Marxism vs Communism | Richard Wolff and Lex Fridman
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- Опубликовано: 16 сен 2024
- Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: • Richard Wolff: Marxism...
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GUEST BIO:
Richard Wolff is a Marxist philosopher and economist.
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Its inconceivable that may be an alternative system to capitalism for ppl in the comment section. A century of propaganda has truly warped your minds
People on here with comments (1) that have nothing to do with this clip (e.g., "this guy is supporting communism, which doesn't work" "he is detached from reality," etc...), (2) somehow assuming that Lex is a communist because he has this guy on, (3) insulting Wolff for the crime of explaining Marxism, communism, and the history of it; REALLY need to take a second, breathe, and think before posting. In this clip, Wolff (or Lex) has not made a single judgment on (approving or disapproving) these theories. In this clip, he is exclusively, explaining the concept and the history--which btw is fascinating! Sh*tposter out there, do you not see any value in learning the theory and history in order to be able to form an informed judgment and criticism. I should not have opened the comments section--don't know why I keep doing this to myself.
I really try to be patient but yes, some people are really dumb. Thanks for summing up what I felt I was seeing in the comments.
I appreciate your comment. What the comments reveal is the style of propaganda in the USA has made actually thinking and forming an opinion on this among many topics impossible for many.
Having known many from the Eastern Bloc they generally tell me the propaganda in the West worse than their former countries.
In order to detect the complete bullshit which Wolff delivered in this clip, would you agree that it requires knowing the material which Wolff presents here?
You people employ confirmation bias which marxists like Wolff use as shelter. Wolff is some great mind to you folks and because you suppose he is informed and truthful about marxian theory and praxis. This has permitted Wolff to present a propaganda version of marxism and its history.
For example, the lie that soviets did not regard state capitalism as socialism or that Marx did not. All 4 key figures of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin acknowledge this in writing Wolff has not read, not understood or not been honest about.
Wolff is a self described Marxist and presents it in a very positive manner. He has a distorted view of reality and deflects destruction of Marxism and communism elsewhere.
Comment section is dummie-central, as expected
Lex, thank you. Whether your podcasts are on Marxism, quantum physics, or literature, they are nuanced, multifaceted, and illuminating. As a seventy year old, I am grateful to still be learning from these open-minded discussions.
Stalin didnt "focus on nation" Stalin was a internationalist who helped every communist and decolonial movement in the entre world, and also was the first world leader to warn about the nazis and asked the other European govts to form a joint security pact, which they ignored. It was with Stalin at the leadership of the entire anti-fascist movement, funding Partisans in every nation and he was involved in every step of military planning from the Interwar period, thru to Barbarossa, the liberation of the camps and Berlin, and even the postwar rebuilding.
I have a hard time understanding how Wolff can frame himself as a Marxist and not have read Lenin and Stalin's works on the National Question and why "Permanent Revolution" and the idea that the Russians shouldve stayed in ww1 to implement socialism via conquest, were unpopular, utopian, and suicidal concepts.
As a Marxist admirer, I would like a critique of Marxist ideas, in the same vein of Marxism being a critique of Capitalism.
Exactly. Ideas and philosophies need to be debated and discussed.
The issue is that Marxist philosophy has had very few examples and none that were not interfered with in some way.
Prof. Wolff is a great explainer
The thumbnails 💀💀💀
Everytime.
Posadism was the most hilarious form of Marxism, too bad it never gets much discussion
I think this guy is saying that business leaders should look after the employees. He isn't saying government should mandate anything. He is saying we should shop at a COOP instead of a Walmart. We should be better neighbors by having a big heart and helping hand. Instead of looking out for, what's in it for me. Just helping one another.
He never mentioned that capitalism isn't true anywhere. We have chrony capitalism because we are doing business with Dollars from the federal reserve.
Well spoken
Yeah, 90% of the comments from this interview are still speaking within like Cold War tropes. Many people obviously didn’t listen to the interview. It’s sad.
You can literally open up his books and see thats exactly what he wants..
This guy gets it, most of the comments, not so much
Coping mechanism. Just this interview is understandable, when you take Wolff at all his interviews it's completely insane.
Guy wants the government to control you. Communism and Fascism are two surfaces of the same coin.
Damn, just want universal health care so i dont end up homeless when i get sick.
You've just taken the first step towards understanding why Marxism Leninism is so important. Voting is a sham. Democracy is a sham. You are a non owner of capital. You work or you die. Don't like it? Find another planet to live on. Earth has owners and you aren't one of them. Get the picture? It's not a joke. This RUclips channel is operated by a guy who doesn't understand political economy, so he's unable to to anything but scratch the surface. The only way you/we are going to get universal healthcare is if the owners of capital fear you.
move to Europe or literally any other devolved country
No, DON'T move to Europe. Neoliberalism, as a natural phase of capitalism, has made healthcare almost totally privatized and expensive for common people. So now even Western imperialism isn't enough to make the working class live decent lives. And now, when the global south is liberating itself from western capitalist exploitation (with the help of China), shit is really about to become fucked up for the masses. And now the ruling, capitalist classes are canalizing this righteous anger and discontent among the masses into violent, racist fascism - both by spreading (cringe, provocative, fake and disingenuous) "wokeism", and by spreading and financing (sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic and islamophobic) "anti-wokeism".
If you want good healthcare, move to China - or any other up-and-coming and prospering socialist country! There you'll find happiness, community and good health.
why when talking about Marxism or Communism nobody ever mention Vasily Blokhin?
While I find myself diametrically opposed to Wolff's worldview, Wolff was correct at the end about his assertion about Marxism's original views of the state and the role that Socialism played. Marx's original thousand foot plan has always seen Communism as the end goal, which is ultimately the result of using Marxism as the mechanism and tool that would first move a capitalistic society into a socialist one before transforming itself into the utopian vison of Communism. Where Wolff, and anyone who opposes Marxism disagrees, however, is how there's never been a complete, efficient, and correct blueprint that details how humankind can achieve the aforementioned Marxist dream without millions of people starving to death, getting sent to the Gulags, or killed. And this concern is something that every Marxist minimizes, sidesteps, or misunderstands. Because in the end, what happened in Soviet Russia or anywhere else wasn't the result of a bad actor or because their regime believed that "the State WAS Socialism," as opposed to the State being used to achieve socialistic outcomes and having communistic aspirations. It was because the fundamental principles of Communism and Marxism only teach people that they need to act, but never how, so if you ascribe to the Postmodern belief that "there is no truth, just power" like most modern day leftists do, then it's not very hard to fathom how or why someone like Stalin came to power and similar situations have occurred every time this Marxist experiment has been tried ever since.
You're completely right and it's no coincidence that Marxists tend to speak in generalities because thinking about the consequences of Marxism leads directly to authoritarianism.
It's pretty simple really, the jobs that people want to do are different than the jobs that society needs. Nobody wants to be a sanitation worker, yet that job needs to be done. Capitalism works by bribing people to do jobs they don't want to do. So without that mechanism how do these jobs get done? People doing them out of the kindness of their hearts? No, instead you need to force people to do these jobs.
Additionally, even though it's imperfect, prices serve as a signal for supply and demand. Without that signal, how do we manage limited resources? You inevitably need some sort of central planning to direct people's efforts. Capitalism solves this in a decentralized way through the mechanism of price and supply/demand.
To the question of how many people will have to suffer to achieve communism I ask, how many more will suffer if we don't? Look at the mess in the world that capitalism lead us to. It's leading us to our extinction? Ever heard of the Resource Based Economy from The Venus Project?
ruclips.net/video/06-XcAiswY4/видео.html
Nope
You could just learn instead of guessing and piecing bits of nonsense together.
Also postmodernists are not leftists, that's why we (leftists) complain about liberals constantly, "lib" is more of a derogatory term on the left than it is on the right.
The only problem with socialism and communism is that normal people like you have been misinformed and build your entire politic view on, what is essentially, propaganda. If you actually want to learn there's a good chomsky video on yt explaining how the perception of socialism and communism was formed, as a result of this perception benefiting the western and Eastern powers equally, but differently.
The genius of Woolf 👀
What genius. He's completely wrong and leaves out tons of variables. Clearly has never ran a business.
@@Jerry-xw7ivco-operative businesses are some of the fastest growing companies on the planet, with by and large the happiest labour force… what do you think a co-operative is?
I love how he brags about how parties formed with direction from the Soviet Union inside American borders and that they supposedly accomplished so much, yet they literally haven’t accomplished anything significant or been able to keep up with Capitalism overall.
The Soviets literally lost to Capitalism during about 70 painful years where the Soviet state held ultimate authority, ran multiple brutal regimes, and all that just so they could be bested by a country based in capitalism.
"That's not 'real' communism..."
@@saltyhero Even real communism wouldn't be real communism to these types.
The Soviet society was an autocratic capitalist society. You obviously didn’t watch the interview. After 1917 they admitted they did not have socialism or communism in the USSR but hoped it would develop. But eventually Stalin the autocrat dictator took power.
They went from a third world country to a world superpower and put the first man in space. Standards of living were higher for Russian workers. Today most of former USSR looks like a shithole compared to how it used to. Under capitalism you had children working in factories and 16 hour work days. Today in Mexico there are towns where the water is owned by coke so all they can drink is soda and everybody has diabetes. Capitalism had virtually an entire country owned by a banana company where the people were basically enslaved, and when people tried to change it they were slaughtered by right wing death squads
@@gringotroller and yet they lasted longer than your super power, who had to be disbanded. Interesting. Capitalism unchecked is horrifying, but communism unchecked leads to world wars and rise of dictators.
The wideness of the eyes.
Social security, Unemployment insurance, minimum wages, it was paid for by taxes on the corporations and the rich
Love Wolff
The guy doesn’t understand how insane he sounds.
He literally is in favor of the government running everything, as opposed to private citizens being able to have control over industries, jobs markets, etc. etc.
He tried to convey it as if it’s only a few people that run this country, when it is literally millions of business owners that run this country.
The Fed government is simply there to make sure that no one gets screwed over, that we are protected against foreign enemies, and to basically make it so that we hold together as a country.
In just 200 years time, the United States became the most powerful country the world has ever seen.
There has never been a country more powerful than us, or more successful than us, or more important to the modern world than we have been.
The people who really built this country, were capitalists, people like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and the millions of entrepreneurs, etc.
We didn’t need a socialist controlled society in order to pull that off. So why do we need that now?
This is what happens when you dedicate your life to preaching a system, that you yourself can’t prove actually works.
It’s hilarious how this guy has used capitalism to make money by getting paid to preach a system, that he himself has never existed in, and quite frankly, neither has anyone else really.
I think that you are framing the success of a society in a narrow way, the US has amassed its massive wealth through the exploitation of countless other nations through the implementation of the neoliberal hegemony during and after the cold war. Geopolitical power is something more complex than the constant economic growth promoted by the US, which is one of the reasons that climate catastrophe is upon us. It's easy to see the success of any model if you're gaining something from it, that's what makes other forms of running societies so difficult or insane to comprehend for someone from the industrialized first world that benefits from the constant extraction of wealth from others, and that's precisely the basis of capitalism, it's alienating power to make you loose empathy for those who are exploited.
@AJ Smith Slavery does not generate wealth and in fact causes a misallocation of resources as slaves would be more productive as free men pursuing their own best interests. It is not why the US is so rich. Honk Kong is rich, Japan is rich, Britain is rich, and those places didn't have slavery in recent history.
@@josecardenas2447 You think the Soviet Union didn't extract wealth, labor, and resources from the disenfranchised?
@@3halfshadows if slavery didn't generate wealth then the Antebellum South wouldn't have been so willing to fight a civil war to keep the institution and the economic structure
@@3halfshadows This is a crazy take. Who says American slavery didn’t produce wealth? You should visit the old sugar and cotton plantations, see the Big Houses (designed and built by enslaved people btw) and tell us slavery didn’t produce wealth. The real questions you don’t want asked are, where is that wealth now and how do we use it to pay reparations? Hint: Southern churches should be worried
Wish you would have included Dubchek / - ism
- afaik a combination where everything necessary for life is regulated communitively = by the state, while everything else regulated by market. Sadly never happened, he was killed.
But do you really think what we see in the west today is capitalism ? Really ?
Definitely not, it’s corporatism.
As long as there is the Federal Reserve and T.A.R.P funds, government subsidies, etc. It's probably a bit of a stretch
There's nothing about capitalism that implicitly states the government can not help the owners of capital, as long as said owners still control the means of production; it's capitalism. I'm pretty sure Smith and Ricardo warned us that this could happen, but everyone was happy to complain about communism and socialism while this change occurred (still do, I see so many people call capitalism "corporatism" yet call state capitalism "socialism/communism")
@@LetsGetitBoahCorporatism is capitalism working as intended. I.E. to the benefit of the capital owning class.
@@mikehorne4053 Or you guys can look up the term.
To all sympathizers of the state: Socialism and communism cannot exist without the state's control. It has the monopoly on force, so how else do you expect to get people under your boot of socialist ideals without it? The state would be required for that. You have no right to the property and livelihood of another person, no matter how little or how much they have.
You can have small scale societies that are basically socialist - every (nuclear) family is kinda socialist.
The problem is that this does not really scale.
capitalism cant exist without state either. "true capitalism" without state is an utopia like the "true communism"
Buddy, capitalism also needs the state, to set and police the rules. Because capitalism without an imposed set of rules, is not capitalism, its anarcho-capitalism which is guaranteed to fail the majority of people
And I believe full on socialism fails as an idea, let alone in practice
@@cocosluca2423 government loves big business and vice versa. monopolies have never existed without the state. look at covid. government shut the economy down and killed a ton of small businesses and it only made the big guys stronger. there is no free market by way of state regulations because there is no competition. It is not perfect, but all of capitalism is voluntary, and does not need a centralized power to survive on its own.
They can't exist with a big state actually.
Really appreciate this content Lex
People follow success and happiness...neither of these systems have worked out or proven it. Most lead to dictatorships, which we all hate. The government subcontracts to private business most of the work it wants done (and is usually successful), the post office is government run and loses money, Fed Ex makes money, UPS makes money.
Lenin died in 1924, not in 1923.
If we could see the dislikes....
119 to 3 as of this comment. returnyoutubedislike will give you the counter back.
Here is one.
Karl Marx was a diabolical loafer.
Leftists now are trying to realize his plans
@@joeduff8761 totally agree. Evil to the core, this ilk.
@@fritzschnitzmueller3768 it takes one to know one Comrade
your mom
@@fritzschnitzmueller3768 he was literally lazy, racist, and didn’t actually build anything. That’s a flat out fact.
wow
Christian anarchy is much better...
The more I hear him explain his ideas, the more I realize he is detached from the majority of society. Classic example of booksmart but no street smarts.
I can see that.
Unable to create or produce. Only able to destroy.
You would almost think that no other society has tried it before.
I generally don't trust an intellectual who hasn't spent time doing manual labor.
Because ideologies are fantasies - ALL of them.
Yes he should have street smarts of skid row. A shining beacon on the hill of capitalism.
M
Worst episode I’ve tuned into. This guy is a perfect example of academia vs the real world/technical experience.
Communism wouldn’t even allow you to discuss capitalism in this format without major censorship.
@@Lnch4ALion Love the "you didn't listen right" lines, which appear in multiple instances in the comments of this video. Same argument as "that wasn't real communism" --- please do us all a favor and give up. The glorious revolution is NEVER coming to a theater near you.
@@Lnch4ALion I bet your nose is bigger.
@@Lnch4ALion case in point. Why don’t you do something useful with your philosophy degree? Your ideaology has failed the test of time, time and time again. It would be great if you would just be a drain on society if you’d refrain from dragging us down with you.
@@Lnch4ALion if only the millions killed by communism would’ve practiced it properly! It’s a sad demonstration of our failed education system every time one of these clowns come out of the gopher hole.
@@dirtypure2023 Literally 100% yes
I have never understood the idea of these - isms in the running of a state.
Each community, caste, business and issues should ideally have a different solution based on multiple factors.
Although I'm not a student of political science or history but my basic intuition says that no single set of rules or framework would be a solution to running a country successfully.
Edit - What I'm implying is that these discussions/debates feel useless to me.
The -isms are like religions. They are an ostensibly coherent collection of doctrines that are supposed to explain reality and solve problems. Of course they don't explain reality, unlike science. And the solutions are proven failures. But people believe in them like religion.
I guess if you find them useless then don't bother with them. I find them interesting.
That is exactly what the isms are. Maoism is just Marxism applied to China. Leninism is Marxism applied to Russia. So on and so forth.
These are useless. Socialists are wrong for their unilateral solutions and haven't been taken seriously by any governments which sought economic expertise or ethical political economy. There would be some value if his history was accurate, but it is apologetics for the worst philosophy humans have ever made.
Isms is there to explain details how a society should be organized. God and Satan cannot be mixed! Capitalism is simply evil!
🐺
Marx is in Hell.
I find this man mildly unpleasant !
There is a thin line between sounding intelligent and sounding like you're in a constant full blown manic episode.
Referring to whom?
Somehow I knew that eventually Whitney would rub off on Lex, now he ventures into comedy with this lunatic.
Hilarious.
Serious question here, is Lex also one of these numb skulls or is he just a dude doing a podcast giving numb skulls time to share their ideas? I don’t know Lex at all so I don’t know where he stands.
For the most part yes, he is apparently quite smart and lectures at MIT in comp science.
However from what I have noticed the majority of his guests are pseudo intellectuals pushing dehumanising ideas like "socialism", and technocracy where AI makes us all redundant.
Ray Dalio was great, Elon was enjoyable to watch, there are some old school tech people, but for the most part we get these sorts of academic social engineers.
@@scottydog9997 Socialism at its truest isn't bad, in its Western sense is. Better way to put it is Lex gives experts and "experts" an opportunity to speak from their personal views.
@@cassiusgolgotha2347 I can accept that, just don't like giving bad ideas air to breath, when good ideas are censored, and removed from public debate.
@@scottydog9997 ye thats fair
@@scottydog9997 "dehumanising ideas like socialism" - I'd love to hear you try and explain
"Elon was enjoyable" - I see the level we're working at now
"Ideas that are censored" - like what? You must know that makes you sound like a nazi. Also, if you think that socialism hasn't been "censored" over the last 120 years then you seriously need to learn some history.
Lex sham on you
Nobody says the Post Office is socialism. Dude lives in a bad book.
Like...social programmes work in the areas we need them, so that we don't need them.
Once we needed a post office to help the world communicate, now that people can see the profit in doing so, they open up a business and generate jobs.
Once we needed pest control divisions, someone sees that people need that...they open up a business to get it done, perhaps with a grant/loan from the government so they can tighten their budget, spend it elsewhere.
I obviously don't advocate for private firefighters or police ha