I wish I could. Right now I starve at the end of every month. My veterans benefits are a joke. But I support you in your message. I shared to my group's.
David should learn real science instead of historical materialism. If he knew real science he would know that freedom is a false religion. Tell him to read this book by a real scientist (Skinner, 1971) Beyond freedom and dignity selfdefinition.org/psychology/BF-Skinner-Beyond-Freedom-&-Dignity-1971.pdf
Just as its the job of atheists to go around busting the myth of religion, it should be the job of socialists to go around busting the myth of liberty. David is a religious nutter
@@PoliticalEconomy101 i dont think many scientist would agree with skiner and social sciences are not predictive the way hard sciences are. Also i went to the soviet union and it sucked.
As opposed to being "free to starve" because a private property owner stole your value of production, and you can't afford to eat...or have healthcare? But you are free to not work there....and again, free to starve to death, because there are no other option under such a "free" system. Either abide by private property owner's authoritarian regime, or starve to death....FREEDOM!!!
@@DayneAW lol no it was the private owner that created the value of your production to begin with. Or do you own machines and a factory? Cant flip burgers without a grill boy.
@@MrHigherplane Can the machine do the job w/o employer or does it have any worth w/o buyers? And skill makes no difference if only 1-3 employer choices I just don't get ppl who advocate for mistreatment of workers, really sad
@@TranquilFaith4me Did u agree to the wage or not? If you did its you problem. How about this. YOURE FIRED! how about that? No more exploitation. Youre free to pick through the garbage now. HAPPY?!
I think it's important that people recognize, when the Right Wing talks about "freedom," that they do not mean the freedom of the mass of people. The are not talking about MY freedom, or YOUR freedom, but instead, they are talking about the freedom of Capital. The freedom of those who own everything, to exploit, manipulate, rip off and prosper from the extraction of wealth FROM the masses. That's what they mean by "freedom."
Yeah, well put. Also Americans should also recall the US Constitution mentions Justice as well as Liberty. You cannot have Freedoms before you have Justice. Justice comes first by all material contextual analyses and practice.
True dat. Thats what the capitalist class, white male oligarchy, corporate capitalists want. But many right libertarians are against monopoly, oligopoly, and big business because they destroy competition. They are for the freedom of small to medium business to compete. Also there are many cooperatives, public goods, and government businesses. So its really just about liberty only for the capitalist oligarchy
The biggest outrage is to privatize the solvent of life: profiting from the sale of water is pure lunacy. Where water is a limiting resource such as in the US Southwest, it's reasonable to pay a fee, but to a public agency, not to some private corporation extracting profits from the sale of the one completely fundamental biological necessity.
I make something that costs me $1. I put it up for sale for $2 (or even $200, doesnt matter the price). You voluntarily choose to purchase it for the price we both agree on and I profit. You receive what you wanted/needed and I received what I wanted/needed. That's the fundamental idea.
What an eloquent way of explaining how the exchange value of the Market manufactures wants, needs and desires which leads to a slavery to necessity. Where as the use value of the Commons satisfies the wants, needs and desires which leads to a freedom of the sovereign self. I've been watching several of your lectures on Marx's Kapital and they have really broadened my understanding of Marxian thought. For a long time I felt that Marx was a philosopher because of his value theories. When I found out that Capital is value in motion and if value isn't realized it becomes anti-value I started thinking of Marx as more of an Economist. Studying Hegel, the dialectic and reality in terms of triads I've come to realize that Marxian/Hegelian thought in its totality is our only exit from the bad infinity we find ourselves in. You mention in your lectures that Marx never created an all encapsulating critique of Capital/Capitalism which is a task we face. Marx says he turned Hegel's philosophy on its head but I don't think that is quite right. I believe that the dialectic is a triad also and that Marxian thought is one of these triads. There is the (1) the concept/abstract/Hegel idealism of being (Thesis), the counter-concept/abstract/Hegel idealism of anti-being (Antithesis) that transcends to the concrete grounded in the history of becoming (synthesis). There is the (2) concept/abstract/Market propaganda (thesis) counter-concept/grounded/exploitation (antithesis) that transcends into the abstraction/ the bad infinity that is destroying our nest. There is the (3) concept/grounded/Marxian historical materialism of value (thesis) the counter-concept/abstract/ the Geist; that which is (antithesis) which leads to a synthesis where instead of Money Capital being the start and finish of value in motion living labour becomes the beginning and ending Capital in the circulation of Capital. This is the only surplus value that can stop us from spiraling down the bad infinity to extinction.
*MrHigherplane* _"Freedom is a right, not required by whatever collective you are talking about."_ -- Even if freedom is a "right", as you claim, then it must be granted by the society you are living in. "Rights" are granted, by definition, by the collective. If you are living as a hermit, by yourself, in a cave, with no other human contact, then you get to "declare" your own rights since only you constitute "the Collective", but if you live in a society, your "rights" are only what the collective grants you. Why is this so hard for you to understand? The "rights" that we all enjoy in the United States are only granted by the government. The Bill of Rights was written and is only enforced by the government. How? When some government agency imposes on those rights, it is only by a GOVERNMENT ASSIGNED judge that you can force the other part of the government to back off. You can't do it on your own, you MUST beg another part of the government to protect your rights. If you don't understand this, you really need to go back to elementary school.
@@dienekes4364 Lol no the way the world really works is that i have balls, and a gun. IF youre doing something that threatens me, then im going to use them. Socialism is just that. Infringing on my rights. Im loading my gun.
@@MrHigherplane You may have "balls and a gun" but your brain must be floating in some "higher" space if you think you can enforce your idea of freedom at the end of a gun. Socialism is less of a threat to you than your own desperately held, anti-social, siege mentality.
What a great video. well thought out and THE PERFECT antidote to libertarian talking points.... what a way to counter their superficial and misguided points ..... Im sharing this video everywhere i go
About free time -- anything one does takes up his time. The only free time is the time that one does nothing. What we want shouldn't be "free time", but the freedom to spend time on what we are passionate about.
A more complete introduction to this man would be great. Just stumbled on this channel and never heard of David Harvey. I can go research him but perhaps a sentence or two in your description, about who DemocracyatWork is, as well as the professor, would entice a larger following.
You have to accept once humans found a way to capilize on human suffering (health care, top-down work environment, pharmaceuticals, prison complex) we were doomed.
All I want is my freedom to pursue my necessities. If you take from me to give other people their "necessities", what have you done to my freedom? Where else can these unearned necessities come from ? And while one man is satisfied with cabbage and pork for a meal, another demands filet mignon - so what are necessities and who gets to define them? The proper restraint on capitalism is our democratic republic. Alas the constraints of our constitution have long been over powered because we citizens failed to protect them.. And so this isn't a free market we operate it any longer, not by a long shot. Our money is fiat and perpetual inflation is guaranteed by the central bankers and high govt cabal - to keep us all running ever faster just to keep what we have. That is what is robbing the poor of their ability to save and buy or build a house - fiat capital manipulation.
Are you guys. @democracatwork broadcasting podcasts outside RUclips? Thank you for the information sharing and political history topics that concerns us all
At a certain point, as David was so calmly laying out here the dynamics of use value vs. exchange value of housing, and how this is playing out in our world, I suddenly felt a surge of rage and had to pause the video to yell out my anger, "FUCK THEM!!!!", etc., and call a friend to share the experience. Free access to food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care are things every human being in a functional (rather than disfunctional) society should have access to in abundance. Then, once we have those basics covered, it would be fine for us to compete and play in markets of contribution and expression, and to gain some unequal additional rewards for our efforts as we all thrive with our comrades. For the first time in my life, I've just contributed money to canidates for political office, Tulsi and Bernie. We may be in a moment where a surge for social democracy is feasible. This could move us towards the awareness and practice of meeting basic needs as human rights. Maybe we can support that government-centered progress as the lesser of several goods, while also finding new energy and resources for really taking down the oppressive power structures and building concensus-based governance from the ground up.
Now all we need to do is get this message into the heads of the indoctrinated. It's particularly painful to see those who are suffering, and could benefit from these ideas, to be towing the message of the 1%. I see it on machining and heavy equipment repair channels I frequent. I love your talks. You're easy to listen to; You're well informed.
I definitely agree that the basic necessities of society should be guaranteed. But I'd argue that if the provider of those necessities is centralised, such as it is in a government or monopoly/ oligopoly corporation situation, this is an open invitation to despotism. As has been the case in most self-identifying communist countries throughout history, and also in the capitalist ones to a large degree, with the centralisation of power in the hands of the banks, and the oligopoly/monopoly corporations. What's needed from government regulation, is to wield the stick of justice against any significant emergence of centralisation of the market. This job could also be aided by computer software, designed to keep the public more informed about current events in the economy. So that they're less reliant on their democratic representatives making the correct judgement calls, instead of what they usually do, which is to get into bed with big business etc. A more informed public could for example partake in direct democratic electronic voting systems on important issues etc. With an electronic direct democratic system, government decisions can be held up against the wishes of the public, to more effectively demonstrate that they're acting in accordance with their responsibility to the public. But also to help keep a finger on the pulse of publics' level of informedness on the most appropriate course of action to be taken on important issues. Which would guard against them sleepwalking into voting in a government that doesn't have the best interests of the nation at heart.
*Socialism is freedom!* Economic collaboration, social cohesion and prosperity must provide every individual with the kind of freedom the best-off enjoy. No matter if you call that capitalism or socialism!
People in the West, especially the US, need to return to a *positive* notion of freedom. I think if explicitly presented with the philosophical matter most working class people nowadays would be rather inclined to understand and agree with it since they are experiencing a lack of positive freedom on their own skin. They probably already have their subconscious suspicions: How free am I if I need to sell my labour in order to have a dignified life and then only have the choice between jobs of equally insufficient pay and equally shitty working conditions? How free am I if I come out of college with a giant student debt hanging over my head that I will need to try and toil away for the next 10 years and cannot even default on? How free am I if I have no choice but to rent apartments with ever increasing rent prices and with ever more expensive shops around me due to gentrification? How free am I if my choice is between a lot of stuff to buy but little freetime to use it - or enough freetime but little stuff to use that I can afford to buy? How free am I if I am at risk of either going bankrupt or die from a preventable disease only because healthcare is not free let alone affordable? And not least, how free will my children be when their whole environment and with that their opportunities and quality of life will be ravaged by the consequences of climate change? But no, the only legitimate notion of freedom that is instilled into people is radically *negative* freedom: That one is entitled to nothing but freedom from open and direct coercion by the government and nobody else, as well as the freedom to participate in a predatory market with no livable alternative. And somehow we are expected to be complacent with that purview despite our society having reached a degree of productive force that could easily guarantee a more than worthwhile life to every human on this planet. It is kind of like a poor street sweeper sweeping on Wall Street when a banker comes along the way and asks them why they make such a long face. Afterall they had the legal *right* to start a venture capital firm when and wherever they wanted to...
There’s been a tendency for us to concede bourgeois historiography on actually existing socialism, not even bothering to do any fact checking. There’s also a tendency for us not to speak frankly about what the State actually is, where it comes from, and how it’s abolished. By simply agreeing that Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc we’re dictators, we don’t gain legitimacy. By agreeing that the USSR or the PRC were “authoritarian,” we don’t get sympathy. It just legitimizes reactionaries’ arguments that the barest welfare reforms are a straight road go gulags and the deaths of tens of millions. By sticking to vague and abstract ideas (freedom, justice) divorced from real world issues (“the freedom for whom to do what?”), we make ourselves out to be the utopian idealists helplessly trying to propel the world towards authoritarianism that will kill millions, like Jordan Peterson asserts. For example The military occupation of the South by the North after the civil war required the political suppression of the losing side, unless they swore allegiance to the Union. Reconstruction was not carried out correctly and was abandoned. But in its duration, the South elected many Black men into office, including a Black governor. The end of this military occupation directly lead to the violent reassertion of the old racial and class system of the semi feudal South. What if, despite our grand ambitions, actual conditions in specific circumstances compel the need of a secret police? What if we cannot transcend the coercive State in one locality as long as capitalism and imperialism are globally hegemonic and are capable of taking advantage of even legitimate grievances to overthrow the whole of the revolution and whatever remnants of socialism remain, like the Color Revolutions? Freedom is an expression of material circumstances as much as conscious political goals. Marxists not being brave enough to independently verify and analyze historical socialism, and being too scared to present the facts of historical and dialectical materialism, has cost us more than the actual failures of our predecessors. We never elaborate or contextualize the development hiccups of liberalism, we never draw parallels. “Stalin wasn’t a real communist, he was a tyrant who like the rest of the bolsheviks high jacked a revolution” is a sentiment divorced from historical materialism. It reifies both the “great man” myth of historical development and the myth that socialists are only ever cliquish wannabe dictators who force an alien and oppressive ideology onto innocent and desperate workers-the argument fascists and right wing nationalists make with our help because we do not challenge their analysis and propaganda on things like the Ukrainian famine. Eugene Debs remarked that being a socialist requires us standing alone sometimes, but in the long term principles will win people over, not opportunism.
Now, that was a super presentation I.have ever heard concerning the foundation of Democratic Socialism and Democratic Socialism does and will work, I always sense that Democratic Socialism could work without the knowledge this gentleman presented, now I know that that is what all corrupt capitalism systems need , if all these corrupt politicains would get educated and implement., we would have freedom.
Thank you David for this thoughtful presentation. You have described well the situation that has occurred in New Zealand. Our current LabourPM Jacinda talks caring and sharing, but walks like a neo lib.
The majority of our citizens are not thinkers at all. So these concepts are irrelevant to most people. They have unwittingly bought into the comfort of consumerism as the height of so-called freedom. How do we fight this obstacle to change?
Leninism might be useful here. An organized vanguard party, with an "enlightened" leadership that acts as the core manifestation of the working class interests, working close together with unions to get a real economic bargaining chip not based only on political speech. The duty of the party, clandestine, based.on democratic centralism, or not, is to develop class conscience, and, therefore, to aggravate class struggle. Greetings from Portugal
People in North Korea, Cuba, USSR, China etc have / had the best freedom. Know what happened to anyone who speaks against the governments in these countries?
It's easy for a man like you, who has no personal experience living in a communist country, to criticise the side effects of capitalism, a system, for the first time in human history, that has solved the problem of starvation. You purposefully ignored the fact that when living in a communist country, you have to surrender your freedom, dignity, and even your soul in order to survive. My suggestion to you is this, instead of romanticize communism, go to a communist country and live there several years and see for yourself. This is a suggestion from a man who lived in a communist country decades himself.
Did you say capitalism has solved the problem of starvation???BWAAAGHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHASHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yOU MUST BE JOKING. Capitalism is ADDS to the starvation problem. It adds to the problem of POVERTY. It is a very unjust system designed so that the top 1% MAINTAIN all the wealth and the more money they have while the poor live in poverty , capitalism over time adds to starvation and has been gutting the middle class. Socialism Solves the problem of starvation. That was a good one tho, i got a good laugh
True that individual freedom is one of the key issues of our time and the socialists and communists movement should address it directly as a priority. We can blame the right to have been appropriated the importance of individual freedom but this comes after all as a lack of concern from the left of this issue. So first let's do ourselves a constructive self-critique and propose solutions to the management of the economy by the workers themselves without bringing more oppression to the masses. This must be the foundations of a communist program for the XXI century.
there are two types of freedom. The freedom to and the freedom from. does socialism balance each? That is the true question. I would hazard a guess, that the answer lies somewhere in the middle of the line between the two extremes. I will leave it up to those with the time and inclination to find the answer, and to come up with the policies that humans can properly live with, and not fight wars over the scraps.
"Freedom" is commonly a euphemism for privilege, that is, rights and freedoms one has BECAUSE someone else is denied those or other rights and freedoms, like a slavemaster and a slave. Class privilege is what capitalists misnomer "freedom".
All great ideas, especially about housing and infrastructure, however why is food need to be guaranteed? Food is not as much a problem in western socieities as all the other things mentioned are. Furthermore many of these problems can be solved through worker co-ops and without the state getting involved.
True the US imperialists colonized the ides that freedom is compromised for socialism. Yet in the US, FDR used socialist ideas to steer the US out of the depressions of the 20's and 30's right into a powerful capitalist state, just by investing in job creating consumer planning and infrastructure spendings. The mistake by the socialists were, ignoring personal property building and consumer dependent economy. The Americans took advantage of the short coming to monopolise freedom, helped by the Soviet model which thought international trade was a capitalist scheme to exploit. This showed the weakness in the theory, enabling the Americans to work for their downfall. flaw in socialist state planning (corrected by Mao) played the main role for strengthening capitalism. Free market economy, the most fruitful state of freedom, leading to liberal globalization, brought prosperity and freedom to billions around the world, for the first time in history, just short of equitable distribution of wealth. However, the age of automation will force us to a socialist formula of equitable distribution, but it will have to have complete sense of control of health care, eduction, housing , job etc. and properly reflected in state planning. It is in the USA that people don't have free time. In China there is a state plan to provide private property, free health care and education and housing.
If you live in California, you can live off the government, as far as i can see it hasnt helped the impoverished. The middle class is struggling right now. I dont think giving people "free stuff" is the answer. This is always the problem with socialism, ideals that sound better than they work. I think taking away the wet blanket of taxes on the middle class, if there is one and making it transparent where our money goes are a few things in the right direction. Its a very complicated issue.
I would like to see certain States in the USA adopt these principles, and give people the option to move there or stay in a market state. I suppose the problem is the fair distribution of federal funds. I'm mainly thinking about housing. It's a large portion of income. I think very simple housing might be agreeable to many if it provides a sense of freedom. The tiny house movement illustrates people's willingness to simplify in this respect.
Great idea! It may even work too well and convince lots of others to do the same, and the liberal utopians would react and defend their class interest. Something to work towards perhaps...
Thanks for the important reminders that Marx and his early syndicate freinds & people had a vaster idea of individual freedom and much broader social freedom of essentials of life ! I wander what to call my utopian super-socialism of Open Social Universtity , based on valorization of all necessary activity at 1.2 to - 2 up to - 4 times working hours, including all leisure social activities evaluated at 0.3 to 1.0 and more for all associative and sportive activities, and buying etc... I consider as social wealth creators , a much wider valorization than Adam Smith's mere natural or working hours in produced merchandizes, as in slavery social orders, including in bourgeoisie's varity of republics using money ?
Of course they can't talk about the possibility of using ancient free markets for the poor. Of course every system we have to entertain always has to have a hidden upper echelon who will live beyond their means while the rest of us have to make do with what we've been told to make do with. I want to go off into an area that is not necessarily oriented towards go political and economic fundamentals but rather what if we are actually governed by microorganisms? What if we are directed by parasites bacteria and viruses? We understand that there are various microorganisms that are capable of hijacking the neural network of other organisms without their egg knowledge meant for knowledge. It is known that some microorganisms do this and they use other organisms as hosts to improve there survivability and I'd optician into the future. We ought to examine this more closely. The reason I speculate on this it's because I cannot see the soundness of the very mechanisms involved in every system that we have used to manage Society, because after all was in every one of these systems we've had to initiate coercion, manipulation aggression acts of violence threats of violence in order to get everyone to comply was any given system. For the more in order to initiate such practices one must amputate their human Spirit of sound mind, self-worth and maturity and in turn from their the ability to Foster and nurture love, empathy and forgiveness in ways that can be measured for Value Through Time. More importantly it is everyone from the peak of this pyramid to its very Foundation that is forced to amputate the human Spirit of these very important components of human spirit. And it is for this reason that I believe that it may have something to do with factors we haven't really considered, after all microorganisms are evolving at a rapid rate and very efficiently, it is foreseeable that at some point in the future we may be overwhelmed and find ourselves unable to compete with these organisms. What if these microorganisms are operating on such a stealthy level but we couldn't possibly even recognize the extent of influence they have on human attitudes and behavior and then turn the path that we take in the process of evolution. I do not know if there is hope for us as we we're all caught up in what we want what we feel we're entitled to what we desire and this takes up precious time, time that we could utilize a different lens by which to view that which may be lurking in the unknown that is going to ultimately or could ultimately compromise the human race. PS We ought not to form opinions I can ultimately lead to the death of Millions simply because we believe that the ends justify the means what we should rather inform ourselves and gain knowledge and all different areas. If you've already studied communism and socialism why not study in-depth Ludwig von mises, read his books or check out the audio books I think Pirate Bay is gone now but through one of those means you may be able to find Ludwig von mises Human Action, it is quite the long series and he uses Old English it is difficult to understand you may have to really listen to it over and over LOL I know I had to. But anyhow good luck
no such thing as living in your means. You have electricity correct? Most people on the planet dont have electricity. Why are you "living beyond your means" by having electricity??? Why do you live on 300$ a week when most of the world live on less than a dollar a day??? Hypocrite.
What I find disturbing is that we have the means by which to initiate the threats of violence for the purpose of discovering whether a person has $300 equivalent in currency or $300 equivalent in gold or silver or Caribou meat or even beaver pelts. I do not think not on the universal level it is my right to come into your space for the purpose of auditing what you have or have not especially in the case where there is no clear wrongdoing a theft for instance. And so for we to gain the otherwise private knowledge that a n individual has access to what we deem is $300 in currency value on a weekly basis, is what I find extremely troubling. This is completely abnormal it wouldn't be natural for us to disturb the nesting grounds of a bird in order to audit its nest, to handle the eggs for whatever purpose goes against the creatures Universal right to live without your or mine interference, harassment molestation of any kind to do with the bird's nest or nesting grounds, but for some reason we find it necessary to contribute mean the human beings Universal rights. Then it would seem that the human being isn't afforded some of the basic Universal rights fat other organisms enjoy. And if people so wholeheartedly subscribe to Communism why do they wait to have there resources redistributed my Declaration of the so-called Authority through the initiation of force when they could simply disperse the resources in their possession equally amongst other people voluntarily. So it would indicate that people act upon there Human Action, desires wants, their individual determined course of action and their lives, so it would require an unnatural antagonistic element to persuade someone to redistribute their resources amongst their fellow man otherwise they would follow a natural course and initiate their Universal rights and tendencies to be as they are, universally free. We see that those people who talk about communism are not yet willing to redistribute their own resources until such time that they are pressured under the threat of violence, obviously this goes against nature and this goes against man's intuition natural niche written in his DNA just like all other creatures. So these subjective systems that we tend to follow along with our quite unnatural indeed and it comes with many injuries and damages of human spirit as you yourself have been able to illustrate and the way in which who formulated your comment towards me, with a sense of antagonism and aggression but that is your choice but you have to understand when you initiate force and aggression towards others you are likely to produce reactions but will in all likelihood bring you great discomfort. Picture someone with a communist mentality who is part of a roaming tribe was very little resources but weapons who come up on a subordinate productive Village what's resources I'm very little defenses it is highly likely that the mentality I'm just roaming tribe will annihilate and subjugate not subordinate Village its people and its resources. It is important to know thyself it is more important to know what you would do under stressful conditions and this way you can get a better grasp on understanding the self and the extent to which you will go for your survival. One doesn't need a crystal ball to know that there's a greater likelihood those with a frame of reference of communism to rely on barbarism in time of societal collapse as opposed to those who subscribed to and practice anarcho-capitalism for example. It simply comes down to utilizing sound reasoning critical thinking 2 / C the behaviors and attitudes of people based on their ideologies. Most people do not see how they themselves have become monsters without even realizing it, however with time and the right stressor these individuals will illustrate their true colors.
MrHigherplane one cannot live very well on 300 a week. This is not an argument for everyone making a dollar a week. Nor is it an argument for everyone making 300 a week.
When we declare any of the basic necessiies of life to be "entitlements", we thereby declare some portion of the society to become de-facto slaves of the entitled persons, being forced to share the fruits of their labors against their will However, since the slaves are not individuals, we choose not to acknowledge the reality of the slavery. And of course there is room for dispute on the definition of "basic necessities". Harvey (and Marx) are basically choosing to re-define the slavery thing as - believe it or not - "BASIC FREEDOM'!
@joyceann011 Most, but not all. Read up on Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos. There is unlimited venture capital just begging for somebody to come up with profitable ideas.
I believe poverty is the biggest killer of freedom. And current definition of freedom is a joke. If you consider not be able to speak online is not free, people cannot pay the internet fee is not free. People who on’t have access to internet is not free. If you consider not be travel around other country being restricted. Well, people who cannot afford a car is restricted to 5km radius, without public transport. The poor kids in some villages does not even get a chance to see anything other than the village. People are not free to choose if they want to go uni or not, even if they got enough marks due to poverty. We all know how many hours of “free time” we have per day, have you ever wondered where the “not free” time went to? Well, you have to work to support yourselves, but you can also say that your freedom is there to sell in reality anyway. “Give me liberty or give me death” may sound passionate but is a joke. Most people would prefer to spend life sentence in jail than being executed, this is just common sense......
I agree that you can't be free while starving or suffering from medical problems, and your freedom is limited in other ways that aren't fair. However, I don't see how people can do whatever they want. There will always be jobs that people would rather not do. No one really WANTS to be a plumber for example. I'm guessing about 99% of plumbers would rather do something else, even if it's other blue collar work, instead of say art. They may want to be welders or carpenters for example, something less dirty. So these dirty jobs, or hard jobs that aren't rewarding (picking fruit is a common example as well), seem like they wouldn't get done in a Communist state that also had a high degree of freedom. How do Communists deal with the problem of job disparity? At least with a market based system, these jobs that are unappealing, or require a lot of work to get into (such as being a doctor), are compensated through increased pay. When they are not compensated by increased pay, they still get done because people NEED to work. How then, are these types of jobs handled in a Communist state? How other than through coercion, without compensation? Why would anyone in such a place do hard work or dirty work? I honestly can't think of a good reason, so let me know.
John Snow we have more than enough ability to engineer ways that trash can be taken out, toilets can be plunged and cleaned, food can be grown and picked and delivered, and our people can be decoupled from this sick economic slavery forced on us all by a few people who are the descendants of those who stole our equality and declared themselves masters of humanity.
Yes, those jobs get coerced, or attributed, assuming there aren't incentives in place. If you are part of an actual community though, and everybody works, then it is not that bad, you get special recognition for things like plumber, or everybody does it a little, in the case of fruit picking. Its still less bad than being starved and then underpaid once you accept not to starve. There is also the chance that you might change jobs if you really don't like it. I don't think it can be done on a large scale though, where people don't know each others, not without some extra incentive that would compensate, otherwise it would be seen as unjust. Even in a commune, it can be seen as unjust, its just less bad so to speak. The whole collectivist thing rarely works by itself, it leads to a lot of abuse, and the solution is often worst than the problem. The housing is a good example of that. But like I said, from experience, in a real commune, they get done one way or another and relatively willingly, because of the shared goal of making it work. But it can lead to some resentment, and people that do not much take it for granted, or everybody wanting those jobs that are easier. Age can play a role as well. As you age, you get better jobs, etc. Overall, you are less free, this guy is pulling legs here. You are free from necessities, but your whole life is controlled, so you can forget free time, there isn't any. But then again, it depends on how rich the society is, and so on. Barely subsisting places will have no free time, while richer ones might have more, but you need to be controlled anyway. Pure collectivist places have a lot less freedom, than one that offers incentives, because then greedy or ambitious people can work for you, or you can work for others if you are that type.
@@evolvedape2161 no one works to create money. Our currency is printed out of thin air. We are a sovereign nation with a fiat currency. We can literally print money whenever we want. We do print money when ever we want. Every year the government prints trillions of dollars for war. The national debt is a scare tactic. Politicians nevee care about the debt when they approve military spending. This is because the debt is just a ledger that the U.S owes itself. Look up MMT
The federal GOVT imposes taxation to create unemployment, and only FEDERAL spending SATISFIES that condition with paid employment. So it's GOVTS job as currency issuer to provide all the essentials needed for AMERICA to exist in perpetuity. Essentials like a military for the common defense for instance, and infrastructure and education and HEALTHCARE for our General Welfare to INSURE DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY. This is in the CONSTITUTION. So govt needs to target true full employment to maximize our productive capacity rebuilding AMERICA and meeting our needs with essential public goods and services needed to exist in perpetuity.
I shall forever keep adding my voice,this kind of vulture capitalist system is not what human kind should be modeling society after,or soon we shall be like animals hunting each other's for our next meal.
Capitalism is a pyramidal society. We have already did try this type of society and it does work for those at the summit not for those at the base. Socialism is more like an inverted "T" where most do have more and a very little elite are voted to be the deciders but can never become dictators, it is not perfect but it is a better solution for all than capitalism that is the same than kingdoms or autocracy and a little better than theocracies.
I live in the US of A I can attest that the only freedom have had in my life is the freedom to "work' 60 or 70 hour a week in world of have more, always more and if you can't afford it right now. well, what the hell "charge it" and pay 18% interest on it until you die and if you miss a payment it jumps to 24% interest that you pay to people that on the golf course everyday by 3:00 PM.
A false choice. Socialism is a system for distributing wealth. Freedom comes from people banding together to make a political compact with guarantees, which they can modify as they wish. And connection between the flow of wealth and political freedom is some other kind of made-up contrivance. There are countries who choose to be very democratic and "free" and socialist at the same time. No necessary connection. The trouble arises when in a capitalist system, wealth gets transferred into political power, and then people without big money lose freedom. The United States in the spring of 2019. I guess to summarize it I should say that sharing and freedom have no intrinsic conflict.
So poor can't pay attention. Freedom is a two edged sword. Free to give, free to give. A good scout gives and improves the habitat (campsite). Greedy CEOs' take and degrade the environment in industrial way. Co-Ops and Unions are a grassroots venture for any group who decides as free people to adhere to community and utility for sustainability. Society is a Union of diverse cultures free to exist in unison with any and all others, Let bygones be bygones. Humans over all universally need to learn humanity can't exist without empathy and compassion a deeper respect for the Natural Order of "things". Obviously we are hard wired to expand and flourish, so outer space is the best avenue for our species or we will kill our host. Get over the addictions of greed and overconsumption and live with in your respectfully allotted footprint.
So who pays for all this free public food and housing and everything if everybody has free time to sit around and do nothing? I smell free bubble up and rainbow stew.
David Harvey is WRONG. Making liberty a central political goal is what we already have. Its called liberalism. That is exactly what undermines the goals of socialism. Is David a liberal and a Marxist? Liberals are shit. Liberals prioritize liberty over all other values. The values of socialism are solidarity and justice. Solidarity and justice should be prioritized over all other values including liberty. David is giving Marx's view. Marx himself was bamboozled by the enlightenment fetishization of liberty. If Marx would have done a proper analysis and critique of liberty as he did with capitalism we would probably already be a socialist country. Liberty is a bigger problem than capitalism. Freedom is an illusion, liberty is a false religion, liberty is a weapon of mass deception, freedom is a shitty political goal, liberty is a horrible way to organize the economy, liberty makes a horrible program for human development, liberty is a license to behave irresponsibly, liberty simply lets power decide the outcome rather than justice, freedom must be regulated no if and or butts. Liberty is incompatible with the goals of socialism. Using the language of liberty only concedes ground to the right wing. I would LOVE to DEBATE David on this issue. He is a fool for promoting such bullshit. Democracy at Work, set me up a debate with David pls
Because there’s no way for govt to control everything. That’s something people on the right try to scare everyone using. If we use the govt to make sure food isn’t sickening the populace and elderly people who can no longer work don’t die of malnutrition and diseases-how the FUCK does that diminish your fucking rights to the same?
@@NonDelusional74611 If you enact government controlled health care, housing, and jobs/payments, then give government the ability to dictate what cars you own, how much meat you consume, how your house is built, whether you have electrical charging stations on your property... I can go on and on. How is that freedom? Please explain that to me. I mean I can go on for hours just on government controlling which hospitals you are allowed to go to, which doctors you are allowed to see, and which medications you are allowed to take. How about government dictating which college you go to? Yeah, that's freedom. I'm an SC fan. . .but Big Gov't closes SC because it's a private school. Same with Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT. and the host of other private and most public universities. These aren't right wing talking points. These are facts. But I'm not done. The government has an entity in place that makes sure the food isn't sickening. Ever heard of the FDA? Probably not, but the fact that you even posted that means you don't think government is doing their jobs. . .so then why would you want to turn around and give them MORE power over food? That's just dumb. The elderly are the responsibility of their children, not the government. If they don't have children, they have a wealth of resources available to them so they DON"T "die of malnutrition and disease". What else you got?
@Abused Monk Hey, putz. . .I'm not in the UK. I'm in America, Stop comparing apples to lemons. Our countries are completely different in size, population, and demographics.
No offense Sir' I respect your words spoken and your explanation of what you believe to be true about socialism.. BUT What I STRONGLY BELIEVE is that socialism in the modern times can be and will be a negative affect towards the country ..In the begining it will be OK has time goes by it is DEFINITELY going to create more and bigger problems in a country financially and the people of the country will end up suffering way more and in the worse ways possible... Socialism in a country like America is going to destroy America..It is NOT going to help America prosper and the American people will end up getting destroyed and will be in tremendous suffering.... People who're having this idea of socialism going to help the society and give them a better life is going to have a rude horrible realty wakening .. It is NOT the peaceful financial freedom and equality beautiful picture everyone who supports socialism for the country has on their mind ..
Are Dr. Harvey and Proff Wolff authoritarian socialists? I understand they fight for worker coops which is libertarian socialist. But what future do they want?
"Authoritarian socialism" Democracy is authoritarian? Can you expound on how this term "authoritarian socialist" you use is sensical? Are you conflating it with state capitalism? Are you referring to the fact that in socialism that you aren't allowed to (in an authoritarian fashion) profit off of other people's work, like with capitalism? How does being able to exploit labor under a hierarchy mean non-authoritarian? How does dismantling the hierarchy, giving power equally to the people mean "authoritarian"? Going to the poorest person in the land, and saying, "You have as much power and influence as the richest person in the land.", "authoritarian"? Socialism and communism are in no way an oligarchy or monarchy. "Government control" is not socialism. If workers (the people) aren't given control, and power and wealth are hoarded at the top of a hierarchy, its not socialism or communism, full stop.
@B. Greene interesting, im greatful for their work in teaching leftist political philosophy and economics. So they believe in social democracy but who will own the production? The state or the worker coops/syndicates. Do they believe in work coops competing in a market, so market socialism? Or are they prefer a social economy of collectivist or communist coops workplaces?
@@DayneAW my dude, im a anarcho syndicalist, im a collectivist akin to Rodolf Rocker and the CNT-FAI model. Im learning about the modern forms of socialism and their means of achieving it. Im probably more opposed to hiearchy than richard wolff. And to answer your question, no democracy is not authoritarian. But what authoritarian Marxist-leninist, Maoists, and stalinists advocate for is a form of socialism which is antithetical to freedom and destroys worker control. Im skeptical of marxists in that they seem to never critizise the most potent hiearchy of all, which is state domination and political classes. This lack of historical knowledge can lead to state capitlaism, and oppressive authoritarian regimes.
@@syndoodlefs4791 That's cute that you attached "Marxist" to "Leninist", when Lenin didn't follow Marx. Lenin thought he had to take control, and force what he called "socialism" onto the people, which was not the "way of the people" but his way...only. Which would make it oxymoronic to call himself "socialist" if he didn't give a shit what anybody else thought. But please do, again, expound on how anything Marx stated referred to obtaining a monarchy, and forcing the population to have "socialism" (again, let me know in any of that "socialist" forms, the "social-" structure was given equal power as the leader, if the population elected them, and it wasn't hoarded at the top of that hierarchy...which is socialism). "Destroys worker control"...You mean is no longer socialist? The only thing you are telling me is that a "leader" can use populist rhetoric, and convince a population to be under a dictatorship, and practice state capitalism....then call it "socialist". "Can lead".... it is state capitalism in the first place.
@@syndoodlefs4791 Marx didn't say what ought to be. Marx described what will be. The progression of society from the right wing monarchy to left wing socialism...to communism...to anarcho-communism...to anarchism. Nothing in his statements or writings implied a hierarchy being established to force order. A country that magically pops up as "communist"...isn't actually communist. ...and the multiple red scare campaigns to redefine "socialism" and "communism" doesn't magically make those definitions true. We also need to stop pretending this is "collectivist". Right wing politics are collectivist.
While these conversations are "interesting", without contextual reality and the recognition of the fact the "citizens" of the US have been essentially reduced to "debt slaves", whose subjugation is "enforced" by the greatest "fraudulent deception" in history, and "maintained" by the "federal judiciary".......that any reform or improvement can be realised, without exposing and ridding ourselves of this "illegitimate" government, is simply a waste of time. ( Wolff and co. are either totally out of touch, completely ignorant, or have been totally "cowed"....along with every other, so called populist, progressive, supposedly alt media voice, that these "flights" of fancy only serve as distraction and misdirection from the REAL task and threat to all of us, by the very government, most people expect, "to protect and serve us", although any actual evidence of THAT, is difficult to come by. Since all contracts since Roosevelt's time have the colorable consideration of Federal Reserve Notes, instead of a genuine consideration of silver and gold coin, all contracts are colorable contracts, and not genuine contracts. [According to Black's Law Dictionary (1990), colorable means "That which is in appearance only, and not in reality, what it purports to be, hence counterfeit, feigned, having the appearance of truth."] Consequently, a new colorable jurisdiction, called a statutory jurisdiction, had to be created to enforce the contracts. Soon the term colorable contract was changed to the term commercial agreement to fit circumstances of the new statutory jurisdiction, which is legislative, rather than judicial, in nature. This jurisdiction enforces commercial agreements upon implied consent, rather than full knowledge, as it is with the enforcement of contracts under the Common Law. All of our courts today sit as legislative Tribunals, and the so- called "statutes" of legislative bodies being enforced in these Legislative Tribunals are not "statutes" passed by the legislative branch of our three-branch Republic, but as "commercial obligations" to the Federal United States for anyone in the Federal United States or in the Continental United States who has used the equitable currency of the Federal United States and who has accepted the "benefit," or "privilege," of discharging his debts with the limited liability "benefit" offered to him by the Federal United States ... EXCEPT those who availed themselves of the remedy within this commercial system of law, which remedy is today found in Book 1 of the Uniform Commercial Code at Section 207. When used in conjunction with one's signature, a stamp stating "Without Prejudice U.C.C. 1-207" is sufficient to indicate to the magistrate of any of our present Legislative Tribunals (called "courts") that the signer of the document has reserved his Common Law right. He is not to be bound to the statute, or commercial obligation, of any commercial agreement that he did not enter knowingly, voluntarily, and intentionally, as would be the case in any Common Law contract. Furthermore, pursuant to U.C.C. 1-103, the statute, being enforced as a commercial obligation of a commercial agreement, must now be construed in harmony with the old Common Law of America, where the tribunal/court must rule that the statute does not apply to the individual who is wise enough and informed enough to exercise the remedy provided in this new system of law. He retains his former status in the Republic and fully enjoys his unalienable rights, guaranteed to him by the Constitution of the Republic, while those about him "curse the darkness" of Commercial Law government, lacking the truth needed to free themselves from a slave status under the Federal United States, even while inhabiting territory foreign to its territorial venue. # # # ADDENDUM U.C.C. 1-207:4 Sufficiency of reservation. Any expression indicating any intention to preserve rights is sufficient, such as "without prejudice," "under protest," "under reservation," or "with reservation of all our rights." The Code states an "explicit" reservation must be made. "Explicit" undoubtedly is used in place of "express" to indicate that the reservation must not only be "express" but it must also be "clear" that such a reservation was intended. The term "explicit" as used in U.C.C. 1-207 means "that which is so clearly stated or distinctively set forth that there is no doubt as to its meaning." ... U.C.C. 1-207:7 Effect of reservation of rights. The making of a valid reservation of rights preserves whatever rights the person then possesses and prevents the loss of such right by application of concepts of waiver or estoppel .... U.C.C. 1-207:9 Failure to make reservation. When a waivable right or claim is involved, the failure to make a reservation thereof causes a loss of the right and bars its assertion at a later date .... U.C.C. 1-103:6 Common law. The Code is "Complementary" to the common law which remains in force except where displaced by the Code .... A statute should be construed in harmony with the common law unless there is a clear legislative intent to abrogate the common law. ... "The Code cannot be read to preclude a common law action." EXAMPLE Your Honor, my use of "Without Prejudice UCC 1-207" above my signature on this document indicates that I have exercised the "Remedy" provided for me in the Uniform Commercial Code in Book 1 at Section 207, whereby I may reserve my Common Law right not to be compelled to perform under any contract, or agreement, that I have not entered into knowingly, voluntarily, and intentionally. And, that reservation serves notice upon all administrative agencies of government -- national, state and local -- that I do not, and will not, accept the liability associated with the "compelled" benefit of any unrevealed commercial agreement. The Bankruptcy of 1933 docs.google.com/document/d/165i0dicryJ_KtzCr6agR6O6v4XaRM2EDr6f1WbmU3Fg/edit?hl=en w-4 Voluntary Withholding Agreements www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/26/31.3402%28p%29-1 Reservation of Rights UCC 1-207/308 www.supremelaw.org/authors/freeman/freeman4.htm www.supremelaw.org/authors/freeman/freeman5.htm
J GALT be gone, troll. Tired of seeing your nonsense in these threads. You seem to have made it your purpose in life to be a contrarian in every single DAW video.
@@ryanh.2842 Aw, you should emulate your "persecuted" DAW intellectual leaders, who having granted "free speech" in the comments here, and simply ignore all questions and challenges raised, since there is no monetary incentive in either responding to or defending the ideas they offer here. Rather than expose your "willfully ignorant, functional illiteracy", why don't you actually read what is written, TRY to grasp why it has been written, and then attempt to make an "argument" regarding the "information" presented, or the "error" that you believe might be "lurking"....even though you can't be bothered to actually read and comprehend what is actually being said. You just watched a video which raised freedom and justice, in the context of the 196o's, and the "free market" distraction, which supposedly gave one and eliminated the other.... and the issue of debt slavery was also raised. ( all of which briefly covered in the "opening paragraph" ) What follows is FACTUAL EVIDENCE that any hope of "justice", was removed, in 1939 and 52, respectively, and by 1968 the fraudulent deception, was two years away from completion, as all the states had signed on to the UCC. ( completing the discarding of the constitution, any limitations it imposed on government power, and any "rights" that had previously been, supposedly guaranteed by it. ) If you actually read anything I have written, my criticisms of DAW are very specific, while I also make clear that I have no objection to achieving the "goals" which they are motivated by. For this particular "episode", there is no way that any "socialist, democratic, progressive program" has a chance, given the "legal" reality that exists, not that you have actually have a "political possibility" of getting anything "passed" in the first place..... So rather than whine, that your delusional safe place has been violated by valid challenges and criticisms, which would become readily apparent, should you actually succeed in getting what you are wishing for..... either ignore me, like DAW, or demonstrate that they have educated you to the extent, that you can present, the "argument" or "response", that they can't seem to be bothered with.
@@jgalt308 too many inverted commas and irrelevant information. You don't seem to have an argument. You are wandering all over the place, and speaking in code.
@@spongeyknuts Another "twitter brain" with nothing to say, who insists on saying it. Which words did you not understand? Which phrases? Which sentences? But you are correct, there is a "code" inextricably entwined in all of this....the Uniform Commercial Code ( 1952 ) and the United States Code (1939). Which part of the "excerpts" of THAT, do you need help with? You just watched a "video" which explained that the generation of 1968, were granted access to "free markets" and denied access to "justice." I have explained by what means that access was denied, and that it took place way before 1968. ( and what you can do about it now. ) Apparently you DAW sycophants are well trained and loyally tune in every week to catch up on, how you got fucked this week....you have no legal recourse, you can't vote your way out of it, but Karl Marx predicted it, so stay tuned as we give you more evidence of how fucked you are. This makes you slightly more "intelligent", than your opposition, whose actions can be directed simply by uttering the "word".....SOCIALIST...and pointing. You are severely outnumbered, in a rigged system without legal recourse and you think, you can combat the above by shouting the word "Capitalism"? Of course, I do understand, that someone pointing this out to you, would be slightly disruptive, given your weekly masochistic orgies....but then, isn't the point of all of this about "winning"?
J GALT I just perceived a long rant that did not make any sense. Nothing constructive whatsoever. The whole body of writing is gibberish. Goodbye Sir, there is nothing further to say.
Crazy Marxist professor - “We should collectivize food production.” Me - “I feel like this has gone wrong before...” *Soviet national anthem intensifies*
Big G Haywood Oh, was it all just a conspiracy to besmirch the good name of socialism? I thought your type were supposed to argue the Soviet Union wasn’t real socialism. Get your talking point right!
@@evolvedape2161 it's almost like individual socialists can disagree with each other and nothing about the ideology necessitates that everyone hold the same opinion.
C How about *Cambodian national anthem intensifies* Or *Chinese national anthem intensifies* Or *Laotian national anthem intensifies* Or *Cuban national anthem intensifies* Or *Venezuelan national anthem intensifies* Or *Ethiopian national anthem intensifies* So are these the “just not real socialism” argument or the “the West is conspiring against them” argument? I can list more failed attempts at collectivization of agriculture which led to millions of dead if you’d like?
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I wish I could. Right now I starve at the end of every month. My veterans benefits are a joke. But I support you in your message. I shared to my group's.
David should learn real science instead of historical materialism. If he knew real science he would know that freedom is a false religion. Tell him to read this book by a real scientist
(Skinner, 1971) Beyond freedom and dignity
selfdefinition.org/psychology/BF-Skinner-Beyond-Freedom-&-Dignity-1971.pdf
Just as its the job of atheists to go around busting the myth of religion, it should be the job of socialists to go around busting the myth of liberty. David is a religious nutter
@@PoliticalEconomy101 i dont think many scientist would agree with skiner and social sciences are not predictive the way hard sciences are. Also i went to the soviet union and it sucked.
So clear so logical and sensible. Well said, thank you. Could you please speak on why people think that socialism is an invention of that devil. I
The workers are so free, as Oscar Wilde put it, 'that they are free to starve.'
As opposed to being "free to starve" because a private property owner stole your value of production, and you can't afford to eat...or have healthcare?
But you are free to not work there....and again, free to starve to death, because there are no other option under such a "free" system. Either abide by private property owner's authoritarian regime, or starve to death....FREEDOM!!!
free to starve when you dont have any skills, and need to beg other men for your own survival. Get on you knees peasant!
@@DayneAW lol no it was the private owner that created the value of your production to begin with. Or do you own machines and a factory? Cant flip burgers without a grill boy.
@@MrHigherplane
Can the machine do the job w/o employer or does it have any worth w/o buyers?
And skill makes no difference if only 1-3 employer choices
I just don't get ppl who advocate for mistreatment of workers, really sad
@@TranquilFaith4me Did u agree to the wage or not? If you did its you problem. How about this. YOURE FIRED! how about that? No more exploitation. Youre free to pick through the garbage now. HAPPY?!
I think it's important that people recognize, when the Right Wing talks about "freedom," that they do not mean the freedom of the mass of people. The are not talking about MY freedom, or YOUR freedom, but instead, they are talking about the freedom of Capital. The freedom of those who own everything, to exploit, manipulate, rip off and prosper from the extraction of wealth FROM the masses. That's what they mean by "freedom."
Well put, thanks.
Excellent point, this is true from my experience. They want the freedom to exploit as much as they can get away with.
Yeah, well put. Also Americans should also recall the US Constitution mentions Justice as well as Liberty. You cannot have Freedoms before you have Justice. Justice comes first by all material contextual analyses and practice.
True dat. Thats what the capitalist class, white male oligarchy, corporate capitalists want. But many right libertarians are against monopoly, oligopoly, and big business because they destroy competition. They are for the freedom of small to medium business to compete. Also there are many cooperatives, public goods, and government businesses. So its really just about liberty only for the capitalist oligarchy
Big G Haywood very well said, thank you.
The biggest outrage is to privatize the solvent of life: profiting from the sale of water is pure lunacy. Where water is a limiting resource such as in the US Southwest, it's reasonable to pay a fee, but to a public agency, not to some private corporation extracting profits from the sale of the one completely fundamental biological necessity.
Shooting down a key conservative talking point...thank you!
This is our favorite episode so far!
Harvey is an absolutely amazing addition to the democracy at work network.
This is awesome.
We love it, too. :)
@@democracyatwrk This is certainly vastly different than the impression of Marxism and socialism that we get in general.
Thank you Democracy at Work and thank you profesor Harvey for these podcasts!!!
Freedom in America means the freedom to get as rich as possible at the expense of everything and everyone else.
The freedom to cause others to suffer and die in the name of profit.
I make something that costs me $1. I put it up for sale for $2 (or even $200, doesnt matter the price). You voluntarily choose to purchase it for the price we both agree on and I profit. You receive what you wanted/needed and I received what I wanted/needed. That's the fundamental idea.
@@G.Smith91 You completely miss the point of the video. Only those who have listened and understood it should be part of the conversation here.
@@Sinleqeunnini I didn't comment on the video. Only replied to Hank Kennedy. I agree with you though on your point.
@@G.Smith91 Ah, I see now.
David Harvey
I love that you sample the Internationale at the start. It is a beautiful song even at the instrumental level.
What an eloquent way of explaining how the exchange value of the Market manufactures wants, needs and desires which leads to a slavery to necessity. Where as the use value of the Commons satisfies the wants, needs and desires which leads to a freedom of the sovereign self. I've been watching several of your lectures on Marx's Kapital and they have really broadened my understanding of Marxian thought. For a long time I felt that Marx was a philosopher because of his value theories. When I found out that Capital is value in motion and if value isn't realized it becomes anti-value I started thinking of Marx as more of an Economist. Studying Hegel, the dialectic and reality in terms of triads I've come to realize that Marxian/Hegelian thought in its totality is our only exit from the bad infinity we find ourselves in. You mention in your lectures that Marx never created an all encapsulating critique of Capital/Capitalism which is a task we face. Marx says he turned Hegel's philosophy on its head but I don't think that is quite right. I believe that the dialectic is a triad also and that Marxian thought is one of these triads. There is the (1) the concept/abstract/Hegel idealism of being (Thesis), the counter-concept/abstract/Hegel idealism of anti-being (Antithesis) that transcends to the concrete grounded in the history of becoming (synthesis). There is the (2) concept/abstract/Market propaganda (thesis) counter-concept/grounded/exploitation (antithesis) that transcends into the abstraction/ the bad infinity that is destroying our nest. There is the (3) concept/grounded/Marxian historical materialism of value (thesis) the counter-concept/abstract/ the Geist; that which is (antithesis) which leads to a synthesis where instead of Money Capital being the start and finish of value in motion living labour becomes the beginning and ending Capital in the circulation of Capital. This is the only surplus value that can stop us from spiraling down the bad infinity to extinction.
Freedom is not a property of individuals, but instead a social achievement by the Collective
Freedom is a right, not required by whatever communist collective you are talking about. Go back to china if u want that.
*MrHigherplane* _"Freedom is a right, not required by whatever collective you are talking about."_ -- Even if freedom is a "right", as you claim, then it must be granted by the society you are living in. "Rights" are granted, by definition, by the collective. If you are living as a hermit, by yourself, in a cave, with no other human contact, then you get to "declare" your own rights since only you constitute "the Collective", but if you live in a society, your "rights" are only what the collective grants you. Why is this so hard for you to understand?
The "rights" that we all enjoy in the United States are only granted by the government. The Bill of Rights was written and is only enforced by the government. How? When some government agency imposes on those rights, it is only by a GOVERNMENT ASSIGNED judge that you can force the other part of the government to back off. You can't do it on your own, you MUST beg another part of the government to protect your rights.
If you don't understand this, you really need to go back to elementary school.
@@dienekes4364 Lol no the way the world really works is that i have balls, and a gun. IF youre doing something that threatens me, then im going to use them. Socialism is just that. Infringing on my rights. Im loading my gun.
@@MrHigherplane You may have "balls and a gun" but your brain must be floating in some "higher" space if you think you can enforce your idea of freedom at the end of a gun. Socialism is less of a threat to you than your own desperately held, anti-social, siege mentality.
@@ivandafoe5451 i will fight to the death to defeat authoritarian socialsim.
This is great. I have also thought about the idea of "freedom" as seemingly "belonging" to reactionary discourse, and I agree with Harvey's analysis.
What a great video. well thought out and THE PERFECT antidote to libertarian talking points.... what a way to counter their superficial and misguided points ..... Im sharing this video everywhere i go
"If people fear government, there is tyranny, if the government fears the people, there is liberty". Thomas Jefferson.
If government fears big wealthy people, it's called liberalism.
And when people start to get annoyed by it, it becomes fashism.
This is the first evidence I have that Harvey has a non-red shirt. :)
Great stuff, as per usual!
Thanks David Harvey sir,thanks for your social service.
About free time -- anything one does takes up his time. The only free time is the time that one does nothing. What we want shouldn't be "free time", but the freedom to spend time on what we are passionate about.
Appreciate and love all the content!
A more complete introduction to this man would be great. Just stumbled on this channel and never heard of David Harvey. I can go research him but perhaps a sentence or two in your description, about who DemocracyatWork is, as well as the professor, would entice a larger following.
i am glad to hear someone else say that housing should not be a vehicle of speculation
Thank you for your great work, very enlightening
You have to accept once humans found a way to capilize on human suffering (health care, top-down work environment, pharmaceuticals, prison complex) we were doomed.
Great lecture David.
I almost have no free time but when I do I make sure to use that freedom to watch some David Harvey. :D
How can one be free from state coercion if "freedom" comes from state coercion through regulation and market control?
social democracy is the marriage between human collective empathy and freedom
All I want is my freedom to pursue my necessities. If you take from me to give other people their "necessities", what have you done to my freedom?
Where else can these unearned necessities come from ? And while one man is satisfied with cabbage and pork for a meal, another demands filet mignon - so what are necessities and who gets to define them? The proper restraint on capitalism is our democratic republic. Alas the constraints of our constitution have long been over powered because we citizens failed to protect them..
And so this isn't a free market we operate it any longer, not by a long shot. Our money is fiat and perpetual inflation is guaranteed by the central bankers and high govt cabal - to keep us all running ever faster just to keep what we have. That is what is robbing the poor of their ability to save and buy or build a house - fiat capital manipulation.
Are you guys. @democracatwork broadcasting podcasts outside RUclips? Thank you for the information sharing and political history topics that concerns us all
Yes! You can listen to all of our shows on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify and other platforms: www.democracyatwork.info/media
Does anyone know if there are downloadable transcripts of this?
Thank you!
Thank you.
My opinion is: David Harvey is the best living marxist.
Excellent lecture and so precious for a modern Marxist to add some great contributions of Polanyi.
Great video.
How do you make education and health care free?
@joyceann011 Just because someone else pays for it does not mean it is free.
Does Socialism Affect Freedom! Simple answer: YES! It increases it because when people have more money, they can buy more freedom!
At a certain point, as David was so calmly laying out here the dynamics of use value vs. exchange value of housing, and how this is playing out in our world, I suddenly felt a surge of rage and had to pause the video to yell out my anger, "FUCK THEM!!!!", etc., and call a friend to share the experience.
Free access to food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care are things every human being in a functional (rather than disfunctional) society should have access to in abundance. Then, once we have those basics covered, it would be fine for us to compete and play in markets of contribution and expression, and to gain some unequal additional rewards for our efforts as we all thrive with our comrades.
For the first time in my life, I've just contributed money to canidates for political office, Tulsi and Bernie. We may be in a moment where a surge for social democracy is feasible. This could move us towards the awareness and practice of meeting basic needs as human rights.
Maybe we can support that government-centered progress as the lesser of several goods, while also finding new energy and resources for really taking down the oppressive power structures and building concensus-based governance from the ground up.
Now all we need to do is get this message into the heads of the indoctrinated. It's particularly painful to see those who are suffering, and could benefit from these ideas, to be towing the message of the 1%. I see it on machining and heavy equipment repair channels I frequent.
I love your talks. You're easy to listen to; You're well informed.
I definitely agree that the basic necessities of society should be guaranteed. But I'd argue that if the provider of those necessities is centralised, such as it is in a government or monopoly/ oligopoly corporation situation, this is an open invitation to despotism. As has been the case in most self-identifying communist countries throughout history, and also in the capitalist ones to a large degree, with the centralisation of power in the hands of the banks, and the oligopoly/monopoly corporations.
What's needed from government regulation, is to wield the stick of justice against any significant emergence of centralisation of the market. This job could also be aided by computer software, designed to keep the public more informed about current events in the economy. So that they're less reliant on their democratic representatives making the correct judgement calls, instead of what they usually do, which is to get into bed with big business etc.
A more informed public could for example partake in direct democratic electronic voting systems on important issues etc. With an electronic direct democratic system, government decisions can be held up against the wishes of the public, to more effectively demonstrate that they're acting in accordance with their responsibility to the public. But also to help keep a finger on the pulse of publics' level of informedness on the most appropriate course of action to be taken on important issues. Which would guard against them sleepwalking into voting in a government that doesn't have the best interests of the nation at heart.
I really recommend to see this movie "High Hopes"
"Colonizing the concept of freedom"
well said!
*Socialism is freedom!*
Economic collaboration, social cohesion and prosperity must provide every individual with the kind of freedom the best-off enjoy.
No matter if you call that capitalism or socialism!
People in the West, especially the US, need to return to a *positive* notion of freedom. I think if explicitly presented with the philosophical matter most working class people nowadays would be rather inclined to understand and agree with it since they are experiencing a lack of positive freedom on their own skin. They probably already have their subconscious suspicions:
How free am I if I need to sell my labour in order to have a dignified life and then only have the choice between jobs of equally insufficient pay and equally shitty working conditions?
How free am I if I come out of college with a giant student debt hanging over my head that I will need to try and toil away for the next 10 years and cannot even default on?
How free am I if I have no choice but to rent apartments with ever increasing rent prices and with ever more expensive shops around me due to gentrification?
How free am I if my choice is between a lot of stuff to buy but little freetime to use it - or enough freetime but little stuff to use that I can afford to buy?
How free am I if I am at risk of either going bankrupt or die from a preventable disease only because healthcare is not free let alone affordable?
And not least, how free will my children be when their whole environment and with that their opportunities and quality of life will be ravaged by the consequences of climate change?
But no, the only legitimate notion of freedom that is instilled into people is radically *negative* freedom: That one is entitled to nothing but freedom from open and direct coercion by the government and nobody else, as well as the freedom to participate in a predatory market with no livable alternative.
And somehow we are expected to be complacent with that purview despite our society having reached a degree of productive force that could easily guarantee a more than worthwhile life to every human on this planet.
It is kind of like a poor street sweeper sweeping on Wall Street when a banker comes along the way and asks them why they make such a long face. Afterall they had the legal *right* to start a venture capital firm when and wherever they wanted to...
There’s been a tendency for us to concede bourgeois historiography on actually existing socialism, not even bothering to do any fact checking.
There’s also a tendency for us not to speak frankly about what the State actually is, where it comes from, and how it’s abolished.
By simply agreeing that Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc we’re dictators, we don’t gain legitimacy. By agreeing that the USSR or the PRC were “authoritarian,” we don’t get sympathy. It just legitimizes reactionaries’ arguments that the barest welfare reforms are a straight road go gulags and the deaths of tens of millions.
By sticking to vague and abstract ideas (freedom, justice) divorced from real world issues (“the freedom for whom to do what?”), we make ourselves out to be the utopian idealists helplessly trying to propel the world towards authoritarianism that will kill millions, like Jordan Peterson asserts.
For example
The military occupation of the South by the North after the civil war required the political suppression of the losing side, unless they swore allegiance to the Union. Reconstruction was not carried out correctly and was abandoned. But in its duration, the South elected many Black men into office, including a Black governor. The end of this military occupation directly lead to the violent reassertion of the old racial and class system of the semi feudal South.
What if, despite our grand ambitions, actual conditions in specific circumstances compel the need of a secret police? What if we cannot transcend the coercive State in one locality as long as capitalism and imperialism are globally hegemonic and are capable of taking advantage of even legitimate grievances to overthrow the whole of the revolution and whatever remnants of socialism remain, like the Color Revolutions?
Freedom is an expression of material circumstances as much as conscious political goals. Marxists not being brave enough to independently verify and analyze historical socialism, and being too scared to present the facts of historical and dialectical materialism, has cost us more than the actual failures of our predecessors.
We never elaborate or contextualize the development hiccups of liberalism, we never draw parallels. “Stalin wasn’t a real communist, he was a tyrant who like the rest of the bolsheviks high jacked a revolution” is a sentiment divorced from historical materialism. It reifies both the “great man” myth of historical development and the myth that socialists are only ever cliquish wannabe dictators who force an alien and oppressive ideology onto innocent and desperate workers-the argument fascists and right wing nationalists make with our help because we do not challenge their analysis and propaganda on things like the Ukrainian famine.
Eugene Debs remarked that being a socialist requires us standing alone sometimes, but in the long term principles will win people over, not opportunism.
Now, that was a super presentation I.have ever heard concerning the foundation of Democratic Socialism and Democratic Socialism does and will work, I always sense that Democratic Socialism could work without the knowledge this gentleman presented, now I know that that is what all corrupt capitalism systems need , if all these corrupt politicains would get educated and implement., we would have freedom.
Thank you David for this thoughtful presentation. You have described well the situation that has occurred in New Zealand. Our current LabourPM Jacinda talks caring and sharing, but walks like a neo lib.
The majority of our citizens are not thinkers at all. So these concepts are irrelevant to most people.
They have unwittingly bought into the comfort of consumerism as the height of so-called freedom.
How do we fight this obstacle to change?
Leninism might be useful here. An organized vanguard party, with an "enlightened" leadership that acts as the core manifestation of the working class interests, working close together with unions to get a real economic bargaining chip not based only on political speech. The duty of the party, clandestine, based.on democratic centralism, or not, is to develop class conscience, and, therefore, to aggravate class struggle.
Greetings from Portugal
with a vanguard party
brilliant
Government owns all property through annual property taxes. We just rent till we die
People in North Korea, Cuba, USSR, China etc have / had the best freedom. Know what happened to anyone who speaks against the governments in these countries?
WHAT YOU ALLOW IS WHAT WILL CONTINUE!! #RealizeTheTruth #TheirCorruptionHurtsUsAll #StopVotingForCorruption #RiseUp
I love that this show opens and closes with The Internationale.
That is what AOC & Bernie are proposing to do, as a policy!
AOC looks psychotic
@Dennis Young lol she definitely looks crazy, but what she is advocating for (socialism, theft by gunpoint) is the definition of psychotic immorality.
It's easy for a man like you, who has no personal experience living in a communist country, to criticise the side effects of capitalism, a system, for the first time in human history, that has solved the problem of starvation. You purposefully ignored the fact that when living in a communist country, you have to surrender your freedom, dignity, and even your soul in order to survive. My suggestion to you is this, instead of romanticize communism, go to a communist country and live there several years and see for yourself. This is a suggestion from a man who lived in a communist country decades himself.
Did you say capitalism has solved the problem of starvation???BWAAAGHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHASHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yOU MUST BE JOKING. Capitalism is ADDS to the starvation problem. It adds to the problem of POVERTY. It is a very unjust system designed so that the top 1% MAINTAIN all the wealth and the more money they have while the poor live in poverty , capitalism over time adds to starvation and has been gutting the middle class. Socialism Solves the problem of starvation. That was a good one tho, i got a good laugh
"Soviet-style socialism was awful and misguided therefore all socialist ideas are terrible." Bit of a straw man from the Fonz here.
True that individual freedom is one of the key issues of our time and the socialists and communists movement should address it directly as a priority. We can blame the right to have been appropriated the importance of individual freedom but this comes after all as a lack of concern from the left of this issue. So first let's do ourselves a constructive self-critique and propose solutions to the management of the economy by the workers themselves without bringing more oppression to the masses. This must be the foundations of a communist program for the XXI century.
there are two types of freedom.
The freedom to and the freedom from.
does socialism balance each? That is the
true question. I would hazard a guess, that
the answer lies somewhere in the middle of the
line between the two extremes. I will leave it up to
those with the time and inclination to find the answer,
and to come up with the policies that humans can properly
live with, and not fight wars over the scraps.
oh my god this is a wise man......
"Freedom" is commonly a euphemism for privilege, that is, rights and freedoms one has BECAUSE someone else is denied those or other rights and freedoms, like a slavemaster and a slave. Class privilege is what capitalists misnomer "freedom".
All great ideas, especially about housing and infrastructure, however why is food need to be guaranteed? Food is not as much a problem in western socieities as all the other things mentioned are. Furthermore many of these problems can be solved through worker co-ops and without the state getting involved.
True the US imperialists colonized the ides that freedom is compromised for socialism. Yet in the US, FDR used socialist ideas to steer the US out of the depressions of the 20's and 30's right into a powerful capitalist state, just by investing in job creating consumer planning and infrastructure spendings.
The mistake by the socialists were, ignoring personal property building and consumer dependent economy. The Americans took advantage of the short coming to monopolise freedom, helped by the Soviet model which thought international trade was a capitalist scheme to exploit. This showed the weakness in the theory, enabling the Americans to work for their downfall.
flaw in socialist state planning (corrected by Mao) played the main role for strengthening capitalism.
Free market economy, the most fruitful state of freedom, leading to liberal globalization, brought prosperity and freedom to billions around the world, for the first time in history, just short of equitable distribution of wealth. However, the age of automation will force us to a socialist formula of equitable distribution, but it will have to have complete sense of control of health care, eduction, housing , job etc. and properly reflected in state planning.
It is in the USA that people don't have free time. In China there is a state plan to provide private property, free health care and education and housing.
What is "individual freedom" ? Is this something from the past ? It sounds strange.
Maybe there is no real freedom within either system and we chasing a dream. This fable of freedom and chase for it is the double curse of being human.
If you live in California, you can live off the government, as far as i can see it hasnt helped the impoverished. The middle class is struggling right now. I dont think giving people "free stuff" is the answer. This is always the problem with socialism, ideals that sound better than they work. I think taking away the wet blanket of taxes on the middle class, if there is one and making it transparent where our money goes are a few things in the right direction. Its a very complicated issue.
I would like to see certain States in the USA adopt these principles, and give people the option to move there or stay in a market state. I suppose the problem is the fair distribution of federal funds. I'm mainly thinking about housing. It's a large portion of income. I think very simple housing might be agreeable to many if it provides a sense of freedom. The tiny house movement illustrates people's willingness to simplify in this respect.
Great idea! It may even work too well and convince lots of others to do the same, and the liberal utopians would react and defend their class interest. Something to work towards perhaps...
Love you socialist society 🥰😚🌸
Inflation is a tool to keep the poor poor.
"Unfreedom"......double plus good.
Thanks for the important reminders that Marx and his early syndicate freinds & people had a vaster idea of individual freedom and much broader social freedom of essentials of life ! I wander what to call my utopian super-socialism of Open Social Universtity , based on valorization of all necessary activity at 1.2 to - 2 up to - 4 times working hours, including all leisure social activities evaluated at 0.3 to 1.0 and more for all associative and sportive activities, and buying etc... I consider as social wealth creators , a much wider valorization than Adam Smith's mere natural or working hours in produced merchandizes, as in slavery social orders, including in bourgeoisie's varity of republics using money ?
(waves to anyone watching this in 2022 or later)
Of course they can't talk about the possibility of using ancient free markets for the poor. Of course every system we have to entertain always has to have a hidden upper echelon who will live beyond their means while the rest of us have to make do with what we've been told to make do with. I want to go off into an area that is not necessarily oriented towards go political and economic fundamentals but rather what if we are actually governed by microorganisms? What if we are directed by parasites bacteria and viruses? We understand that there are various microorganisms that are capable of hijacking the neural network of other organisms without their egg knowledge meant for knowledge. It is known that some microorganisms do this and they use other organisms as hosts to improve there survivability and I'd optician into the future. We ought to examine this more closely. The reason I speculate on this it's because I cannot see the soundness of the very mechanisms involved in every system that we have used to manage Society, because after all was in every one of these systems we've had to initiate coercion, manipulation aggression acts of violence threats of violence in order to get everyone to comply was any given system. For the more in order to initiate such practices one must amputate their human Spirit of sound mind, self-worth and maturity and in turn from their the ability to Foster and nurture love, empathy and forgiveness in ways that can be measured for Value Through Time. More importantly it is everyone from the peak of this pyramid to its very Foundation that is forced to amputate the human Spirit of these very important components of human spirit. And it is for this reason that I believe that it may have something to do with factors we haven't really considered, after all microorganisms are evolving at a rapid rate and very efficiently, it is foreseeable that at some point in the future we may be overwhelmed and find ourselves unable to compete with these organisms. What if these microorganisms are operating on such a stealthy level but we couldn't possibly even recognize the extent of influence they have on human attitudes and behavior and then turn the path that we take in the process of evolution. I do not know if there is hope for us as we we're all caught up in what we want what we feel we're entitled to what we desire and this takes up precious time, time that we could utilize a different lens by which to view that which may be lurking in the unknown that is going to ultimately or could ultimately compromise the human race. PS We ought not to form opinions I can ultimately lead to the death of Millions simply because we believe that the ends justify the means what we should rather inform ourselves and gain knowledge and all different areas. If you've already studied communism and socialism why not study in-depth Ludwig von mises, read his books or check out the audio books I think Pirate Bay is gone now but through one of those means you may be able to find Ludwig von mises Human Action, it is quite the long series and he uses Old English it is difficult to understand you may have to really listen to it over and over LOL I know I had to. But anyhow good luck
no such thing as living in your means. You have electricity correct? Most people on the planet dont have electricity. Why are you "living beyond your means" by having electricity??? Why do you live on 300$ a week when most of the world live on less than a dollar a day??? Hypocrite.
What I find disturbing is that we have the means by which to initiate the threats of violence for the purpose of discovering whether a person has $300 equivalent in currency or $300 equivalent in gold or silver or Caribou meat or even beaver pelts. I do not think not on the universal level it is my right to come into your space for the purpose of auditing what you have or have not especially in the case where there is no clear wrongdoing a theft for instance. And so for we to gain the otherwise private knowledge that a n individual has access to what we deem is $300 in currency value on a weekly basis, is what I find extremely troubling. This is completely abnormal it wouldn't be natural for us to disturb the nesting grounds of a bird in order to audit its nest, to handle the eggs for whatever purpose goes against the creatures Universal right to live without your or mine interference, harassment molestation of any kind to do with the bird's nest or nesting grounds, but for some reason we find it necessary to contribute mean the human beings Universal rights. Then it would seem that the human being isn't afforded some of the basic Universal rights fat other organisms enjoy. And if people so wholeheartedly subscribe to Communism why do they wait to have there resources redistributed my Declaration of the so-called Authority through the initiation of force when they could simply disperse the resources in their possession equally amongst other people voluntarily. So it would indicate that people act upon there Human Action, desires wants, their individual determined course of action and their lives, so it would require an unnatural antagonistic element to persuade someone to redistribute their resources amongst their fellow man otherwise they would follow a natural course and initiate their Universal rights and tendencies to be as they are, universally free. We see that those people who talk about communism are not yet willing to redistribute their own resources until such time that they are pressured under the threat of violence, obviously this goes against nature and this goes against man's intuition natural niche written in his DNA just like all other creatures. So these subjective systems that we tend to follow along with our quite unnatural indeed and it comes with many injuries and damages of human spirit as you yourself have been able to illustrate and the way in which who formulated your comment towards me, with a sense of antagonism and aggression but that is your choice but you have to understand when you initiate force and aggression towards others you are likely to produce reactions but will in all likelihood bring you great discomfort. Picture someone with a communist mentality who is part of a roaming tribe was very little resources but weapons who come up on a subordinate productive Village what's resources I'm very little defenses it is highly likely that the mentality I'm just roaming tribe will annihilate and subjugate not subordinate Village its people and its resources. It is important to know thyself it is more important to know what you would do under stressful conditions and this way you can get a better grasp on understanding the self and the extent to which you will go for your survival. One doesn't need a crystal ball to know that there's a greater likelihood those with a frame of reference of communism to rely on barbarism in time of societal collapse as opposed to those who subscribed to and practice anarcho-capitalism for example. It simply comes down to utilizing sound reasoning critical thinking 2 / C the behaviors and attitudes of people based on their ideologies. Most people do not see how they themselves have become monsters without even realizing it, however with time and the right stressor these individuals will illustrate their true colors.
MrHigherplane one cannot live very well on 300 a week. This is not an argument for everyone making a dollar a week. Nor is it an argument for everyone making 300 a week.
When we declare any of the basic necessiies of life to be "entitlements", we thereby declare some portion of the society to become de-facto slaves of the entitled persons, being forced to share the fruits of their labors against their will However, since the slaves are not individuals, we choose not to acknowledge the reality of the slavery. And of course there is room for dispute on the definition of "basic necessities". Harvey (and Marx) are basically choosing to re-define the slavery thing as - believe it or not - "BASIC FREEDOM'!
Harvey forgets one of the laborer's "freedoms" - he also has the right to go into business for himself, same as his employer did!
@joyceann011 Most, but not all. Read up on Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos. There is unlimited venture capital just begging for somebody to come up with profitable ideas.
"with LIBERTY and JUSTICE for ALL"
Nice idea. When will this happen?
Fuck liberty. There is NEVER a fucking time when liberty should trump justice or solidarity. Liberty is for right wing nutjobs
Do Child labor laws affect freedom?
Obviously not.
There is no “freedom of speech” on private property (eg the workplace)
Bertrant russel. In praise of idelness
I believe poverty is the biggest killer of freedom. And current definition of freedom is a joke.
If you consider not be able to speak online is not free, people cannot pay the internet fee is not free. People who on’t have access to internet is not free.
If you consider not be travel around other country being restricted. Well, people who cannot afford a car is restricted to 5km radius, without public transport. The poor kids in some villages does not even get a chance to see anything other than the village.
People are not free to choose if they want to go uni or not, even if they got enough marks due to poverty.
We all know how many hours of “free time” we have per day, have you ever wondered where the “not free” time went to?
Well, you have to work to support yourselves, but you can also say that your freedom is there to sell in reality anyway.
“Give me liberty or give me death” may sound passionate but is a joke. Most people would prefer to spend life sentence in jail than being executed, this is just common sense......
I agree that you can't be free while starving or suffering from medical problems, and your freedom is limited in other ways that aren't fair. However, I don't see how people can do whatever they want. There will always be jobs that people would rather not do. No one really WANTS to be a plumber for example. I'm guessing about 99% of plumbers would rather do something else, even if it's other blue collar work, instead of say art. They may want to be welders or carpenters for example, something less dirty. So these dirty jobs, or hard jobs that aren't rewarding (picking fruit is a common example as well), seem like they wouldn't get done in a Communist state that also had a high degree of freedom.
How do Communists deal with the problem of job disparity? At least with a market based system, these jobs that are unappealing, or require a lot of work to get into (such as being a doctor), are compensated through increased pay. When they are not compensated by increased pay, they still get done because people NEED to work. How then, are these types of jobs handled in a Communist state? How other than through coercion, without compensation? Why would anyone in such a place do hard work or dirty work? I honestly can't think of a good reason, so let me know.
John Snow we have more than enough ability to engineer ways that trash can be taken out, toilets can be plunged and cleaned, food can be grown and picked and delivered, and our people can be decoupled from this sick economic slavery forced on us all by a few people who are the descendants of those who stole our equality and declared themselves masters of humanity.
Yes, those jobs get coerced, or attributed, assuming there aren't incentives in place. If you are part of an actual community though, and everybody works, then it is not that bad, you get special recognition for things like plumber, or everybody does it a little, in the case of fruit picking.
Its still less bad than being starved and then underpaid once you accept not to starve. There is also the chance that you might change jobs if you really don't like it. I don't think it can be done on a large scale though, where people don't know each others, not without some extra incentive that would compensate, otherwise it would be seen as unjust. Even in a commune, it can be seen as unjust, its just less bad so to speak. The whole collectivist thing rarely works by itself, it leads to a lot of abuse, and the solution is often worst than the problem. The housing is a good example of that.
But like I said, from experience, in a real commune, they get done one way or another and relatively willingly, because of the shared goal of making it work. But it can lead to some resentment, and people that do not much take it for granted, or everybody wanting those jobs that are easier. Age can play a role as well. As you age, you get better jobs, etc.
Overall, you are less free, this guy is pulling legs here. You are free from necessities, but your whole life is controlled, so you can forget free time, there isn't any. But then again, it depends on how rich the society is, and so on. Barely subsisting places will have no free time, while richer ones might have more, but you need to be controlled anyway. Pure collectivist places have a lot less freedom, than one that offers incentives, because then greedy or ambitious people can work for you, or you can work for others if you are that type.
Our CURRENCY ISSUING federal government must provide all the essential real resources needed for AMERICA in perpetuity.
Let me just bend over and pull your dinner out of my ass. Oh wait, people have to work to create it?
How do you not understand this?
@@evolvedape2161 no one works to create money.
Our currency is printed out of thin air.
We are a sovereign nation with a fiat currency. We can literally print money whenever we want.
We do print money when ever we want.
Every year the government prints trillions of dollars for war.
The national debt is a scare tactic.
Politicians nevee care about the debt when they approve military spending. This is because the debt is just a ledger that the U.S owes itself.
Look up MMT
The federal GOVT imposes taxation to create unemployment, and only FEDERAL spending SATISFIES that condition with paid employment.
So it's GOVTS job as currency issuer to provide all the essentials needed for AMERICA to exist in perpetuity. Essentials like a military for the common defense for instance, and infrastructure and education and HEALTHCARE for our General Welfare to INSURE DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY. This is in the CONSTITUTION.
So govt needs to target true full employment to maximize our productive capacity rebuilding AMERICA and meeting our needs with essential public goods and services needed to exist in perpetuity.
I shall forever keep adding my voice,this kind of vulture capitalist system is not what human kind should be modeling society after,or soon we shall be like animals hunting each other's for our next meal.
what David Harvey has a podcast? say no more
Capitalism is a pyramidal society. We have already did try this type of society and it does work for those at the summit not for those at the base. Socialism is more like an inverted "T" where most do have more and a very little elite are voted to be the deciders but can never become dictators, it is not perfect but it is a better solution for all than capitalism that is the same than kingdoms or autocracy and a little better than theocracies.
Money equals freedom in the world we live in today. Everybody should have some.
Production means freedom.
@@celestialbuffalo why
@@celestialbuffalo socialism is theft
@@celestialbuffalo yes
celestialbuffalo capitalism is slavery but the worker gets to pay for his room and board
Yeah, I don't feel free at all being a poor person in the United States of America.
Do you have freedom of speech? Freedom to use Google and Facebook (which are banned in China)? Freedom to buy guns?
I live in the US of A I can attest that the only freedom have had in my life is the freedom to "work' 60 or 70 hour a week in world of have more, always more and if you can't afford it right now. well, what the hell "charge it" and pay 18% interest on it until you die and if you miss a payment it jumps to 24% interest that you pay to people that on the golf course everyday by 3:00 PM.
Freedom for which class,ofcourse the majority but not for the prostitution
The only freedom the poor have is the freedom to be poor.
A false choice. Socialism is a system for distributing wealth. Freedom comes from people banding together to make a political compact with guarantees, which they can modify as they wish. And connection between the flow of wealth and political freedom is some other kind of made-up contrivance. There are countries who choose to be very democratic and "free" and socialist at the same time. No necessary connection. The trouble arises when in a capitalist system, wealth gets transferred into political power, and then people without big money lose freedom. The United States in the spring of 2019. I guess to summarize it I should say that sharing and freedom have no intrinsic conflict.
So poor can't pay attention. Freedom is a two edged sword. Free to give, free to give. A good scout gives and improves the habitat (campsite). Greedy CEOs' take and degrade the environment in industrial way.
Co-Ops and Unions are a grassroots venture for any group who decides as free people to adhere to community and utility for sustainability. Society is a Union of diverse cultures free to exist in unison with any and all others,
Let bygones be bygones. Humans over all universally need to learn humanity can't exist without empathy and compassion a deeper respect for the Natural Order of "things".
Obviously we are hard wired to expand and flourish, so outer space is the best avenue for our species or we will kill our host. Get over the addictions of greed and overconsumption and live with in your respectfully allotted footprint.
I really like this podcast but him breathing loudly drives me nuts!
So who pays for all this free public food and housing and everything if everybody has free time to sit around and do nothing? I smell free bubble up and rainbow stew.
David Harvey is WRONG. Making liberty a central political goal is what we already have. Its called liberalism. That is exactly what undermines the goals of socialism. Is David a liberal and a Marxist? Liberals are shit. Liberals prioritize liberty over all other values. The values of socialism are solidarity and justice. Solidarity and justice should be prioritized over all other values including liberty. David is giving Marx's view. Marx himself was bamboozled by the enlightenment fetishization of liberty. If Marx would have done a proper analysis and critique of liberty as he did with capitalism we would probably already be a socialist country. Liberty is a bigger problem than capitalism. Freedom is an illusion, liberty is a false religion, liberty is a weapon of mass deception, freedom is a shitty political goal, liberty is a horrible way to organize the economy, liberty makes a horrible program for human development, liberty is a license to behave irresponsibly, liberty simply lets power decide the outcome rather than justice, freedom must be regulated no if and or butts. Liberty is incompatible with the goals of socialism. Using the language of liberty only concedes ground to the right wing. I would LOVE to DEBATE David on this issue. He is a fool for promoting such bullshit. Democracy at Work, set me up a debate with David pls
Maybe you can help me here. . .how are people free if government controls everything?
maybe you could actually watch the video
@@arthurporter131 Or maybe you can explain it since you support this nonsense.
Because there’s no way for govt to control everything. That’s something people on the right try to scare everyone using. If we use the govt to make sure food isn’t sickening the populace and elderly people who can no longer work don’t die of malnutrition and diseases-how the FUCK does that diminish your fucking rights to the same?
@@NonDelusional74611 If you enact government controlled health care, housing, and jobs/payments, then give government the ability to dictate what cars you own, how much meat you consume, how your house is built, whether you have electrical charging stations on your property...
I can go on and on. How is that freedom? Please explain that to me. I mean I can go on for hours just on government controlling which hospitals you are allowed to go to, which doctors you are allowed to see, and which medications you are allowed to take. How about government dictating which college you go to? Yeah, that's freedom. I'm an SC fan. . .but Big Gov't closes SC because it's a private school. Same with Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT. and the host of other private and most public universities.
These aren't right wing talking points. These are facts. But I'm not done.
The government has an entity in place that makes sure the food isn't sickening. Ever heard of the FDA? Probably not, but the fact that you even posted that means you don't think government is doing their jobs. . .so then why would you want to turn around and give them MORE power over food? That's just dumb. The elderly are the responsibility of their children, not the government. If they don't have children, they have a wealth of resources available to them so they DON"T "die of malnutrition and disease".
What else you got?
@Abused Monk Hey, putz. . .I'm not in the UK. I'm in America, Stop comparing apples to lemons. Our countries are completely different in size, population, and demographics.
No offense Sir' I respect your words spoken and your explanation of what you believe to be true about socialism..
BUT
What I STRONGLY BELIEVE is that socialism in the modern times can be and will be a negative affect towards the country ..In the begining it will be OK has time goes by it is DEFINITELY going to create more and bigger problems in a country financially and the people of the country will end up suffering way more and in the worse ways possible...
Socialism in a country like America is going to destroy America..It is NOT going to help America prosper and the American people will end up getting destroyed and will be in tremendous suffering....
People who're having this idea of socialism going to help the society and give them a better life is going to have a rude horrible realty wakening ..
It is NOT the peaceful financial freedom and equality beautiful picture everyone who supports socialism for the country has on their mind ..
Are Dr. Harvey and Proff Wolff authoritarian socialists?
I understand they fight for worker coops which is libertarian socialist.
But what future do they want?
"Authoritarian socialism"
Democracy is authoritarian?
Can you expound on how this term "authoritarian socialist" you use is sensical?
Are you conflating it with state capitalism?
Are you referring to the fact that in socialism that you aren't allowed to (in an authoritarian fashion) profit off of other people's work, like with capitalism? How does being able to exploit labor under a hierarchy mean non-authoritarian?
How does dismantling the hierarchy, giving power equally to the people mean "authoritarian"?
Going to the poorest person in the land, and saying, "You have as much power and influence as the richest person in the land.", "authoritarian"?
Socialism and communism are in no way an oligarchy or monarchy. "Government control" is not socialism. If workers (the people) aren't given control, and power and wealth are hoarded at the top of a hierarchy, its not socialism or communism, full stop.
@B. Greene interesting, im greatful for their work in teaching leftist political philosophy and economics.
So they believe in social democracy but who will own the production? The state or the worker coops/syndicates.
Do they believe in work coops competing in a market, so market socialism?
Or are they prefer a social economy of collectivist or communist coops workplaces?
@@DayneAW my dude, im a anarcho syndicalist, im a collectivist akin to Rodolf Rocker and the CNT-FAI model.
Im learning about the modern forms of socialism and their means of achieving it.
Im probably more opposed to hiearchy than richard wolff.
And to answer your question, no democracy is not authoritarian.
But what authoritarian Marxist-leninist, Maoists, and stalinists advocate for is a form of socialism which is antithetical to freedom and destroys worker control.
Im skeptical of marxists in that they seem to never critizise the most potent hiearchy of all, which is state domination and political classes. This lack of historical knowledge can lead to state capitlaism, and oppressive authoritarian regimes.
@@syndoodlefs4791
That's cute that you attached "Marxist" to "Leninist", when Lenin didn't follow Marx. Lenin thought he had to take control, and force what he called "socialism" onto the people, which was not the "way of the people" but his way...only. Which would make it oxymoronic to call himself "socialist" if he didn't give a shit what anybody else thought.
But please do, again, expound on how anything Marx stated referred to obtaining a monarchy, and forcing the population to have "socialism" (again, let me know in any of that "socialist" forms, the "social-" structure was given equal power as the leader, if the population elected them, and it wasn't hoarded at the top of that hierarchy...which is socialism).
"Destroys worker control"...You mean is no longer socialist?
The only thing you are telling me is that a "leader" can use populist rhetoric, and convince a population to be under a dictatorship, and practice state capitalism....then call it "socialist".
"Can lead".... it is state capitalism in the first place.
@@syndoodlefs4791
Marx didn't say what ought to be. Marx described what will be. The progression of society from the right wing monarchy to left wing socialism...to communism...to anarcho-communism...to anarchism. Nothing in his statements or writings implied a hierarchy being established to force order. A country that magically pops up as "communist"...isn't actually communist.
...and the multiple red scare campaigns to redefine "socialism" and "communism" doesn't magically make those definitions true.
We also need to stop pretending this is "collectivist". Right wing politics are collectivist.
While these conversations are "interesting", without contextual reality and the recognition
of the fact the "citizens" of the US have been essentially reduced to "debt slaves", whose
subjugation is "enforced" by the greatest "fraudulent deception" in history, and "maintained"
by the "federal judiciary".......that any reform or improvement can be realised, without exposing
and ridding ourselves of this "illegitimate" government, is simply a waste of time. ( Wolff and
co. are either totally out of touch, completely ignorant, or have been totally "cowed"....along
with every other, so called populist, progressive, supposedly alt media voice, that these
"flights" of fancy only serve as distraction and misdirection from the REAL task and threat to
all of us, by the very government, most people expect, "to protect and serve us", although any
actual evidence of THAT, is difficult to come by.
Since all contracts since Roosevelt's time have the colorable
consideration of Federal Reserve Notes, instead of a genuine
consideration of silver and gold coin, all contracts are
colorable contracts, and not genuine contracts. [According to
Black's Law Dictionary (1990), colorable means "That which is in
appearance only, and not in reality, what it purports to be,
hence counterfeit, feigned, having the appearance of truth."]
Consequently, a new colorable jurisdiction, called a statutory
jurisdiction, had to be created to enforce the contracts. Soon
the term colorable contract was changed to the term commercial
agreement to fit circumstances of the new statutory jurisdiction,
which is legislative, rather than judicial, in nature. This
jurisdiction enforces commercial agreements upon implied consent,
rather than full knowledge, as it is with the enforcement of
contracts under the Common Law.
All of our courts today sit as legislative Tribunals, and the so-
called "statutes" of legislative bodies being enforced in these
Legislative Tribunals are not "statutes" passed by the
legislative branch of our three-branch Republic, but as
"commercial obligations" to the Federal United States for anyone
in the Federal United States or in the Continental United States
who has used the equitable currency of the Federal United States
and who has accepted the "benefit," or "privilege," of
discharging his debts with the limited liability "benefit"
offered to him by the Federal United States ... EXCEPT those who
availed themselves of the remedy within this commercial system of
law, which remedy is today found in Book 1 of the Uniform
Commercial Code at Section 207.
When used in conjunction with one's signature, a stamp stating
"Without Prejudice U.C.C. 1-207" is sufficient to indicate to the
magistrate of any of our present Legislative Tribunals (called
"courts") that the signer of the document has reserved his Common
Law right. He is not to be bound to the statute, or commercial
obligation, of any commercial agreement that he did not enter
knowingly, voluntarily, and intentionally, as would be the case
in any Common Law contract.
Furthermore, pursuant to U.C.C. 1-103, the statute, being
enforced as a commercial obligation of a commercial agreement,
must now be construed in harmony with the old Common Law of
America, where the tribunal/court must rule that the statute does
not apply to the individual who is wise enough and informed
enough to exercise the remedy provided in this new system of law.
He retains his former status in the Republic and fully enjoys his
unalienable rights, guaranteed to him by the Constitution of the
Republic, while those about him "curse the darkness" of
Commercial Law government, lacking the truth needed to free
themselves from a slave status under the Federal United States,
even while inhabiting territory foreign to its territorial venue.
# # #
ADDENDUM
U.C.C. 1-207:4 Sufficiency of reservation.
Any expression indicating any intention to preserve rights is
sufficient, such as "without prejudice," "under protest," "under
reservation," or "with reservation of all our rights."
The Code states an "explicit" reservation must be made.
"Explicit" undoubtedly is used in place of "express" to indicate
that the reservation must not only be "express" but it must also
be "clear" that such a reservation was intended.
The term "explicit" as used in U.C.C. 1-207 means "that which is
so clearly stated or distinctively set forth that there is no
doubt as to its meaning." ...
U.C.C. 1-207:7 Effect of reservation of rights.
The making of a valid reservation of rights preserves whatever
rights the person then possesses and prevents the loss of such
right by application of concepts of waiver or estoppel ....
U.C.C. 1-207:9 Failure to make reservation.
When a waivable right or claim is involved, the failure to make a
reservation thereof causes a loss of the right and bars its
assertion at a later date ....
U.C.C. 1-103:6 Common law.
The Code is "Complementary" to the common law which remains in
force except where displaced by the Code ....
A statute should be construed in harmony with the common law
unless there is a clear legislative intent to abrogate the common
law. ... "The Code cannot be read to preclude a common law
action."
EXAMPLE
Your Honor, my use of "Without Prejudice UCC 1-207" above my
signature on this document indicates that I have exercised the
"Remedy" provided for me in the Uniform Commercial Code in Book 1
at Section 207, whereby I may reserve my Common Law right not to
be compelled to perform under any contract, or agreement, that I
have not entered into knowingly, voluntarily, and intentionally.
And, that reservation serves notice upon all administrative
agencies of government -- national, state and local -- that I
do not, and will not, accept the liability associated with the
"compelled" benefit of any unrevealed commercial agreement.
The Bankruptcy of 1933
docs.google.com/document/d/165i0dicryJ_KtzCr6agR6O6v4XaRM2EDr6f1WbmU3Fg/edit?hl=en
w-4 Voluntary Withholding Agreements
www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/26/31.3402%28p%29-1
Reservation of Rights
UCC 1-207/308
www.supremelaw.org/authors/freeman/freeman4.htm
www.supremelaw.org/authors/freeman/freeman5.htm
J GALT be gone, troll. Tired of seeing your nonsense in these threads. You seem to have made it your purpose in life to be a contrarian in every single DAW video.
@@ryanh.2842 Aw, you should emulate your "persecuted" DAW intellectual leaders, who having granted
"free speech" in the comments here, and simply ignore all questions and challenges raised, since there
is no monetary incentive in either responding to or defending the ideas they offer here.
Rather than expose your "willfully ignorant, functional illiteracy", why don't you actually read
what is written, TRY to grasp why it has been written, and then attempt to make an "argument"
regarding the "information" presented, or the "error" that you believe might be "lurking"....even
though you can't be bothered to actually read and comprehend what is actually being said.
You just watched a video which raised freedom and justice, in the context of the 196o's,
and the "free market" distraction, which supposedly gave one and eliminated the other....
and the issue of debt slavery was also raised. ( all of which briefly covered in the "opening
paragraph" ) What follows is FACTUAL EVIDENCE that any hope of "justice", was removed,
in 1939 and 52, respectively, and by 1968 the fraudulent deception, was two years away from
completion, as all the states had signed on to the UCC. ( completing the discarding of the
constitution, any limitations it imposed on government power, and any "rights" that had
previously been, supposedly guaranteed by it. )
If you actually read anything I have written, my criticisms of DAW are very specific, while I
also make clear that I have no objection to achieving the "goals" which they are motivated by.
For this particular "episode", there is no way that any "socialist, democratic, progressive program"
has a chance, given the "legal" reality that exists, not that you have actually have a "political possibility"
of getting anything "passed" in the first place.....
So rather than whine, that your delusional safe place has been violated by valid challenges and criticisms,
which would become readily apparent, should you actually succeed in getting what you are wishing for.....
either ignore me, like DAW, or demonstrate that they have educated you to the extent, that you can
present, the "argument" or "response", that they can't seem to be bothered with.
@@jgalt308 too many inverted commas and irrelevant information. You don't seem to have an argument. You are wandering all over the place, and speaking in code.
@@spongeyknuts Another "twitter brain" with nothing to say, who insists on saying it. Which
words did you not understand? Which phrases? Which sentences? But you are correct, there
is a "code" inextricably entwined in all of this....the Uniform Commercial Code ( 1952 ) and the
United States Code (1939). Which part of the "excerpts" of THAT, do you need help with?
You just watched a "video" which explained that the generation of 1968, were granted access to
"free markets" and denied access to "justice." I have explained by what means that access was denied,
and that it took place way before 1968. ( and what you can do about it now. )
Apparently you DAW sycophants are well trained and loyally tune in every week to catch up on,
how you got fucked this week....you have no legal recourse, you can't vote your way out of it,
but Karl Marx predicted it, so stay tuned as we give you more evidence of how fucked you are.
This makes you slightly more "intelligent", than your opposition, whose actions can be directed
simply by uttering the "word".....SOCIALIST...and pointing. You are severely outnumbered, in
a rigged system without legal recourse and you think, you can combat the above by
shouting the word "Capitalism"? Of course, I do understand, that someone pointing this out
to you, would be slightly disruptive, given your weekly masochistic orgies....but then, isn't
the point of all of this about "winning"?
J GALT I just perceived a long rant that did not make any sense. Nothing constructive whatsoever. The whole body of writing is gibberish. Goodbye Sir, there is nothing further to say.
Crazy Marxist professor - “We should collectivize food production.”
Me - “I feel like this has gone wrong before...”
*Soviet national anthem intensifies*
I'll take that to mean that you don't know much about what actually happened in the Soviet Union.
Big G Haywood Oh, was it all just a conspiracy to besmirch the good name of socialism? I thought your type were supposed to argue the Soviet Union wasn’t real socialism. Get your talking point right!
@@evolvedape2161 it's almost like individual socialists can disagree with each other and nothing about the ideology necessitates that everyone hold the same opinion.
C And yet millions and millions always die. It is almost like the ideas themselves are garbage, but we’re always given some form of the same excuse.
C How about
*Cambodian national anthem intensifies*
Or
*Chinese national anthem intensifies*
Or
*Laotian national anthem intensifies*
Or
*Cuban national anthem intensifies*
Or
*Venezuelan national anthem intensifies*
Or
*Ethiopian national anthem intensifies*
So are these the “just not real socialism” argument or the “the West is conspiring against them” argument? I can list more failed attempts at collectivization of agriculture which led to millions of dead if you’d like?