Hello, friends. Was really looking forward to get this video out to you all. I really enjoyed this book a ton. Truly think Zizek's outlook on Marxism is super useful today. There are so many ways in which our traditional outlook on capitalism and even Marxist critiques underscore capitalism's ability to sell ideas, lifestyles, etc. (As Zizek talks about the needed material reversal of Marx in the Peterson debate.) As always, none of this is ever possible without the support of Patrons and RUclips members. If you want to get early access to videos, exclusive videos, etc. come join Patreon or our member section! This truly keeps this entire channel alive. Thanks for any support you can throw my way! Patreon: www.patreon.com/epochphilosophy Member: ruclips.net/channel/UC738SsV6BSLUVvMgKnEFFzQjoin
I didn't understand much of your video. You say the Internet/technology will become open source and free, but then you just give examples of how all cyberspace is monopolized for profit?? So what is it? I don't see how is it "cool" to abandon Marxism, when at the heart of it lies a Hegelian understanding of history . If you ever thought or read The Capital as a blueprint to a definitive formation of society (and I really don't know how you can manage to do that) then I think you missed one of his central points. Thanks for the video!
I would say you’re wasted on RUclips , except I don’t think you are . And just in case you don’t have a doctorate in philosophy we really ought to bestow an honorary one on you right here for your fluent and accessible content .
This is my first encounter with this channel and I'm pretty impressed. I used to think Zizek was basically an amusing academic sort of comedian but not someone to take seriously when it comes to understanding revolution. I have come to realize he's a lot more than a hot take machine and that his contradictory positions actually make pretty clear sense and are probably where a lot of marxists today are at. He's actually a lot more consistent in his revolutionary politics than someone like Chomsky who famously wrote articles supporting the Spanish anarchists who would pose with the skulls of slain fascists yet who calls antifascist protesters protecting themselves from physical assault by "proud boys" a "gift to the right wing." While Manufacturing Consent and his encyclopedic criticism of US foreign policy still rings true as ever I definitely regret taking Chomsky's straw man attacks against Zizek seriously. He is obviously the more revolutionary of the two and his hot takes are more honest than Chomsky's liberal talking points which the media ironically uses against the left.
Out of all comments I have received in my videos this arguably my favorite one. Genuinely, thank you for this. This at least tells me what I am REALLY trying to do is actually kind of working. (Hopefully.) Trying to add clarity to more complex ideas and show their relevance. Especially with Zizek and other complex philosophies and theory. I still love Chomsky, and he has done wonders for adding deeper context to leftist ideas in an easier way, but his idea that Zizek and what is regarded as "theory" is "pseudo intellectualism" is utter bullshit. That's the goal of these videos. To show that Zizek is saying some extremely significant and relevant things that we would be extremely wise to take seriously. Things that often get brushed under the rug as nonsense, post-marxism, or simply saying nothing at all under fancy language. The stuff Zizek lays out is some of the most relevant stuff we could ask for. It is just a shame that the subject matter is kinda complex for most. Thus, here is what I'm trying to kind of mend.
Absoloutely fantastic video! The ending quote about the best way to be a Marxist is to not be a Marxist perfectly summed up the contradictions in dialectical relationships for me! Thank you!
@@epochphilosophy No problem!! Loved your videos so far! Really struggled with Heidigger, but your visual representation of dasien was a massive help! Happy New Year 😊
This video blew my mind, I'm going to have to revisit, take notes, and watch it a few times before I fully grasp the info. I'm reading Zizek now, he's writing is sometimes impenetrable for me (lack of background in philosophy) but he's very alluring. This video definitely helped! Keep them coming!
Appreciate this a ton! Yeah, Zizek is certainly not a bad writer, but I think a ton of people overstate his clarity. He is very much not very clear at times lol. Big reason why I try to hammer in videos around Zizek.
I saw this great little book on the counter of a bookstore when I visited New York. I picked it up and read it all in a few hours. What I find interesting about open source projects such as Linux and the anarchist beginnings of the internet is dat you can have a social economy without money. People put hours and hours into writing the software without the lure of financial compensation. According to some right-libertarians, this isn't possible and people would become completely apathic and lazy in some kind of advanced socialist society in which all basic needs are met. Yet, we see examples of the opposite.
Fascinating shit, I really enjoyed this a lot. I’m not sure I completely agree with all the conclusions, particularly the “don’t be a Marxist” part, but there’s a lot of *value* here. I definitely agree with actually using dialectical materialism today, and not being dogmatic in “one’s Marxism”, lost in the past, but I don’t see how we go from that to just not “being a Marxist”. I guess with that part it all comes down to what one means when they say they are a Marxist, and what Zižek means, etc.. I want to spell this out a bit, bc I think it actually matters, and maybe someone can help me understand how I’m not getting it, if they disagree. It’s like, I call myself a Christian, because I have faith in the person who was Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, but what I mean when I say that, and what most of my family members mean, are VERY different things, which really are only connected to each other via Christ. I’m very influenced by Tolstoy, Christian Anarchism, Cornel West, and a more radical Christian tradition, and conceptualize my actual faith most closely to how Kierkegaard explained faith; I’m an anti-fundamentalist, as I think a fundamentalist reading of the Bible makes no sense in just about every way you could cut it, and I think fundamentalism, in general, can only be maintained through a fervent dogmatism, and is actually contradictory to Christ. (I could go deep into that, logically and theologically, but that’s not my purpose here.) My family is the polar opposite, dogmatic and fundamentalist, with a view of the Bible as inerrant (KJV, of course), and of course believing Genesis literally is ESSENTIAL to them, otherwise Christ means nothing (so Adam and Eve literally happened, and the universe is only thousands of years old). Several of those in my family simply view me as a heretic, as someone who can’t possibly “be saved”, because I break from a form of their tradition that can’t be broken from while continuing to actually be that tradition... One might call me, “a revisionist”, though in reality that’s of course what all modern Christians are to some extent, bc the interpretations and theology has expanded and contracted and evolved over 2000 years... So... um, you see where I’m going with this? Marxism is definitely younger, not even 200 years old, but I hope people see the parallels I’m trying to draw here (of course I could have used something other than Christianity, and I’m not saying they’re perfectly paralleled, for obvious reasons). Point is, there isn’t a singular MARXISM, just like there isn’t a singular CHRISTIANITY, just like there isn’t a singular.. well, almost any kind of ethos, system of thought, and so on. There isn’t even just one singular NAZISM ffs, though the difference there is that all Nazism(s) are trash. Given all this, why stop being a Marxist, full stop? I mean, I’m not JUST a Marxist, just like I’m not JUST a Christian, just like I’m not JUST humanist, or JUST a queer, etc, and so on.. For me, it makes far more sense to just say, “give up dogmatism”, or any kind of dogmatic thinking, in general. You want to be a Marxist, fine, but don’t get so bogged down in theory from the past that it clouds your understanding of the future. Instead, discard what doesn’t make sense in 2021 given the change in material condition, and the last 170+ years of history, and keep using the tools for analysis that continue to make sense. To me, there’s something almost hypocritical about saying everything up until the point of, “don’t be a Marxist”, all that useful stuff about remembering what year it is, and what the material conditions are, but then saying, “now, don’t be a Marxist”... Idk, maybe it’s meant to provoke, or sound more radical, or something. I get lost on that, as anyone who’s read this far can see. Now, you can tell me what I’m missing or why I’m wrong. ✌️❤️🏴♾
This is just mind-blowing stuff. The amount of time and effort that went behind this is amazing - so much details packed in half an hour. It would be really helpful if you can provide a transcript. Thank you once again for your efforts.
The end of production and the freedom of choice really ties in with the society of control remarks from Deleuze. Its really interesting listening to the new philosophy channels popping up and learning through this medium. Really cool stuff and impressive video production!
The point about how class is dissolved into an ideology of everyone being an entrepreneur is very useful. You already have the tendency in countries like the US to call virtually everybody middle class, but then we get this supposed new freedom added into the mix, the idea of which is leveraged by the gig economy, girlboss MLMs, the framing of crypto, etc.
This new dominant 'rent' economy that Zizek talks about has been occupying my brain a lot lately. It's very interesting and contains a lot of the answers we may need, I believe. Also, this form of product in which a company like Facebook operates fully on the form in which their product is free, because every click of every person generates revenue for Facebook in that it creates a more complete consumer profile for propaganda, or advertising companies to better trick you into looking at or buying the products of their clients.
Yup. I've actually been doing the same. Zizek carries a lot from Jeremy Rifkin (a dude who is relatively unknown who really pushed this idea of a new rent economy), and I want to get into his stuff specifically.
Precisely! Even Adam Smith himself (and really all classical economists) highlighted this "rentier class" and their parasitic form as a vestige residue of feudal social relations as rent is value extracted _without_ value produced, a clear contradiction to the justifying logic of "the market". _"Kelp was never augmented by human industry. The landlord, however, whose estate is bounded by a kelp shore of this kind, demands a rent for it."_ - Ch.11 Wealth of Nations Really I think putting the term "free market" back into its historical context among Smith, John Stuart Mill, Malthus, Lassalle, David Ricardo, etc. (and of course Marx) it becomes more illustrative of a market free of _rent extraction_ as opposed to the laissez faire distortion it has transformed into over time being utilized as a dogma of maintaining the social hierarchy rather than one that would attempt to dismantle this hierarchy, but that's just my interpretation because of this prominent and pretty ubiquitously omitted emphasis. Mill has some good/humorous quotes on this as well, but yeah check out ch.11 in WoN as it's pretty much entirely justifiably shitting on landlords for being the parasites they are. Actually on a similar note, the "tendency of the rate of profit to fall" was also highlighted by Smith himself, which makes it quite strange how the cultural characterization of these people seem to be diametrically opposed and I think demonstrates the trajectory of this cultural distortion over time. I think it also may clarify why Marx was emphasizing the market structure mentioned at the end of the video, namely that Marx wrote his critique under an acceptance of the first principle logical assumptions so as to remove his analysis from a mischaracterization of a normative "ought" (in regards to Hume's is/ought distinction), or basically to be an extension of classical economic analysis, which as we can see...did not work at all lol. And of course all this stuff has been quite conveniently circumvented entirely in contemporary econ by simply creating the "orthodox" branch (the fact that this is the common term of distinction used from within the field itself is rather fitting and unselfaware) of neoclassical econ which removes any discussion of exactly this point of the contradiction posed by economic rent, dismissing that focal goal of making "the market" actually serve that universal social good by simply declaring a new assumptive standpoint that all market outcomes are justified inherently. Ironically and inevitably of course this will necessarily lead to the capture of any productive outcomes by the least-productive rentier class and of course it has done exactly that in the rise and dominion of fictitious capital since the 70s and the emergence of this neoclassical/neoliberal orthodoxy. This is super long already sorry, but I think it's maybe worth noting the throughline of dialectical progression with Marx, as all of the outcomes he outlined were implicitly from a class consciousness emerging from the conditions of _industrial_ capitalism as a progression in time, whereas what we have now is a complete takeover of mostly finance (fictitious) capital, which devours not only that productive capacity industrial capital must yield to survive in its symbiotic (though of course also exploitative) relationship it has with the working class, but also in dissolving the conditions that create such class consciousness in the first place as all of it is essentially based in ungrounded ethereal ideological distortion. Hopefully any of that made sense lol. Actually, Vol.3 of Capital (aka the volume that is never actually opened lol) elaborates what I'm trying to get at here, and of course Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism ( www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ ) extends this further to pretty presciently illuminate the inherently dominant role finance capital has when it is unburdened by any tethering to reality.
Also as a follow up that hopefully won't be book-length lol, Smith's (et al) proposed prescription to natural monopoly and its emergent exploitation through rent extraction was a "land value tax" which unlike property taxes, it disregards the value of buildings and other supplemental additions to real estate, as this differentiates value that emerges as an external effect (like good schools, neighborhood, etc.) and is supposed to then redistribute this collected LVT back into the collective source of such value, hence it being a tax. I think Marx liked this as well, as well as many others, and it's something China is attempting to actually structure and implement as they are for the most part acutely aware of the US's trajectory into finance capitalism and how this dissolves the totalizing systemic progression Marx was outlining into a regressive feudalist foundation. This is basically why I would consider Smith, Ricardo, etc. sort of "proto-socialists" as opposed to "capitalists" in regards to the modern understanding of capitalism as that laissez faire proto-neofeudalism bullshit the word has now popularly become in its de facto embrace of rent-extraction as this poses a stark contradiction on its face in terms of the justifying logic of the market itself.
@@epochphilosophy You should definitely check out economist/anthropologist/mentat Michael Hudson in this regard, if you're not already aware of course. After reading Wealth of Nations and being confused as hell with no popular mention of the rent stuff he wrote, Hudson was the only one who clearly put all of this into a historical materialist framework that not only makes _enormous_ sense, but recontextualizes the historical role of even religion itself as it gives it a _material_ power that is pretty much never associated with it in its contemporary understanding, much like the role of economics plays in all of our implicit ideological frameworks despite it masquerading as something purely materially "objective" in its modern form/study. This in particular helped me understand the material basis for the war in Iraq and really all wars, in a more totalizing context beyond the military industrial complex that is, essentially an extension of Lenin: michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/superimperialism.pdf Here's a random vidya discussion with him and the late David Graeber (whose book on Debt and its mythology is similarly quite revealing if not already familiar): ruclips.net/video/1rlIXAUGans/видео.html
if you don't pay for the product you are the product. I can see a future in which you don't have a basic income but every citizen gets a basic package of essential services: food, internet, transportation, energy. Of course this gives the government or mega-corporations (who are already pretty much the same) tremendous power as they might cut anyone off who doesn't behave the way they should. Think social credit, which China already has. The world economic forum already talked about such a future in an article titled "you own nothing and you will be happy".
Defiantly my favourite video of yours and favourite video on Zizek. I think the last section on how Communism is really the name of new problems emerging exemplifies what Zizek says about the role of a public intellectual is to articulate the right questions.
The work you put into these videos has me feeling legitimately guilty I can't pitch in on the Patreon. I just hope I don't get a long ass PragerU ad so I can let it play through. Thank you for this 🙏
This was incredibly insightful, i rethought much of my views thank your for your work if even another person other than me watches this video and feels like i felt than we will have made one more step :)
Thank you!!! The only reason I would use Amazon, for you. The Commons is it, the essential ingredient, very difficult to maintain. Water and air were assumed to.be shared in life...yet....we must fight for it
Thank you. Appreciate that a ton. If you don't use Amazon and shop elsewhere, continue to do so! Don't want to pull people over to a pretty horrid corporation. Rather, for people who do use them already, it is a good way to help out!
Reminds me of Capital is Dead (2019) by Mckenzie Wark. In the book she speculates we're seeing the birth of two new dialecticly opposed classes, the vectoralist being the new capitalists who use their control of "vectors" (the connections that allows information to flow, somewhat similar to platforms in concept) to extract value.
The background music is so hauntingly beautiful. Please make it available as 'Hauntingly Beautiful Ambient Music to Organize/Ponder on the relevance of Marxism' or something
Also, a video idea: If you made a video about your process of deciphering loaded texts, I think a lot of people would find it very helpful. I often rely on systems thinking approach when trying to extract meaning out of a very loaded sentence. Split it into parts and denominate each part, then construct the meaning from all the previously denominated parts. So far so good, yet to come across a text that's just a dead end impenetrable.
I like your video but you make a very big flaw when talking about the labor theory of value. Marx never said that all labor has value and he also distinguishes between what we calls "productive" and "unproductive" labor. He clearly states that for something to have value it must have use, it must fulfill a purpose in society.
I think the point of the critique wasn’t how a commodity starts to have value but that they were fighting for commodification of their labor which brought them into the capitalist hegemony.
18:11 *undialectical stagnated monolith* “A very small few orthodox Marxists undeniably like to lock Marx in a deep box and keep his analysis suspended in time as a religious singularity-an undialectical stagnated monolith.”
One of the worst things is that a lot of Leftist hear Zizek and think that means that identity doesnt have a place in ideology, which i think is different than what Zizek is actually analyzing. I think that i s why people get this idea that the only conflict, is class conflict, when in fact it just seems to mean that we cannot rely wholly on the critique of race, sex, and gender in our critique of ideology, and instead we need to de-liberalize these aspects of discourse, and then tie in the relation of class so that the critique is "whole" and not dismissive of the learned experience of so many oppressed peoples.
He's actually said this before as well. Zizek being a sexist, transphobe, homophobe, and a pseudo-intellectual, etc. almost have no real basis whatsoever. Zizek is complicated, so I understand not contending with his work, but most criticisms I see are massively untrue.
The key thing is not to be a dogmatic Marxist. dialectical materialism (hegel+marx) is the tool to use to confront the contradictions of today's world. 'A Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing' must be the correct attitude. Nice video, gg
9:24 *paradox-extreme deregulation necessitates larger state* “The philosophical push is for extreme deregulation-yet ironically we necessitate the state even more to secure the contracts/licensing agreements for corporations when they rent out their intellectual property for us all to mindlessly* consume.” */s
If it helps get your spirits up, know that when it comes to scientific research, more and more papers are being published in open access journals or straight up uploaded on the internet. In Europe universities especially, I noticed that, out of the papers published in the last 5 years, around 75% were free to to read. But that might be the case just in my domain. If fundamental research becomes free, the rest can be build upon it (to some extent).
Curious question. If I'm a participant of cryptocurrency, am I more capitalist? Because the idea of it is to decentralize and eventually replace fiat. So is it capitalism next gen or can it coincide with communist ideals?
I didn't understand much of your video. You say the Internet/technology will become open source and free, but then you just give examples of how all cyberspace is monopolized for profit?? So what is it? I don't see how is it "cool" to abandon Marxism, when at the heart of it lies a Hegelian understanding of history . If you ever thought or read The Capital as a blueprint to a definitive formation of society (and I really don't know how you can manage to do that) then I think you missed one of his central points. Thanks for the video!
and, alongside that was exploitation of labor for the production of cash crops, rice and wheat on plantations for export, in addition to some manufacturing and mercantilism
It’s interesting, I would very much consider myself a Marxist-Leninist, and I very much believe in analysing things anew. Particularly through this lens of modern Capitalism vs. the Capitalism that existed in the time of Marx and Engels. I’ve always enjoyed Žižek and I think many of the things he writes are very relevant. His analysis of Ideology is, to me, a very important piece of work. Still, the conclusion that the most Marxist thing to do is, in a way, abandon Marx, is a difficult concept to grapple with. What precisely does this entail? What would it mean for political work and organisation in the future? I suppose it’s compounded by the fact that, as far as I can tell, Žižek rarely offers a solution. I don’t think he has to, just to be clear. Nonetheless, it makes it difficult for me to envision the movement continuing on without splintering into a multitude of agitated sub-groups (something which, as Žižek has pointed out, is already happening) would one begin to apply Žižek to the practical nature of political organising. I suppose I just find it difficult to imagine unifying Žižekian theory with praxis.
28:12 social media doesnt divide. material conditions under capitalism do. if everyone was doing well under capitalism, you would log on facebook not to see qanon posts but pics of dogs and cats. social media is just the medium where people express their frustration.
Can you expound on the freedom section of starting at 16:15? It seems like it is stating that the freedom of choice is 1) not an actual freedom and 2) a burden on the person. But it seems the opposite of it would be 1) akin to slavery or a circumstances where 2) a person has unlimited resources. If someone were in a situation akin to slavery, they would be provided with long term employment so they would not have to worry about being fired, likely a place to stay so they can be of use to the owner, all of the healthcare the owner decided to provide, all the education the owner provided, all the travel the owner decided to provide. There would be no freedom of choice nor burden of choice if those choices were not adequate.
"either work or be poor and suffer" Marx explodes this kind of thinking that poverty is only because of a lack of jobs. Rather it comes about because of work in this society, and unemployment is a necessary part of the logic of capital. In this society work produces massive wealth, and at the same time massive poverty-- and that already is a criticism of it.
Omg yes! I haven't read this book of Žižek yet but I'm super interested in works going deeper into the ideology of Free/Open Source in the context of capitalism. I've been active in Open Source movements much of my life and often you find people who strongly disagree on each other's economic ideologies work on FOSS Projects together. Nowadays, the ideological war between "free" and "commercial" software is long over and we have Microsoft running GitHub and Google being one of the largest contributors to free and open source software. We need some theory on this!!
well intentioned critique here. That background noise you have on the soundtrack is quite useless. i am already struggling with tinnitus and it is tiring to have to strain to hear your words over the droning of a cat asleep on a casiotone. Have faith that what you are saying is worth a isten without sweeteners, thank you.
The first 5 seconds is a contradictory statement... This is going to be fun. Remember, if this wasn't "real" communism, then this isn't "real" capitalism either... It seems like both systems have a lot in common. Still waiting for the "fall" though... Been almost 150 years, the predictions keep getting made. If anything, it's moving to gestalt and totalitarianism, but that's a different ploy. Thanks for this.
There were several points during this video which I am having some trouble with. First off, the whole deal about ficticious Capital being 'parasitic' strikes me as quite vulgar marxism. Ficticious (forms of) capital aren't any less real or a less integral part of capital. Marx himself writes in volume 3 about capitals movement from industrial to 'ficticious' forms during down-cycles. This is nothing new, neither in a qualitative or quantitative sense. It is simply a necessary component of capitalism as a social system, which doesn't rely on selling something 'material' at all. All capitalism needs is the circulation of value through commodities, be they physical objects or ethereal services. Viewing the latter as 'parasitic', is simply wrong. I like Zizek, but his understanding of marxian economic analysis is obviously not his strong point. I recommend Michael Heinrichs introduction to Capital, or his Der Wissenschaft von Wert.
Hello, friends. Was really looking forward to get this video out to you all. I really enjoyed this book a ton. Truly think Zizek's outlook on Marxism is super useful today. There are so many ways in which our traditional outlook on capitalism and even Marxist critiques underscore capitalism's ability to sell ideas, lifestyles, etc. (As Zizek talks about the needed material reversal of Marx in the Peterson debate.)
As always, none of this is ever possible without the support of Patrons and RUclips members. If you want to get early access to videos, exclusive videos, etc. come join Patreon or our member section! This truly keeps this entire channel alive. Thanks for any support you can throw my way!
Patreon: www.patreon.com/epochphilosophy
Member: ruclips.net/channel/UC738SsV6BSLUVvMgKnEFFzQjoin
I didn't understand much of your video. You say the Internet/technology will become open source and free, but then you just give examples of how all cyberspace is monopolized for profit?? So what is it?
I don't see how is it "cool" to abandon Marxism, when at the heart of it lies a Hegelian understanding of history . If you ever thought or read The Capital as a blueprint to a definitive formation of society (and I really don't know how you can manage to do that) then I think you missed one of his central points.
Thanks for the video!
As a poet, I am more of a communist than Zizak will ever be, but I am a communist of spirit, not economy.
@Unism You are most welcome.
I would say you’re wasted on RUclips , except I don’t think you are . And just in case you don’t have a doctorate in philosophy we really ought to bestow an honorary one on you right here for your fluent and accessible content .
This is my first encounter with this channel and I'm pretty impressed. I used to think Zizek was basically an amusing academic sort of comedian but not someone to take seriously when it comes to understanding revolution. I have come to realize he's a lot more than a hot take machine and that his contradictory positions actually make pretty clear sense and are probably where a lot of marxists today are at. He's actually a lot more consistent in his revolutionary politics than someone like Chomsky who famously wrote articles supporting the Spanish anarchists who would pose with the skulls of slain fascists yet who calls antifascist protesters protecting themselves from physical assault by "proud boys" a "gift to the right wing."
While Manufacturing Consent and his encyclopedic criticism of US foreign policy still rings true as ever I definitely regret taking Chomsky's straw man attacks against Zizek seriously. He is obviously the more revolutionary of the two and his hot takes are more honest than Chomsky's liberal talking points which the media ironically uses against the left.
Out of all comments I have received in my videos this arguably my favorite one. Genuinely, thank you for this. This at least tells me what I am REALLY trying to do is actually kind of working. (Hopefully.) Trying to add clarity to more complex ideas and show their relevance. Especially with Zizek and other complex philosophies and theory.
I still love Chomsky, and he has done wonders for adding deeper context to leftist ideas in an easier way, but his idea that Zizek and what is regarded as "theory" is "pseudo intellectualism" is utter bullshit. That's the goal of these videos. To show that Zizek is saying some extremely significant and relevant things that we would be extremely wise to take seriously. Things that often get brushed under the rug as nonsense, post-marxism, or simply saying nothing at all under fancy language.
The stuff Zizek lays out is some of the most relevant stuff we could ask for. It is just a shame that the subject matter is kinda complex for most. Thus, here is what I'm trying to kind of mend.
@@epochphilosophy do you like Todd McGowan? Or Peter Rollins?
zizek's mind is in constant revolution
Absoloutely fantastic video! The ending quote about the best way to be a Marxist is to not be a Marxist perfectly summed up the contradictions in dialectical relationships for me! Thank you!
Super happy you enjoyed. Thank you for the kind words!
@@epochphilosophy No problem!! Loved your videos so far! Really struggled with Heidigger, but your visual representation of dasien was a massive help! Happy New Year 😊
Even better! Genuinely love these comments. Happy new year to you!
You know a guy has consumed a lot Žižek when he uses «precisely» in every other sentence 😁
And so on, and so on...
Actually, he says "dialectical" so much, you could make a drinking game out of it. tavi.
That's pure ideology
This video blew my mind, I'm going to have to revisit, take notes, and watch it a few times before I fully grasp the info. I'm reading Zizek now, he's writing is sometimes impenetrable for me (lack of background in philosophy) but he's very alluring. This video definitely helped! Keep them coming!
Appreciate this a ton! Yeah, Zizek is certainly not a bad writer, but I think a ton of people overstate his clarity. He is very much not very clear at times lol. Big reason why I try to hammer in videos around Zizek.
Great start to the new year! You've put in a lot of effort
Thank you, my friend. Figured this would be a good one.
This is a great video, gonna share this with all my 3 friends.
I saw this great little book on the counter of a bookstore when I visited New York. I picked it up and read it all in a few hours. What I find interesting about open source projects such as Linux and the anarchist beginnings of the internet is dat you can have a social economy without money. People put hours and hours into writing the software without the lure of financial compensation. According to some right-libertarians, this isn't possible and people would become completely apathic and lazy in some kind of advanced socialist society in which all basic needs are met. Yet, we see examples of the opposite.
Great addition to the Slavoj Zizek playlist mate ;)
Many thanks!
Fascinating shit, I really enjoyed this a lot. I’m not sure I completely agree with all the conclusions, particularly the “don’t be a Marxist” part, but there’s a lot of *value* here. I definitely agree with actually using dialectical materialism today, and not being dogmatic in “one’s Marxism”, lost in the past, but I don’t see how we go from that to just not “being a Marxist”. I guess with that part it all comes down to what one means when they say they are a Marxist, and what Zižek means, etc.. I want to spell this out a bit, bc I think it actually matters, and maybe someone can help me understand how I’m not getting it, if they disagree.
It’s like, I call myself a Christian, because I have faith in the person who was Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, but what I mean when I say that, and what most of my family members mean, are VERY different things, which really are only connected to each other via Christ. I’m very influenced by Tolstoy, Christian Anarchism, Cornel West, and a more radical Christian tradition, and conceptualize my actual faith most closely to how Kierkegaard explained faith; I’m an anti-fundamentalist, as I think a fundamentalist reading of the Bible makes no sense in just about every way you could cut it, and I think fundamentalism, in general, can only be maintained through a fervent dogmatism, and is actually contradictory to Christ. (I could go deep into that, logically and theologically, but that’s not my purpose here.) My family is the polar opposite, dogmatic and fundamentalist, with a view of the Bible as inerrant (KJV, of course), and of course believing Genesis literally is ESSENTIAL to them, otherwise Christ means nothing (so Adam and Eve literally happened, and the universe is only thousands of years old). Several of those in my family simply view me as a heretic, as someone who can’t possibly “be saved”, because I break from a form of their tradition that can’t be broken from while continuing to actually be that tradition... One might call me, “a revisionist”, though in reality that’s of course what all modern Christians are to some extent, bc the interpretations and theology has expanded and contracted and evolved over 2000 years...
So... um, you see where I’m going with this? Marxism is definitely younger, not even 200 years old, but I hope people see the parallels I’m trying to draw here (of course I could have used something other than Christianity, and I’m not saying they’re perfectly paralleled, for obvious reasons). Point is, there isn’t a singular MARXISM, just like there isn’t a singular CHRISTIANITY, just like there isn’t a singular.. well, almost any kind of ethos, system of thought, and so on. There isn’t even just one singular NAZISM ffs, though the difference there is that all Nazism(s) are trash.
Given all this, why stop being a Marxist, full stop? I mean, I’m not JUST a Marxist, just like I’m not JUST a Christian, just like I’m not JUST humanist, or JUST a queer, etc, and so on.. For me, it makes far more sense to just say, “give up dogmatism”, or any kind of dogmatic thinking, in general. You want to be a Marxist, fine, but don’t get so bogged down in theory from the past that it clouds your understanding of the future. Instead, discard what doesn’t make sense in 2021 given the change in material condition, and the last 170+ years of history, and keep using the tools for analysis that continue to make sense. To me, there’s something almost hypocritical about saying everything up until the point of, “don’t be a Marxist”, all that useful stuff about remembering what year it is, and what the material conditions are, but then saying, “now, don’t be a Marxist”...
Idk, maybe it’s meant to provoke, or sound more radical, or something. I get lost on that, as anyone who’s read this far can see. Now, you can tell me what I’m missing or why I’m wrong. ✌️❤️🏴♾
Don't be a Christian
我和你一样即使马克思主义共产党员，也是基督教徒，并且一样的认为精神创造思想，人不要被意识形态左右，即便在不的现象周边的所有人形成的现实，意识形态如何如何，我做的是不和任何人站一队的独立与怀疑。
另外亚当夏娃是吃了永恒知识树的过去的人，我认为，人要做上帝的人子，通过耶稣的保血，洗净我的身体，可以和上帝交流，并且带更多的人进入基督里面。
You ever read/listen to Peter Rollins?
As the kids say, there's a lot to unpack here.
You need to do some grass-touching.
This is just mind-blowing stuff. The amount of time and effort that went behind this is amazing - so much details packed in half an hour. It would be really helpful if you can provide a transcript. Thank you once again for your efforts.
Thanks for make these types of videos.
More than happy to provide, friend. Thanks for being here.
If you can be fired, you are working class.
"Henry Ford showed us how." --Joseph Stalin --Stalin was the ultimate utilitarian. Anyone could be replaced.
@@joelfry4982 He didn't seem to be all that good at weighing social utility and personal loyalty.
@@NathanDudani hey I was actually just on your channel two hours ago watchin perverts guide. Thank you so much for posting it btw.
A CEO can be fired by his shareholders
It's a bit more complicated than that
The end of production and the freedom of choice really ties in with the society of control remarks from Deleuze. Its really interesting listening to the new philosophy channels popping up and learning through this medium. Really cool stuff and impressive video production!
The point about how class is dissolved into an ideology of everyone being an entrepreneur is very useful. You already have the tendency in countries like the US to call virtually everybody middle class, but then we get this supposed new freedom added into the mix, the idea of which is leveraged by the gig economy, girlboss MLMs, the framing of crypto, etc.
This new dominant 'rent' economy that Zizek talks about has been occupying my brain a lot lately. It's very interesting and contains a lot of the answers we may need, I believe. Also, this form of product in which a company like Facebook operates fully on the form in which their product is free, because every click of every person generates revenue for Facebook in that it creates a more complete consumer profile for propaganda, or advertising companies to better trick you into looking at or buying the products of their clients.
Yup. I've actually been doing the same. Zizek carries a lot from Jeremy Rifkin (a dude who is relatively unknown who really pushed this idea of a new rent economy), and I want to get into his stuff specifically.
Precisely! Even Adam Smith himself (and really all classical economists) highlighted this "rentier class" and their parasitic form as a vestige residue of feudal social relations as rent is value extracted _without_ value produced, a clear contradiction to the justifying logic of "the market".
_"Kelp was never augmented by human industry. The landlord, however, whose estate is bounded by a kelp shore of this kind, demands a rent for it."_ - Ch.11 Wealth of Nations
Really I think putting the term "free market" back into its historical context among Smith, John Stuart Mill, Malthus, Lassalle, David Ricardo, etc. (and of course Marx) it becomes more illustrative of a market free of _rent extraction_ as opposed to the laissez faire distortion it has transformed into over time being utilized as a dogma of maintaining the social hierarchy rather than one that would attempt to dismantle this hierarchy, but that's just my interpretation because of this prominent and pretty ubiquitously omitted emphasis. Mill has some good/humorous quotes on this as well, but yeah check out ch.11 in WoN as it's pretty much entirely justifiably shitting on landlords for being the parasites they are. Actually on a similar note, the "tendency of the rate of profit to fall" was also highlighted by Smith himself, which makes it quite strange how the cultural characterization of these people seem to be diametrically opposed and I think demonstrates the trajectory of this cultural distortion over time.
I think it also may clarify why Marx was emphasizing the market structure mentioned at the end of the video, namely that Marx wrote his critique under an acceptance of the first principle logical assumptions so as to remove his analysis from a mischaracterization of a normative "ought" (in regards to Hume's is/ought distinction), or basically to be an extension of classical economic analysis, which as we can see...did not work at all lol. And of course all this stuff has been quite conveniently circumvented entirely in contemporary econ by simply creating the "orthodox" branch (the fact that this is the common term of distinction used from within the field itself is rather fitting and unselfaware) of neoclassical econ which removes any discussion of exactly this point of the contradiction posed by economic rent, dismissing that focal goal of making "the market" actually serve that universal social good by simply declaring a new assumptive standpoint that all market outcomes are justified inherently. Ironically and inevitably of course this will necessarily lead to the capture of any productive outcomes by the least-productive rentier class and of course it has done exactly that in the rise and dominion of fictitious capital since the 70s and the emergence of this neoclassical/neoliberal orthodoxy.
This is super long already sorry, but I think it's maybe worth noting the throughline of dialectical progression with Marx, as all of the outcomes he outlined were implicitly from a class consciousness emerging from the conditions of _industrial_ capitalism as a progression in time, whereas what we have now is a complete takeover of mostly finance (fictitious) capital, which devours not only that productive capacity industrial capital must yield to survive in its symbiotic (though of course also exploitative) relationship it has with the working class, but also in dissolving the conditions that create such class consciousness in the first place as all of it is essentially based in ungrounded ethereal ideological distortion. Hopefully any of that made sense lol. Actually, Vol.3 of Capital (aka the volume that is never actually opened lol) elaborates what I'm trying to get at here, and of course Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism ( www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ ) extends this further to pretty presciently illuminate the inherently dominant role finance capital has when it is unburdened by any tethering to reality.
Also as a follow up that hopefully won't be book-length lol, Smith's (et al) proposed prescription to natural monopoly and its emergent exploitation through rent extraction was a "land value tax" which unlike property taxes, it disregards the value of buildings and other supplemental additions to real estate, as this differentiates value that emerges as an external effect (like good schools, neighborhood, etc.) and is supposed to then redistribute this collected LVT back into the collective source of such value, hence it being a tax. I think Marx liked this as well, as well as many others, and it's something China is attempting to actually structure and implement as they are for the most part acutely aware of the US's trajectory into finance capitalism and how this dissolves the totalizing systemic progression Marx was outlining into a regressive feudalist foundation.
This is basically why I would consider Smith, Ricardo, etc. sort of "proto-socialists" as opposed to "capitalists" in regards to the modern understanding of capitalism as that laissez faire proto-neofeudalism bullshit the word has now popularly become in its de facto embrace of rent-extraction as this poses a stark contradiction on its face in terms of the justifying logic of the market itself.
@@epochphilosophy You should definitely check out economist/anthropologist/mentat Michael Hudson in this regard, if you're not already aware of course. After reading Wealth of Nations and being confused as hell with no popular mention of the rent stuff he wrote, Hudson was the only one who clearly put all of this into a historical materialist framework that not only makes _enormous_ sense, but recontextualizes the historical role of even religion itself as it gives it a _material_ power that is pretty much never associated with it in its contemporary understanding, much like the role of economics plays in all of our implicit ideological frameworks despite it masquerading as something purely materially "objective" in its modern form/study.
This in particular helped me understand the material basis for the war in Iraq and really all wars, in a more totalizing context beyond the military industrial complex that is, essentially an extension of Lenin:
michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/superimperialism.pdf
Here's a random vidya discussion with him and the late David Graeber (whose book on Debt and its mythology is similarly quite revealing if not already familiar):
ruclips.net/video/1rlIXAUGans/видео.html
if you don't pay for the product you are the product. I can see a future in which you don't have a basic income but every citizen gets a basic package of essential services: food, internet, transportation, energy. Of course this gives the government or mega-corporations (who are already pretty much the same) tremendous power as they might cut anyone off who doesn't behave the way they should. Think social credit, which China already has. The world economic forum already talked about such a future in an article titled "you own nothing and you will be happy".
New peak after the mark fisher video! Keep it up Ian!
advanced democracy is the way, plus democracy at work
Thanks for this. Zizek's Marxism has been confusing to me. This clarifies a lot.
Defiantly my favourite video of yours and favourite video on Zizek. I think the last section on how Communism is really the name of new problems emerging exemplifies what Zizek says about the role of a public intellectual is to articulate the right questions.
For sure your best video (so far). Phenomenal work, my friend 🙏🏼
Thanks my dude. Appreciate that a ton. Keep up the good work on your channel yourself!
It would be amazing if it had English subtitles to make it easier for non-speakers to understand. Great video!
"The twentieth century was a discosure of the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one." --Nassim Taleb
It's pure ideology™
The work you put into these videos has me feeling legitimately guilty I can't pitch in on the Patreon. I just hope I don't get a long ass PragerU ad so I can let it play through. Thank you for this 🙏
Do not feel bad whatsoever. Appreciate this comment a ton!
Amazing Eval. Thank you so much!
Criminally undersubscribed channel. You’ll have your come up!
Thank you, friend.
This was incredibly insightful, i rethought much of my views thank your for your work if even another person other than me watches this video and feels like i felt than we will have made one more step :)
Thank you man... You are a medicine to my life.
Damn. Quite the compliment. Super glad you enjoy!
Great channel. This is like a free university lecture
I never found out why the audience cheered at 23:44 when he says he's more of a hegelian.
Great video man , makes you wonder more about the subject and stimulate you to read about it. Good content thumbs up !
Really great video, it clarified a lot for me! I think I’ll have to pick up this book soon. Thank you 😊
Comment for the algorithm gods
Coming back to this video after listen to the manifesto on audiobook like 40 times at work over the last few months lol
Thank you!!! The only reason I would use Amazon, for you. The Commons is it, the essential ingredient, very difficult to maintain. Water and air were assumed to.be shared in life...yet....we must fight for it
Thank you. Appreciate that a ton. If you don't use Amazon and shop elsewhere, continue to do so! Don't want to pull people over to a pretty horrid corporation. Rather, for people who do use them already, it is a good way to help out!
this is such an incredible video. one of your best. i rewatch it like once a month haha
I was at that Zizek talk in the beginning :)
Youre blowing my mind here dude
Reminds me of Capital is Dead (2019) by Mckenzie Wark. In the book she speculates we're seeing the birth of two new dialecticly opposed classes, the vectoralist being the new capitalists who use their control of "vectors" (the connections that allows information to flow, somewhat similar to platforms in concept) to extract value.
Zizek references McKenzie Wark in this book!
@@epochphilosophy Am I right in thinking that Zizek is somewhat implying that the means of production are going for a revolution of their own?
19:20 doesn't marx addresse this in Capital in regards to socially necessary labor time or am I confusing my theory?
The background music is so hauntingly beautiful. Please make it available as 'Hauntingly Beautiful Ambient Music to Organize/Ponder on the relevance of Marxism' or something
Also, a video idea:
If you made a video about your process of deciphering loaded texts, I think a lot of people would find it very helpful.
I often rely on systems thinking approach when trying to extract meaning out of a very loaded sentence. Split it into parts and denominate each part, then construct the meaning from all the previously denominated parts. So far so good, yet to come across a text that's just a dead end impenetrable.
Great video as always!
Time to see what this guy is about at last
I like your video but you make a very big flaw when talking about the labor theory of value. Marx never said that all labor has value and he also distinguishes between what we calls "productive" and "unproductive" labor. He clearly states that for something to have value it must have use, it must fulfill a purpose in society.
Don’t the activities of housewives provide use for society?
I think the point of the critique wasn’t how a commodity starts to have value but that they were fighting for commodification of their labor which brought them into the capitalist hegemony.
Great work. Favorite video so far
18:11 *undialectical stagnated monolith* “A very small few orthodox Marxists undeniably like to lock Marx in a deep box and keep his analysis suspended in time as a religious singularity-an undialectical stagnated monolith.”
Great work mayte!! Could you do one on Fukuyama as well ? Would be delighted.
May the force be with ya!
eNd Of HiStOrY
Jordan Peterson should watch this video and learn the value of the communist manifesto.
Great video, thank you for the excellent content!
One of the worst things is that a lot of Leftist hear Zizek and think that means that identity doesnt have a place in ideology, which i think is different than what Zizek is actually analyzing. I think that i s why people get this idea that the only conflict, is class conflict, when in fact it just seems to mean that we cannot rely wholly on the critique of race, sex, and gender in our critique of ideology, and instead we need to de-liberalize these aspects of discourse, and then tie in the relation of class so that the critique is "whole" and not dismissive of the learned experience of so many oppressed peoples.
He's actually said this before as well. Zizek being a sexist, transphobe, homophobe, and a pseudo-intellectual, etc. almost have no real basis whatsoever. Zizek is complicated, so I understand not contending with his work, but most criticisms I see are massively untrue.
BTW, I absolutely hated "What is Zizek For." Strawman article.
The key thing is not to be a dogmatic Marxist. dialectical materialism (hegel+marx) is the tool to use to confront the contradictions of today's world. 'A Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing' must be the correct attitude. Nice video, gg
Great work, again!
This is an excellent video, thanks!
Liked commented subscribed thank you friend
9:24 *paradox-extreme deregulation necessitates larger state* “The philosophical push is for extreme deregulation-yet ironically we necessitate the state even more to secure the contracts/licensing agreements for corporations when they rent out their intellectual property for us all to mindlessly* consume.”
*/s
Can you make a video on Deloos and guitar
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
I watched this video twice and still can't tell if I should blow out my brains or not.
You're too good to us
I absolutely agree with him.
Great work!
Great job as usual.
Thanks, this is an interesting insight
Great thanks. I listened to this in a restaurant looking at glasses on the bar. Some had water. Does it matter? They are all the same.
Ambient + Socialism = Subscribed
Id love it if you did a video with unlearning economics
Good work!
If it helps get your spirits up, know that when it comes to scientific research, more and more papers are being published in open access journals or straight up uploaded on the internet. In Europe universities especially, I noticed that, out of the papers published in the last 5 years, around 75% were free to to read. But that might be the case just in my domain. If fundamental research becomes free, the rest can be build upon it (to some extent).
Linux gang FTW, using Garuda/w10 dualboot atm (Arch based)
Great video
"DVDs are disappearing you download everything" and basically watch Netflix dumping money into series for future markets shares.
housework is already a commodity though. it's already creating value for the bourgeoisie, it's just not being compensated in all cases.
Curious question. If I'm a participant of cryptocurrency, am I more capitalist? Because the idea of it is to decentralize and eventually replace fiat. So is it capitalism next gen or can it coincide with communist ideals?
I didn't understand much of your video. You say the Internet/technology will become open source and free, but then you just give examples of how all cyberspace is monopolized for profit?? So what is it?
I don't see how is it "cool" to abandon Marxism, when at the heart of it lies a Hegelian understanding of history . If you ever thought or read The Capital as a blueprint to a definitive formation of society (and I really don't know how you can manage to do that) then I think you missed one of his central points.
Thanks for the video!
Which Gerald A. Cohen work is referenced on the movement and formation of the working class?
15:45 Speculation of value was the foundation of the economy of the 13 colonies in the 18th Century
and, alongside that was exploitation of labor for the production of cash crops, rice and wheat on plantations for export, in addition to some manufacturing and mercantilism
im happy you adressed the transphobia allegations! i can sleep easy now
It’s interesting, I would very much consider myself a Marxist-Leninist, and I very much believe in analysing things anew. Particularly through this lens of modern Capitalism vs. the Capitalism that existed in the time of Marx and Engels.
I’ve always enjoyed Žižek and I think many of the things he writes are very relevant. His analysis of Ideology is, to me, a very important piece of work.
Still, the conclusion that the most Marxist thing to do is, in a way, abandon Marx, is a difficult concept to grapple with. What precisely does this entail? What would it mean for political work and organisation in the future?
I suppose it’s compounded by the fact that, as far as I can tell, Žižek rarely offers a solution. I don’t think he has to, just to be clear. Nonetheless, it makes it difficult for me to envision the movement continuing on without splintering into a multitude of agitated sub-groups (something which, as Žižek has pointed out, is already happening) would one begin to apply Žižek to the practical nature of political organising.
I suppose I just find it difficult to imagine unifying Žižekian theory with praxis.
not a leftist but still enjoy these videos
It's because of the non-Hegelian nature and doctrines of Lenin that set China and Vietnam back in terms of natural progression of history organically.
Why does Zizek avoid what is being described by Freud in his Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego as the possible explanation?
28:12 social media doesnt divide. material conditions under capitalism do. if everyone was doing well under capitalism, you would log on facebook not to see qanon posts but pics of dogs and cats. social media is just the medium where people express their frustration.
This is good stuff
Can you expound on the freedom section of starting at 16:15? It seems like it is stating that the freedom of choice is 1) not an actual freedom and 2) a burden on the person. But it seems the opposite of it would be 1) akin to slavery or a circumstances where 2) a person has unlimited resources. If someone were in a situation akin to slavery, they would be provided with long term employment so they would not have to worry about being fired, likely a place to stay so they can be of use to the owner, all of the healthcare the owner decided to provide, all the education the owner provided, all the travel the owner decided to provide. There would be no freedom of choice nor burden of choice if those choices were not adequate.
"either work or be poor and suffer"
Marx explodes this kind of thinking that poverty is only because of a lack of jobs. Rather it comes about because of work in this society, and unemployment is a necessary part of the logic of capital. In this society work produces massive wealth, and at the same time massive poverty-- and that already is a criticism of it.
Talk about Richard Stallman
Omg yes! I haven't read this book of Žižek yet but I'm super interested in works going deeper into the ideology of Free/Open Source in the context of capitalism. I've been active in Open Source movements much of my life and often you find people who strongly disagree on each other's economic ideologies work on FOSS Projects together.
Nowadays, the ideological war between "free" and "commercial" software is long over and we have Microsoft running GitHub and Google being one of the largest contributors to free and open source software. We need some theory on this!!
The live is going to remain afterwards as a video right?
The whole red highlighter thing makes me wonder if this is all a political compass meme
What lol
@@epochphilosophy ah nvm. I thought it was a reference to those political compass highlighter memes. Great video btw 👍
@@waylaytrucking Ah gotcha. Was super confused for a second. Appreciate that my friend!
Bro, it's funny how PwC is allowing him to say so
The system needs to adapt to new ways of understanding
Can you do a video on manufacturing consent
well intentioned critique here. That background noise you have on the soundtrack is quite useless. i am already struggling with tinnitus and it is tiring to have to strain to hear your words over the droning of a cat asleep on a casiotone. Have faith that what you are saying is worth a isten without sweeteners, thank you.
Iterating the marxist analysis to reflect the now is imperative for leftism to persist
Hi, where i can see the complete videos where he's speaking about "weird communism" and where he says why he's still a marxist?
The first 5 seconds is a contradictory statement... This is going to be fun.
Remember, if this wasn't "real" communism, then this isn't "real" capitalism either...
It seems like both systems have a lot in common.
Still waiting for the "fall" though... Been almost 150 years, the predictions keep getting made. If anything, it's moving to gestalt and totalitarianism, but that's a different ploy.
Thanks for this.
Oh, and Hegel was gross. Schopenhauer hated him, and that's enough for me.
@Kevin Tewey Are you lonely? May I direct you to someone who cares?
There were several points during this video which I am having some trouble with. First off, the whole deal about ficticious Capital being 'parasitic' strikes me as quite vulgar marxism. Ficticious (forms of) capital aren't any less real or a less integral part of capital. Marx himself writes in volume 3 about capitals movement from industrial to 'ficticious' forms during down-cycles. This is nothing new, neither in a qualitative or quantitative sense. It is simply a necessary component of capitalism as a social system, which doesn't rely on selling something 'material' at all. All capitalism needs is the circulation of value through commodities, be they physical objects or ethereal services. Viewing the latter as 'parasitic', is simply wrong. I like Zizek, but his understanding of marxian economic analysis is obviously not his strong point. I recommend Michael Heinrichs introduction to Capital, or his Der Wissenschaft von Wert.
But but, the working class was never a uniform entity, but a plurality (think iww vs more conservative trade unions at the time).