WHY MARXISM DOESN'T WORK
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- čas přidán 5. 07. 2024
- Is marxism and communism truly discredited? Why do we see a revival of marxist thought with political groups publicly adopting it?
In this video I explain the pillars of marxism and why it did not, can not, and will not ever work.
Music: Fredji- Blue Sky
Well said. Brilliant incites and concrete info. Even some of the best descriptions of Marxism don’t really explain why it’s destined to fail, but you explained it well. Keep up the great work
Thanks for making this video! Definitely learned something new.
his video was crap and full of misinformation
@@nateisawesome766 Is there a video I can watch that covers the same topic without the crap and misinformation then?
@@muizzsiddique Marx's Wage Labour and Capital Explained by Hakim. Its a 4 part series and it dissects Marxism very well. I highly recommend you watch it.
@@nateisawesome766 Thanks.
@@muizzsiddique no problem 😊
Great video! New subscriber
Excellent analysis! Can you make one about Distributism?
Very interesting topic. Yes I might do a video on it I'd I get the time.
Distributism actually sounds interesting because I share most of their beliefs.
It doesn't matter what you say, It's always "it's wasn't real socialism", "you don't understand marxism", "marx wasn't a marxist", "you need to educate yourself on marx"... etc.
Great video. highly underrated channel. I also would've liked to hear your thoughts on the labour theory of value.
Thank you!
Just like everything Marx wrote, it was complete bs. This is an error that even Adam Smith committed, linking value to a mythical labour substance going into it. But whereas Smith's theory stands with or without the LTV, Marx's theory of exploitation was built on it.
It is enough to observe how some jobs are labor intensive but contribute little value, or how some machines or AI can produce vastly more value than the supposed labor that went into creating them.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert. I think to understand Marx's use of the Labour Theory of Value you need to familiarize yourself with the argument about whether numbers are socially constructed first: i.e. was mathematics discovered or invented? - with a materialist (like Marx) arguing maths is invented rather than discovered, while an idealist (opposite to Marx, like Hegel) would I think argue maths was discovered. So in this context for a Marxist 'Labour' is a means of creation/invention only human beings can do, while machines - that human beings make - are not capable of such creativity and are then only a store of value (or information) imparted to them from human beings.
The Labour Theory of Value is only one half of what Marx used and is termed 'Abstract Labour' - as a means of 'quantifyng labour'. 'Concrete Labour' is the other half of what Marx used and is about 'quality' rather than 'quantity' and so remains 'hidden' in effect. 'Abstract Labour' vs 'Concrete Labour' forms part of Marx's dialectical approach - you could argue this is an oversimplification and open to abuse, and not a very 'pragmatic' way of looking at things.
Marx's argument revolves around 'Socially Necessary Labour Time' - the agreed time it takes to make something. This was what he added to previous economic theories. Marx arguing that because the free market only tells you about the 'Socially Necessary Labour Time' and not the actual amount of labour time that went into making products. This then leaves unscrupulous employers free reign to essentially lie about how much labour time went into making products - for example new machines in their factory could reduce labour time by employees - enabling employers to sell products at a profit while undercutting their competition Marx argues.
Marx arguing that because value only comes from labour, in such a situation described above then eomployers have to get employees to work for longer to maintain a profit once other competing factories have caught up with their labour saving machinery (because the labour saving machinery - which has no ability to create new value in Marx's economics - doesn't add value but only adds to the employers costs).
Criticism against Marx arises with the 'transformation problem' - essentially the conversion of concrete qualitative value into abstract quantitative value. Marx used a macro-economic argument to say that while on a micro level quality may never match up to quantity (people could be paying too much or too little for something), that on average on a macro level qualities match with quantities - and so Marx argues you can use this to measure exploitation of workers. There is much debate about this analysis though. But the same problem exists within the current mainstream theory of neo-classical economics but just the other way around. Today the problem of 'emergence' is recognised - that micro phenomena and macro phenomena may not have a complete causal connection to each other - leading to absurdities in outcomes of economic theories.
@@decodeeconomics220 "It is enough to observe how some jobs are labor intensive but contribute little value, or how some machines or AI can produce vastly more value than the supposed labor that went into creating them." Groan! Try reading Chapter 1 of Volume 1 of Capital DE. It is not 'jobs' that determine value for Marx, labour intensive or otherwise, but socially necessary labour, the average labour of society. And value is not price, but diverges from it in several ways that Marx analyses. Inevitably, there are difficulties with the Marxian theory of value, like any theory of this sort, but this is not one of them.
@@richardfield6801 "value is not price" true. Value is a mythical substance similar to unicorn blood. 😂
Bro what are you chatting about, just cause you're dressing something in a philosophical garment doesn't mean it's not crap. I read what marx wrote about average labor and it's ridiculous. Price is a real thing, governed by supply and demand, value is a on the same shelf as the alchemist stone and the fountain of youth.
@@decodeeconomics220 So what you are saying is that your only response to Marx’s value theory is to call it names. OK, I have to tell you that name calling does not add up to a meaningful argument. Let’s be clear. You are making positive claims here, so the burden of justifying them lies with you. No one else. Your remarks are really very superficial. All of science is built on an understanding that the surface appearance of things is not all there is to reality, and that these appearances have to be explained by more essential concepts. Your jibe is no more rational than that of a science denier who says, I can see that material objects exist and that they interact, but intangible essentialist principles like force, inertia, energy etc are beyond my perception and therefore are on the same shelf as the philosopher’s stone and the fountain of youth. Value for Marx is not a metaphysical or a mythological construct. It is a social relation that asserts itself under a capitalist system of price determinations. He hypothesises that abstract labour therefore has a role in determining price in the aggregate. Is he right? That depends on how well his theory describes the generalised reality of capitalism at the surface level, and not on whether it fits your dogmatic beliefs. You seem not to understand how the scientific hypothetico-deductive model works. A scientific theory does not prove its essentialist assumptions directly. It does not have to prove, for instance, that a hypothetical essence such as the scientific concept of energy exists independently of its manifestations. Value is Marx’s hypothesis, from which he derives his conclusions. The existence of Value as a useful model is not determined by silly name calling but by how well the deductive propositions that can be derived from it meaningfully correspond to relevant parts of the world in which we live, and whether they do so more completely than rival theories such as various forms of subjectivism. Marx’s value theory does pretty well. We do not have a final confirmation, but that’s because performing controlled tests on a capitalist economy is difficult. The lack of a final confirmation, nevertheless provides no justification for your calling it names and denying that it exists.
Brilliant. I wanted to watch some videos about why Marxism doesn’t work. This was by far the best, even compared to the likes of Jordan Peterson.
Humans can't take responsibility for their actions. The first man Adam: "The Woman you gave me gave me the fruit and I ate it.
Adam blames Eve and God for his sin
Economic stagnation is a dumb argument as much of the innovation comes from the public sector the earliest blue prints of a touch screen phone came from government specially the cia or what about NASA. When it comes to capitalism there is a tendency to innovate only where there is profit motive, build a machine that increase production but when it comes to new areas such as experimental technology such as space travel it’s too expensive to be profitable for the mass population it stagnates only though the state stepping in a providing government contracts does it become profitable and innovative.
I'm not an expert. I've been looking into Marxism these last couple of years. I originally studied engingeering design. I think the advantage of a Marxist lens - the way I see it anyway - is it forces you to think about the value of human beings vs machines: where the 'mode of production' becomes characterized as an oppressive mechanism that seperates and forces human beings to work in more robotic ways. A modern example is on social media with celebrities having millions of followers (drones...?).
Marx has some interesting things to say. I do enjoy his theory of alienated labor, and his analysis of societal dynamics is one of the things that attracted me to Marxism in the beginning. But the solution he proposes, a centralised state dictatorship with no freedom, is a medicine worse than the cure.
I'd much rather live in a society where I can take risks, start a business and enjoy the fruits my work than one where I have to think in a certain way under gunpoint.
@@decodeeconomics220 You have misunderstud him, he never advocated for a centralised dictatorship. His "Dictatorship of the proletariat" means that the workers would become the dominant class as opposed to the capitalists in a capitalist society. He was very much pro-democracy, just not liberal democracy
@@Vukma161 under a dictatorship of the prolitariat, am I allowed to keep the factory I built or my house? If I disagree with this dictatorship, what would marx suggest should be done to me?
Also, how would the dictatorship of the proletariat dissolve, knowing it never dissolved in the USSR but became more tyrannical?
@@decodeeconomics220 The factory would belong to the workers that work in it and the house would belong to the people who live in it. I'm not much of a marxist but you would probably be free to voice your opinion without reprecussions, but in the end as all revolutions go, you would probably not keep the factory or the house unless you live in it. As far as the USSR is concerned, Lenins "Vanguard party" concept was completely against what Marx stood for, so at their core the bolsheviks weren't a good representation of Marx's ideeas. Hell, they even outlawed some of his works.
@@decodeeconomics220 I think my main criticism wouldn't be of Marx or Marxism but of Marxists. A person with an indepandant view would recognise there is still a lot of debate about 'materialsim' and how it applies to the human being. But sadly you have Marxists anywhere from denying free will exists to asserting we have free will beyond the constrainst of nature. Perhaps mixed with Heidegger who removed the front of his body!
This was 100% truth. We need need more of you
uhhh wages haven't risen in accordance with labor output in some time, dude. what stats are you looking at?
you also use examples of communism not working on huge governmental levels in situations where many, many more factors led to the failure of those systems. people are only greedy when they are raised in a society dominated by a zero-sum mentality, by hyper-individualism, by Christian ideas like "only selfless giving is TRUE giving" as opposed to an assumed mutual oneness between people and their very environment, by a culture that encourages plundering and consumerism and possession and greed itself. and yes, the soviet union still had such a society when they formed.
also, what would drive "growth" is the needs of the people, not the constant accumulation of wealthy by a tiny percentage of the population. if people got together because they wanted to go to the moon, they could still do that? people wouldn't be desperate for more money because their needs would be better met. they would work out of the natural human desire to follow one's passions, to help one another.
if companies had no profit motive to further compete, their motive would become... that people would just stop using their product. it would be more democratic that way, no? steve jobs 100% did not do what he did SOLELY to make buckets of money. i really hope you've found something in your life that provides meaning on a level deeper than money.
@@erikaleo5469then why does the US out innovate all of the more Communist/socialist countries. Profit is not the only motive, but no one likes working for free.
I wonder how people like you cope with the fact that the Soviets got to space first
Moving all your resources into one project does not mean your system is successful. North Korea has nukes but no food, does that mean NK is a successful country? If the soviet union was so successful, why did it end? Also, what is your response to my last critique of marx?
@@decodeeconomics220 North Korea is a heavily sanctioned country. That doesn't mean their government is free from any blame but believing their country would be better of if it were capitalist is laughable. As for the Soviet Union it was undemocratically dissolved from the inside due to it's flawed political system. Also I don't take supply and demand arguments serious as they are unfalsifiable.
What also irks me is the way you try to pathologize people not wanting to get exploited at the end of your video.
Didn't that happen after the reforms? Lol.
We got to the moon first.
Without communism.
Without forcefully relocating resources, and whipping people like slaves to get it done.
@@pepesfinalform4634 Let me see if I understood correctly, saying that NK would be better as a capitalis nation is laughable, the internal dissolution of a flawed political system is necessarily undemocratic, there's no measure we can falsify for supply and demand, and mentioning emotions is pathologizing people, and you thhought yours was a well thought answer.
You could have shared sources, dude.
Marx wasnt dumb. Even he knew that it wouldnt work.
Damn you're based.
most stunning word aslong communism exist there are no innovator. 😂
It wasn’t Hegel that said “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” that was another German philosopher. Never in Hegels work did he ever say that.
Hey man, nice video! I can tell you've done a lot of reading and thinking about Marxism and the economic implications thereof... Are you interesting in doing a collaboration video with me? For example, a discussion of Capitalism vs. Socialism? Check out some of my videos and let me know if you're interested. You can also DM me on Twitter if that's easier, @AlanHibbard. Cheers!
The dictatorship of the proletariat is a democracy. He said so in civil war in France. Marx is pointing out that under democracy it is not really democracy in the traditional sense in which everyone has a say in the state, Marx points out that under capitalism the capitalists class has a much bigger say then that of the working class or as Lenin said in state and revolution “ Democracy in capitalism is the same as democracy in ancient society, a democracy for slaveholders”. Your commits about the state withering away ignores the historical reality of 1917. As soon as the Bolsheviks seized state control they were invaded by the allied powers (the United States, Britain and France) as well as the proto-fascist white guards. If they done always with the state it would have failed right away and not in the military coup like in 1991.
Lack of democracy and innovation under socialist regimes is just false. Few historians take this view seriously. How much history did you really read?
save it Enoch
Man, this is embarrassing. lmao.
Marxism is a scientific study of capitalism, idk how you can claim that doesnt work lmfao.
Can you prove that it DOES work?
this is econ 101 surface level analysis, there are very valid critiques of socialism and marxism but you are just regurgitating Cold War era talking points and it's clear you don't really understand marxism nor capitalism or "human nature" for that matter lol.
I mean, you say you read many crucial marxist books, yet you make the same arguements as all the people on the internet who never actually read anything and just take liberal propaganda at face value. Either you are not well enough educated on the subject, or you did nt understand most of what waswritten in those books.
Lol I'd suggest you educate yourself on Marx and Lenin's works. Your comment reeks of ignorance and bourgeois propaganda
Get a job
@@decodeeconomics220 Nice argument buddy, it shows how low your intelligence is (though I'm not surprised since your video already gave away your low iq). I do have a job even though its none of your business.
You can "educate" us here.
It's never going to work 😅
Where did it ever work 😅