and just as biased when you enter the modern age of globalism, so it becomes a moot point that you can then handle democratically.
And the moment you talk about modern politics, you go far off the rails. Not only do modern Marxists (speaking), very much hone in on class, but we advocate that workplace regulations don't go far enough, and by and large we are backsliding. What you described are stopgate measures that make it not inherently dangerous, but still do not give workers dignity. Your comments on poverty are also misleading, a we are seeing a distinct division of wealth, especially in America. The few with all the wealth control our political system and our lives, ordinary people have very little impact, whereas lobbyists hold all of it. No, people are not in extreme hunger-stricken poverty anymore, but modern poverty is not invalid.
The rise of identity politics instead of class politics has been a disaster for the left, it has divided working people and turned us against one another, and made the left completely toothless in achieving anything, with liberals working as a ratchet for conservatives dragging America further to the right, and the same happening on a smaller scale worldwide.
Your video started out great and I was going to praise you for your neutrality, with only a few mistakes of language, but then your video turns into you taking a firm stance on whether or not Marxism is democratic of authoritarian, and then essentially advocates for what modern Marxists should strive for.
"One more disappointment" is right.
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@werefeat0356 Well firstly, I didn't say anything about Jews, I said Jews have nothing to do with Communism. Just because you (wrongly) believe these two groups both want a world government, does not mean they are one and the same, or even cooperating. I promise you, Israel is not at the top of the list for most Communists to praise.
Secondly, what are you saying I claimed about Communism? I said they want Democracy. That is a good thing.
No, anything opposing Communism is Capitalism (at least realistically), and Fascism is Capitalism in decline. Get your terminology right.
I don't care about your Nazi conspiracies, they are wrong. I don't care what quotes you post. I will never, ever, and let me emphasize this one, EVER, believe your Nazi propaganda.
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@elifarnsworth8762 It's a rhetorical means of speaking, you say that, give your example, and then trail off, implying you have a lot more to say, but are refraining for some reason.
Objectively incorrect, Socialist nations and even Socially Democratic nations who implement hefty social welfare and safety nets have the highest standard of living and guarantee the best life expectancy, potable water, infant mortality rates, etc...
USSR doctors were famed across the world for their skill, Cuban doctors are the same today. Some of the best in the damn world.
Of course if you look at Cuba's material conditions they don't seem to measure up... why?
Well, first and foremost you can point the finger at 60 years of sanctions by America, who prevents Cuba from trading with the rest of the world and thus guarantees that their growth will be exceptionally slow.
And other nations where we've seen a sharp spike in quality of life post-Socialist or Communist policies being implemented, those nations have often been directly overthrown by American assets, such as in Chile and Bolivia.
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@SurmaSampo And in most systems, amending or rewriting the constitution is a whole process. And again, "Waaahhh, we can't vote for slavery, this is a dictatorship!"
99% Capitalism with 1% Socialism is not a "mixed system". We live under Capitalism, your "gotcha" is stupid and misses the point entirely.
Watch literally any nation in the world, global north or south, and you will see very clearly that voting against Capitalism is aggressively resisted. There have been enough coups in the past few years to prove that point well enough. Just look at Bolivia and what happened there, we know for a fact now there was an attempt at a Capitalist coup against the Socialist leadership. In America a majority of Democratic voters wanted Bernie Sanders, a Socialist, and those in power schemed, cheated, and defied the will of the voters in order to resist his election.
More importantly, Socialism is not "when the government does stuff", so no, this idea of a "mixed system" is stupid.
I didn't say Communist states can't suffer from corruption, but Capitalist corruption is a feature, rather than a bug. To have Capitalism, is to forgo Democracy. The two are not compatible.
"What liberties and voting power would communities and individuals would be feasible in this new state and how would they be able to exercise it?"
I refer to CIA documents where they discussed the internal workings of the Soviet Union, where they expressly noted their Democratic inner workings.
There are literally dozens of options for actual Democracy, but in what way does Socialism impede Democracy? You vote for the policies you want, you vote in leadership, so on, and so forth. Why is this a question?
Or is your question how could there possibly be Democracy without Capitalism being allowed? That's easy; you vote on Socialist policies, of which there are many options, and a variety of possibilities. You could debate various left-wing ideas, how to resolve problems, etc...
I don't understand what's so difficult to grasp about that.
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@SurmaSampo Fallacious argument; completely irrelevant to the point that you shouldn't be allowed to vote to strip people's rights away. The fact we should end prison slave labor is irrelevant to the point.
Except Socialism does have a duty to people under Socialist theory. For one, Marxism is anti-Imperialism, and two, Marxism openly advocates for a global unity of workers, and acknowledges that the Revolution must include all workers. Again, if you're going to argue against something at least understand it.
And once again, you make a point that is irrelevant. No, there is no system completely immune to corruption, but that is like saying there's no food that's 100% healthy for you so you should just eat maggots because it's good enough. The argument is based around the notion that in a system such as this, Capitalism and "Free Markets" will be outlawed by the Constitution, and would need to be amended if you wanted to change that. Just as in our own constitution, we have things we outlaw straight-up, even if those things are other ideologies. In theory, we outlaw Theocracy, is America oppressing Theocrats by not allowing them to participate in Democracy?
Use your brain for like five seconds instead of throwing fallacious bullshit my way.
Actually, Monarchy has a history of being exceptionally resilient to the evils of Capitalism. As does Fascism, because it arises from Capitalism's decline and is a reactionary movement to suppress it.
"There are no perfect solutions" is a bullshit answer that doesn't actually address which system provides more freedom and better Democracy; the answer is Socialism, which you sidestep because you are dishonest and just want to sound smart while committing every fallacy like a checklist.
No it's a tool of somebody calling you out for a very obvious gish gallop. You're asking me to basically write a constitution for a Democracy, how that Democracy would work, etc... on the spot.
How about this, describe to me the perfect Capitalist Democracy, and I'll match your level of detail. Give me a framework here on how much detail you desire for this stupid fallacious bullshit and I'll work with you.
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@SurmaSampo "I am not talking about slave labour in prisons. I am referring to the fact that prisoners are literally legally slaves without any of the rights bestowed to common people like freedom of speech, the right to self defense nor the right to vote or even own anything. If you think people's rights should be able to be stripped away, what rights do you think people should have?"
I said exactly the opposite.
People's rights should not be able to be stripped away, that is the backbone of this discussion; Capitalism strips people's rights away.
"Yes, he advocated for the power of the worker and by that he was referring to the labourers. But the duty a state has is to the people it governs not those outside of it by definition. Does a socialist state have a duty to invade and overthrow all non socialist states in order to empower the workers there? If so how is that congruent with the fact that the defending forces who killed en mass in the process will be by vast majority of the working class?"
This is again, why you should actually study the thing you profess to think is wrong.
Socialists have come to a solid conclusion on this; agitation, just like any other. Look at how the Soviet Union supported Democracies in central and south America, overthrowing American-backed dictatorships. You fight alongside the working class, giving them their own choices, and their own country.
"I went into more detail about this in my last post which you seem to have ignored. There is no evidence at all that communist systems are any less corrupt than capitalist ones. Currency isn't the only tool of corrupt as I pointed out and a society without money does not mean no one owns property, it means there is no property at all. If I have something in my possession I can give it to someone else (even in the form of sex) in exchange for something else. I reject your supposition that capitalism is inherently more corrupt unless you can provide actual evidence as you have done nothing to prove it."
I didn't ignore it, you debunked it yourself; no money, means no bribes, means no PACs, means no lobbyists, means no paying underlings to perform unscrupulous activities, means no paying prostitutes to offer people sex, means no paying people to acquire something fancy, etc...
Lack of money equates to a lack of social networks that produce not only mass criminal organizations, but organized corruption. Money influences all of this. Not to mention, when all of your basic needs are taken care of, it's a lot harder for someone to influence you with more shit when you don't want to do it. You don't need to put your son in a powerful position if you know they'll be taken care of. You don't need to fuck your way through college when college is free. Etc, etc...
FFS, Marx railed against the sort of bourgeoisie prostitution that you keep bringing up in The Communist Manifesto alone, calling out how money corrupts the acts of intimacy and turns everything into an exchange.
"Oppressed, no because they can still vote for theocracy and publicly hold those beliefs while running for and sitting in office. This is widely different to what you propose which is the equivalent of banning religion outright and even the ability to discuss religion in a positive way."
Except they can't. You cannot vote for theocracy because in theory, our judicial system strikes it down. I hate this argument, but that's how it was intended. You cannot have a system that forces theocracy when the constitution declares you cannot have a theocracy. And you aren't banning the ability to even discuss it, you are banning the ability to implement it. Again, I have said this over and over again, no system is concrete, you are falling into a philosophical discussion about the continuity of nation-states and law systems, but the fact is any system can be overturned eventually. Implementing laws can be overturned, but it takes time. You fail to understand this basic principle and purposefully blur the lines.
"Against I have seen no proof of this assertion. Neither current nor historically since most monarchs today and in the past are and have been capitalist."
Well first of all, false, most Monarchs have been Feudalists.
Secondly, look to the dissolution of the British East India Company. A company as powerful as a nation, with its own navy, conquering the nation of India, subjugating them, dominating them, and holding vast amounts of wealth and yet, when the Queen said "Fall", they fell. Their money, their influence, didn't matter when the Queen made a demand.
Then look at the Nazis, who were happy to wipe out the titans of industry when they tried to accrue more power or skirt the lines the Nazis drew.
Take a look, it's in a fucking book.
"How does socialism provide more freedom and better Democracy? Got any actual examples rather than just the assertion itself?"
See above. A system where people are more economically free, and suffer less corruption, fulfills both of those.
Just looking at all of that it's clear that yes, you are committing a gish gallop by trying to extract an entire governmental system in the span of one message from one person who is clearly not at that stage yet, a governmental system that you can then pick apart and criticize to your heart's content, but hey, I'll be happy to explain to you how Democracy works even though you can basically just copy/paste from existing systems and go "Look at me, I'm so smart".
We start at the beginning, with education, the backbone of democracy. A portion of things like "Social Studies" would be dedicated to logic classes, similar to the ones we have now on college campuses. Teaching people to recognize good arguments, bad arguments, flawed arguments, and dishonest arguments. Teach people how to construct a position of their own, and allow this to influence their political positions.
Direct democracy would implement most overarching laws, with the people called upon to vote on major bills, with representatives functioning as elected bureaucrats, running the systems that people vote for. Representative voting would be performed on as-needed basis, in order to react swiftly to immediate problems, but long-standing laws would be voted in by the people and petition. Under ideal circumstances, computers would be utilized to speed this process up, and AI (that we currently possess) would draw the district lines as fairly as possible for people of similar areas and living conditions to be governed by people that actually represent them.
Every position from heading natural resources to diplomacy is an elected position, with their positions clearly stated on their own branch. Any elected official can be recalled, including judges. The head of the nation is elected directly by popular vote of the people and functions as Chief Diplomat, the face we send to other nations to speak for us.
I don't see why you need to have a Bill of Rights when it can just be part of the Constitution, cause the only reason we had a Bill of Rights was for the sake of time pressure in passing a Constitution. However, here's a few.
Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of privacy, freedom from slavery & serfdom, etc...
Right to a home, right to healthcare, right to food & clean water, right to communication with your fellow man, right to education, etc...
There are constitutions that have hundreds of stipulations listed on them, I shouldn't have to list every single one I value off the top of my head.
Economically, every natural resource and the means of production are publicly owned and can never be privatized. These resources are organized by individuals voted in by the people as mentioned before, who distribute them across the nation. Everything is publicly disclosed and the representatives function to keep tabs on these departments and can issue investigations to ensure efficient uses of resources. Once distributed, every citizen is entitled to the food and resources of the community, hoarding anything is strictly prohibited by law and anyone accused of such will be judged by a jury of their peers. Petitions can be brought to departments for use of excess goods in particular ways, and recall votes can be issued by either the legislative body, or a petition in the case of poor use of resources.
Ideally, automation can take over a vast majority of jobs, as we see jobs in warehouses, transportation, retail, etc... can all be either automated or simply gotten rid of within the next few years.
So on, and so forth.
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@SurmaSampo "Corruption and dictatorship strip rights away as can communities. Capitalism is neither the only nor the most effective way to strip away rights."
See, right there, you name corruption, but then act like Capitalist is an independent force totally seperate from that. Capitalism is corruption at its most base level. It isn't about being the most effective way, but it is the fact it will always result in that, because people's rights get in the way of profit.
"They also backed violent minority coups and the establishment of dictatorships which then pressed workers and children into slavery as did the USA. There are no clean hands here and you are stretching to the point of gas-lighting to paint the Soviets as morally just in all their actions."
I did not such thing. I am pointing out a solution to your question and gave real world examples.
Also, you mean the child labor they employed when their country was being invaded by the Nazis? Oh yeah, great example.
"I happen to know real criminal fixers and bagmen for corruption. The tools of the trade are sex, drugs and favours with money coming in 4th. All goods and services are money in the broadest definition including attention, fame and influence. Unless you establish a totalitarian state that tracks the activities of every person you can't remove independent voluntary trade in the society. Currency is only a small fraction of money."
Ok let me hold your hand on this one.
How do you get someone to have sex with someone else? Money.
How do you acquire drugs? Money. To pay people to grow them, to transport them, etc... and then you sell them to acquire money.
You are being purposefully dense on this topic to avoid the point. Money is the means by which these things become solvent, it's like how water makes things solvent, but you can still have things work without it, it's just much harder.
Your example is literally just "We use money to buy other things that we use", all of those things are just a representation of what money can buy, including most favors.
"The constitution can be amended to remove the prohibition against theocracy. All it takes is enough widespread popular support. You also previously made comment that only political discussions that support communism could be had. Nice to see you flip on this."
I have literally never said that and you are a liar.
And yes, ""TEKNICALEEE"" you can amend the Constitution to change things. Fuck your "Gotchas", you know exactly what it means to say "You cannot do X".
"Feudalism is complex governance system where the ruling hierarchy is bound to each other through traditional and personal pledges of fealty and protection ultimately tied to grants or titles of land. This has noting to do with the economics of these places especially when it came to skilled labour. Remember that Feudalism created the guilds which created the template for the trade unions. Some of these guilds still exist today as do some of the feudal banks and institutions fealty. The economics of the middle middle ages (also referred to as the dark age by the media) is one of my pet interests in economics. The others are the economics of cybercrime and the extent to which entropy is the fundamental force of resource allocation and utilisation (I am planning to write a thesis on this topic)."
Wrong.
Feudalism is a political and economic system, because the economics are directed by feudal lords, who own the land directly. It is explicitly defined as being an economic system as well as a political one.
Like there's no argument to be had, you're just wrong. If it is one of your "Pet interests", then you're incredibly poorly educated on it.
"Because the Queen was the safe harbour through which their trade flowed and held the hearts and minds of the people who operated the company. Being English and loyal to the crown was the greater relationship whereas the company only had money. This is interestingly enough a good argument against the corrupting power of capitalism to overcome the binding and moderating force of community and identity. Thanks for helping me out there."
What the actual gobstopping fuck are you talking about?
The reason the Queen was able to dissolve the East India Company was because she commanded the military and saying "No" would have effectively meant declaring war, and getting godsmacked not just by the Queen, but by every fucking nation on the planet who would've descended on them like vultures, and then being hunted to the ends of the Earth.
And, I'm gonna need you to follow me on this one, the Queen was richer than the East India Company, and paid her soldiers well enough to ensure their loyalty.
The Queen.
Also.
Paid.
Her.
Soldiers.
"Yes, popular dictators are more powerful than capitalists. How does this help your argument?"
If you could read that'd be helpful.
The fact the Nazis were happy to buddy up with Titans of industry, even before they came into power. Big companies financially backed the Nazi party while they were still running for office.
"My, my. Such an angry little communist."
Yeah, stupidity makes me angry.
"Yes, economic prosperity decreases the value of corruption and makes implementing effective corruption controls more achievable. It also reduces a large amount of other negative societal affects such as crime, drug addiction, etc. Moderated capitalism has been historically the most successful implementation that has performed."
And then it is immediately undone in a generation or two. Womp, womp.
Should we just play tug-of-war forever with Capitalists until they win and we live in the Cyberpunk future where corporations rule the world?
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@SurmaSampo "Every system is built of the preferred features of other systems. This is a core methodology of systems architecture and innovation. You engaged in the argument and if you are not capable of performing in it then it is not my responsibility to hold your hand and make it easy for you. You learn by doing, not by whining about how hard it is. You want to advocate for a new thing to change people's live then you should know and be able to convince others of what that thing is. "
Irrelevant, you are still committing a fallacy.
I was wrong about which one tho, it's an "On-the-Spot" Fallacy.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/On_the_spot_fallacy
Tho it's related to a Gish Gallop.
"I would council against the idea of trusting AI to make political decisions and any idea that must be implemented in ideal circumstances where high levels of informational uncertainty exist are ensured to fail. Google the paperclip AI to understand."
We already use AI to draw district lines. Just very simple AI.
>Rights of the populace are fundamental to the governance of nations and the power the government can legally exert over the people so having them specifically declared shows you have thought about the interface of authority and responsibility. Rights are the responsibilities of government to the people that cannot be abandoned. You seem to have a lot of duplication in the above.
You misunderstand.
The Bill of Rights, specifically, is just a list of the 1st 10 changes we made to the Constitution that didn't make it into the first draft. If you're building a nation from scratch, you can just, include them in the first copy.
"This is a system of totalitarian micromanagement enforced by everyone spying on everyone else that will result in people being punished for saving leftovers in the fridge or helping a family member mop the floor. This has been tried before in the soviet union and in current day is how North Korea works where people's entire families get sent to labour camps for trying to grow their own food. Ideas like this are the same as tracking every second of an employee's work day and personal activities outside of work to ensure absolute compliance with policy and to maximise productivity. It harms individuals and slides societies into collective sociopathy. "
Strawmanning.
You really love your fallacies.
Literally nothing I said implied any of that. We already know how to distribute resources, and once they're somewhere people can just, go get them. Saving leftovers is not "Hoarding". "Hoarding" would be somebody taking 30 packs of toilet paper for themselves. The key is the moment it begins to impact other people, but no micromanaging or spying has to take place, you just let people report "Hey, this one guy is taking all of the food and leaving none for us." We already have people in government who can use their judgement on whether or not something follows regulation closely enough.
Everything you've mentioned is just bullshit paranoia about "COMMIES!"
"Jobs or more importantly productive challenge is essential to self esteem and social stability. Getting rid of all of the jobs will create a community of people with no challenges to address and no achievements to ground their self value and identity on. The biggest complain by people living in Russia just after the collapse of the USSR was "Before we could never be sure if we would get paid for our work but at least we still had work". The opportunity and necessity of performing meaningful work is more important to healthy human psychology than having stuff. The automation of jobs is the largest existential threat to society's long term mental well being we have ever faced."
It demonstrates how indoctrinated by Capitalism you are to believe jobs created by Capitalists are the only way to achieve those things.
Taking care of kids.
Educating yourself.
Helping out your community.
Planning and building projects.
Writing, creating, and making something that will last
And fuck, there's always going to be plenty of jobs to do, you can always become an engineer, a mechanic, write code, become a doctor, become a scientist, literally anything people actually wanna do except clean toilets and fill out paperwork all day.
People can attain productive challenge by choice, not by coercion.
Also, no, the biggest complaint was "Now we're poor and the government won't help us". People still complain about it, to this day, people legit miss the USSR and the prosperity it brought. The USSR built hospitals, bridges, roads, provided healthcare and schools, it was a prosperous place to live. It was not perfect, I would not claim it as the pinnacle of my ideology, but it wasn't some garbage shit hole like Russia is today.
"I should also mention that the current automation R&D is focused on replacing the jobs of decision makers and white collar professionals. It is not just menial work that is to be replaced but also the meaningful and the impactful. I don't see that working out very well."
Middle management is not meaningful work for most people. It's actually kind of soul-crushing.
And transportation is 10% of the job market, automated vehicles are going to take most of those jobs. Warehouse workers make up some few percentage points, don't feel like googling it, but Amazon alone is 1% of workers in the US. Fast Food employees are on that list too, retail jobs (except for a few), and so forth.
Oh and pretty much the entire gig economy is on that list.
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@sree8603 Ok, but it did. The USSR directly and materially improved people's lives compared to Tsarist Russia.
All I hear is "Wah, wah, wah, Capitalism good, Communism bad, waahhh, 100 billion gajillion dead, vuvuzela, no food, Stalin's gonna steal my toothbrush and the KGB will lick my butthole!"
You have no proof. That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
GG.
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Oh man, imagine, the guy who wrote or co-wrote dozens of books was, *gasp*, a writer? Not a manual laboror? Say it isn't so, say it isn't so!
Any more utterly incomprehensible truth* bombs you wanna lay out?
Let's see... you bring up the rumor that's been debunked about Marx and his maid. Also you say it's rape, despite the original claim being expressly otherwise. Right.
Then you bring up the fact he was a political exile who was kicked out of a country ruled by a literal Monarch for trying to make it, ya know, more Democratic, and he suffered from ailments that were fairly fucking normal at the time because food and medicine were both shit.
Oh and your 100 million number, which has been denounced by every single person that wrote it except one, and the others who co-authored his book say that the dude was crazy.
And ya know, the fact Capitalism kills 100 million every five years, so, yay, gotta be a winner, right?
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This was genuinely an amazing video; I became cautious when you started to draw the lineage of Fascism coming from Marxism, but your later clarification was a fair one that set forth a very clear distinction between the two. I think the only two parts I would criticize (and you even said it was your own opinion), are firstly; the denouncement that Fascism comes from Capitalism. When talking about the rise of Fascism, economy instability, recessions, depressions, etc... very distinctly lead to Fascism in the form of Nationalism and Central, Authoritative figures. We see very clearly throughout the 20th and 21st centuries that the economic decay of a nation leads to Fascism, or something close to it, in various nation-states. It's fair not to define it this way as per a textbook, but identifying it based in this way is certainly fair.
I do however understand your neutrality on the concept however, since my argument here stems from the ideology of Capitalism functioning in stages, and the position of Late-Stage Capitalism leading to Fascism, and that's not exactly a "Neutral" position to take.
Though at the end of your video I think there's an issue with your conclusion; we absolutely define Liberalism and Conservatism based on those sorts of things, and quite bluntly put, ideology is difficult to define because it is mutable by its nature, just like any form of sociology. Fascism should be defined by that which is at is core, and that which its most vocal (or notable) proponents define it as. Fascism is, at its core, a belief in nationalism, and a belief in authoritarianism. Thus, that is how it should be defined.
Your definition of Fascism is poetic and succint, sure, but I don't think it centers truly on how to identify Fascism and what its characteristics are, which is what a definition should be. Authoritarianism is just a description of other ideologies such as Monarchism, Imperialism, or a Military Dictatorship. A Military Dictatorship need not carry Nationalistic undertones, nor hold the strong charismatic central figure, and so forth.
It is the combination of the form of Nationalism (which you essentially just described poetically), and the emphasis on a strong charismatic leader in an authoritarian fashion that is exactly what Fascism is. As an ideology, of course it's vague, because all ideologies are variable. Liberalism varies just based on what country you go to, same for conservatism. That is the nature of ideology, as I said before.
In the end however, I feel like all of the factual stuff you put forth is great.
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