Life under communism in the Soviet Union | Eugenia Kuyda and Lex Fridman
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- čas přidán 5. 09. 2020
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I cringe when certain youtubers talk about communism like they have some form of experience with it and yet they never talk with a person from an actual communistic dictatorship. This is the best as far as getting info from ACTUAL people who lived it.
@@xa1313 I dont need to read it to tell you that communism is a bad idea because I experienced it in the first hand.
@@xa1313 Yeah, I'm sure if you were leading the next revolution, you'd do communism right. *barf*
Elon son's brother is right. Nobody lived communism. These two witnessed an end of a country that never implemented communism, it was always a brighter future (in reality just lies obviously).
Want to get a better idea about communism - read The Culture series.
@@batzorigvaanchig6358 you're right
@@batzorigvaanchig6358 dude.. collapse of any country is very bad, especially if the collapse was precipitated by foreign influence... cough cough US cough, and the next decades are bad as well. Was there any country with major and sudden regime change that did not end up in decades of turmoil after that? You can guess what kind of people tend to grab the power at those times?
My wife was born in Czechoslovakia in 1979 were they had a "soft" version of communism. Actually, officially it was called a socialist country. This was 10 years before the velvet revolution took place. When you hear hear some of the stories about life under that regime, the only thing you can think is "God, am I glad I didn't have to endure that" She remembers vividly about queuing 4 hours in order to get a loaf of bread or toilet papers. Sanitary towels were rationed so young women would try to get the once of older women who didn't need them i some form of illegal trade.
You would end up 8 months in jail for possessing a political cartoon mocking the country's leadership. Her parents would avoid talking politics when she was around because kids would sometimes turn their parents over to the authorities.
Favouritism was rampant and nothing functioned properly.
The crazy thing is that even until now, their society is still dealing with the consequences of that corrupt system.
Not to mention the awful architecture and urban planning of those days which is still omni present in smaler purpose build towns.
Even in Germany were east and west were unified in 1989, despite all the cash that was pumped into the formal "Socialist East", the East is still lagging behind compared to the Western part of the country after more than 30 years.
Communism? Nah...
I think you're underestimating how bad the shift to capitalism was when you're saying they are still lagging behind. I'm not saying those days were better, the tyranny was unbearable for people. But it's not like the shift to democracy and market economics has been a steady march of progress and all the problems can be traced back to the previous system. My country made machines and high tech goods then, they can barely export yoghurt today.
The problem is that the pro-capitalists don't really understand what made their economies prosperous in the first place. Free trade is great if you are developed, it's a disaster if you have no domestic production and capacity to compete. And that's what happened with the fall of the regimes, everything ground to a halt, everything was chopped up and sold and domestic production ground to a halt and has never recovered.
@@rumble1925 Just to make sure I fully understand your argument, what country are you from? (Your Yoghurt reference might hint at Bulgaria) :-)
Actually there is and was no communist country ever. They were socialist. As Marx wrote the purpose of socialism is to abolish capitalism and achieve communism.
And sadly the socialist regimes were a big period of 50-70 years that development in terms of better standard of life stopped. The only significant thing was the rapid industrialization that ironically got destroyed (trading with Chinese goods) when the communist parties collapsed.
@@coolthief8375 That's the theory and that's also why I mentioned that the Czechoslovakia identified as a socialist country but the question is; when are the conditions met in order to qualify as a communist state? If you base that condition on what criteria are laid out in the communist manifesto written by Marx and Engels, I would suggest that most Easter European states in the second half of the 20th century would in theory fit the description.
@@captaincheese-beard6316 To be communist there should be no authority AKA no money, no government and etc. meanwhile somehow keeping people equal and not letting them having a leader.
Communism doesn’t work and can’t work hence why these states never got there.
I grew up in Communists country. We need to educate people in USA how horrible it is. No one was equal the corruption was horrible. Favorites fruit was banana I got once every 3-4 years.
I want to pay people like you to speak at the middle schools, high schools, and Universities.
Did people suffer by famines?
You may have grown up in a communist country, but that doesn't mean you understood anything about it or the wider world.
There has never been a moment in the history of the USSR when corruption was worse than it was in the best times in the US. And don't even get me started about the present.
The US is one of the most corrupt societies on Earth. Everything is bought and sold. Federal and local politicians, individual bills that legislature passes, judges, individual court decisions, you name it.
The reason there is "no corruption" is that most of it is legalized, and what isn't legalized, everyone ignores and pretends it isn't happening.
In the USSR it was nothing like that, especially in the early years. The Stalin period and immediately after is one of the most corruption-free times and places in humanity's history. Because it was actively and severely punished. And it is precisely why Stalin is demonized -- the people who wanted to be corrupt never forgave him for it, and it was mostly they who wrote the history later on.
But even in the 1980s, when corruption was indeed rampant in the USSR, it was nowhere close to what it is in the West today. It is why the USSR had to go -- the system placed too much constraints on looting.
@@cloudh8779 No, the Soviets permanently solved the recurrent famine issue that had plagued Russia for centuries. Nobody went hungry after 1946. Meanwhile you still have many millions homeless and food insecure people in the USA today.
Just wanted to add, they are talking about USSR in 1990's when it was largely dying and fell apart in some places for some semblance of free markets to begin take tentative hold, while I am describing early 80's, which was still Soviet in all regards.
As a person who lived in Soviet Republic of Ukraine, as kids we were going hungry every single day, I looked at a video of a nice grandma who cooks depression era meals. The other day she made "depression era poor mans lunch" she pan fried potatoes and sausages. I was floored, I am not exaggerating, sausages with pan fried potatoes? This is how middle class ate in USSR times, we mostly ate flour based products, rarely any proteins and rarely vegetables.
---The idea of wealth disparity is an incredibly disingenuous talking point of the people who oppose Capitalism, what difference does it make that other people are much wealthier if a) lower classes are wealthy in comparison to other nation lower classes b)if said rich person gained his wealth through providing products or services that people wanted to voluntarily buy? Sure, in Soviet Union we were much more equal in comparison, we were all equally DIRT POOR.
--As to why everything goes down hill in Socialist countries, it is because murderous individuals who are willing to murder for their political power, always take over those who are not willing to kill.
This post didn't get enough attention
Capitalism has to be fixed and the simple easy fix is to add a dose of common good into the Corporate Charter/Mandate. The problem with American Corp is the only reason a Corp exists is to seek a profit. This is by design as the original design of Corp America was by rich elite industrialist. No one envisioned back in the day thought there would be Corp the size of IBM Apple Google arising and controlling ...everything. The lack of money falling from the top down right now is result of all of this. It can and must be fixed by very very wise people...people who have wisdom not sheer brain power. The system is in effect broke right now but you don't fix things by breaking them worse.
@@MA-vr8gp The system ain’t broke. The politicians are. Anti-Trust laws can easily be used against these tech monopolies.
@@MA-vr8gp The poor have never been better off. Even your average poor person has a big tv, smart phone, a wardrobe full of clothes. never known a day without food. That is a historical anomaly compared to most of human history. Even the average working class American live better than Kings compared to most of History. "But someone else is better of than me" boo hoo.
I AM SCREEN SHOTTING THIS ONE THANK YOU!
"Communist theorists" in the comments make me chuckle.
MadDeuceJuice Ha ha, then get in here and get your hands dirty!
Like... ancient alien theorists believe...
Not a stupid podcast, Lex. I love the fact that you are emotional yet such a brilliant man. We are smart, yet human. Don't let that disconnect. It has to flow with both.
After you're finished "3rd Reigh" read "The Gulag Archipelago"
This guy jordan petersons.
And then "200 Years Together" by the same author
and then read road to wigan pier by george orwell
Read cannibal island too
@@apacheslim who?
Any “communist” talking about instituting communism has no idea what they’re talking about. Marx said communism can’t be instituted it has to be socialism, the goal of socialism is communism because Marx believed the only way for communism to work was for it to naturally come about after the dissolution of governments
Edit : I’m a staunch free market guy I just like knowing the enemy
Exactly the reason why he should have Richard Wolff over. So people can understand what communism really is
Why are you putting “communist” in quotations marks? I’m guessing you don’t think anyone who calls themselves a communist understands communism, because then they wouldn’t label themselves that? Seems to me you don’t know “the enemy” at all. Also, Lenin made that socialism/communism distinction
@@weignerleigner3037 if humans instinctively create hierarchies does that not occur in capitalism as well as socialism?
Free markets and capitalism are not compatible. Capitalism unrestrained leads eventually to a single monopoly, like we saw in the USSR. When communist countries opened up their government's simply became fascist, as authoritarianism was always the core. Communism in the USSR was a lie, authoritarianism with a communist wrapper, but there was another side of that coin. People are both individuals, and collective, but the propiganda divides people's nature in two and askes them to choose. The pure individual was part of the ideology, and a tool to destroy the west. It was the USSR's best weapon. FDR's New Deal ended the communist revolution in the USA, so their goal was to destroy it, and focused on moving the USA to the right. Ayn Rand sold anti-western propiganda of the pure individual as virtuous, but a nations of sociopaths and psychopaths can't be a nation.
PS: Actual socialism is non-governmental. It's human software that when followed lets people act as one simply because their presuppositions, and interaction protocols let people solve their own problems. Liberal Democracy depended on a collectivist society. Christianity was that collectivism, and it was ended by Capitalism. The founding fathers saw how society dissolved around industry in England, and all but banned Capitalism. Corporations were only formed for public works projects.
Socialism was a prescription for creating the required collectivism.
@@weignerleigner3037 if the USA today is more socialist than capitalist, then what is an example of functioning capitalism? My point is that it's unreasonable to believe a command economy will become corrupt but that a market one will not. Capitalism cannot exist without a state which monopolises violence and defends private property, and once established, capitalism has tended towards the growing concentration of wealth, means of production, and power in the hands of a small elite. Claiming that "this isn't real capitalism" seems to me to be similar to saying "that wasn't real communism". Being able to "vote with your dollars" sounds nice until we consider that some people have access to far more dollars than others. As a matter of fact, as income inequality increases, it becomes apparent that the production of the economy is directed increasingly towards luxuries for the rich, who are simply casting more "votes" than the poor. If you want everybody to have a say in what the economy produces, as "voting with your dollar" implies, then I think you must support an equalisation of political and economic power, accomplished not through top down authority (as of course failed in the USSR etc), but rather the seizing of that power by those who currently lack it. Only then will we all be able to influence the economy to an equal degree.
I remember first getting a banana in soviet Poland. It was a rarity and a treat. We are them green and hated it cause we didn't know what a ripe banana was.
We also got apples for Christmas, not apple ipads like kids get today but actual apples wrapped in nice newsprint and put under the tree. The communists/marxists of USA have no idea what they are subscribing to.
“Yeah but it wasn’t real communism”
@@jacobwilson7030 ....right.
@@PeterSosinski currently reading Gulag Archipelago. It always amuses me that people born in Western countries like myself fight so hard for a system of government that’s killed in the neighborhood of a quarter billion people.
People talk about a social safety net as a slippery slide directly to authoritarian communism. They never bring up the mass killings of fascism and right wing death squads, but the slide is just as steep and slippery.
@@jacobwilson7030 Gulag Archipelago is very bad and overhyped book. There are many russian writers, which wrote "better" about repressions in USSR, but noone knows about them in USA or any other western countries. Don't get me wrong, Gulag Archipelago contains truth about repressions, but the book is bad and author isn't cool man at all. Sorry for my English, I'm from Russia.
Born in Russia adopted in 96. Greatest Blessing I could ask for.
Russia was a capitalist shithole in the 90s. I moved back to Russia myself, Krasnodar region, after many years in the states. Best choice I ever made. Although, the wealth inequality here today reminds me a lot of the US.
Russia is not a capitalist, it is a mixed economy and is run by Altruism, I'm from Russia/Ukraine, so I know.
I thought after communism fell, people would pick up the pieces and regroup. Instead they ran right to the church!
@@elgrigorio1 You say "Russia/Ukraine" as if they're similar. Ukraine has a GDP barely larger than Syria, it has crippling economic debt, massive economic dependency on a country its supposedly "at war with", and the highest migration rate in Europe. Russia's one city of Tyumen has a larger GDP and more infrastructurally developed regions than all of Ukraine combined. But either way you are correct that the church dependency on orthodox post soviet countries is heavy. Communism didn't really fall, it was systematically disassembled when traitors conducted a literal power grab and flipped the whole country on its ass overnight, we're it not for that we'd have another country very similar to China today, through all the adaptation.
@@kutuzovm3215 I'm Russian, born in Ukraine. I was trying to say that both countries, who could have rationally liberated themselves and climbed up the social and economic ladder did not do that. Ukraine has been voting with their feelings, not based on fact, rationale or even research. Ukraine, election cycle after election cycle has been continuously voting for the same corrupt asshole after another, dragging themselves deeper and deeper into poverty and crime. I am proud to be from Odessa Ukraine, but I have NO sympathy for my country at all. They did this to themselves, because after 29 years, they havent learned a goddamn thing.
@@kutuzovm3215 it's funny to compare the GDP of one region to GDP of a country, Tyumen has big GDP because it's the place where oil companies get their oil and natural gas to sell to the rest of the world, drilling whole and getting oil or gas has low additional cost, that means after drilling there is no need for a lot of workers, pumps work automatically, so Tyumen is it's frozen desert with a break for short summer, state of New York has bigger GDP than Russia. USSR was not a democracy, but totalitarian state which dictated everything, and who gets promotion in totalitarian state? Only those who accept the rules and play accordingly to get promotions, effectiveness and quality wasn't priority in USSR, the quantity was the measurement of success. Chinese government saw that USSR failed miserably, that is only reason they changed their police to capitalism, and China still totalitarian state, and workers work for peanuts.
I'm surprised we have so many Stalin apologists in the comments.
What examples do you have of capitalism solely doing these things, without the power of the state willfully participating towards the same goals, which is cronyism.
@@John_Doe-007 that's the thing, its not capitalism or socialism that is the root of the issue. It's power dynamics and people who are willing to lie cheat and kill for power.
@@chrisdab- Yet socialism always results in catastrophe. You have to bend over backwards to attribute millions of deaths to capitalism alone.
@@chrisdab- communism and socialism give much more opportunity for that greed to have catastrophic consequences. Thats why capitalist countries are so much richer. Because of the free market and competition due to capitalism
Stalin once said: "When I'm gone, they will dump lots of dirt on my grave, but eventually the winds of history will blow it all away".
The winds of history have been blowing hard indeed, especially recently.
My ex father in law was allowed to travel from Czechoslovakia to the west in the 70s/80s. Each time he travelled the StB (secret service) would tell him that if he defected they would destroy the life of his wife and children. Thus: control.
I was born in Romania in 1994. completely after the fall of Communism.
my grandparents used to talk about the Communist period with nostalgia but sometimes also with disgust.
when my grandparents were young in highschool, they had to go each summer to rural areas and work on the fields. on farms. planting corn or potatoes. basically work for free for the collective farms owned by the state. slavery
the benefits of Communism? maybe those Communist blocks that were built in the cities and how Romania became more urbanized during that period.
but honestly, in reality not much urbanization happened even with Communism. even today's Romanian population is 45% urban vs 55% rural.
"Capitalism is delicious" - Lex Fridman 🤣
😁
Lex is still high on bananas. That's too bananas...but delicious.
He has such a kind and fresh face
Such a handsome man
Regulations create the “drawbacks” of capitalism
Well said
That depends on what you consider draw backs. If you consider crack heads having kids they are happy to let starve to death, or old folks etc. being left behind..it sounds good on paper is more appealing. People are short sighted in alot of ways. Capitalism isnt the best way...just the only way we've found that works. So since it doesn't dissolve into hell for everyone it's a win.
@@fuhq5121 you choose the worst situation and even with that churches and adoption homes take care of those kids. And old folks homes etc. You don’t need a middle man aka the government to step in. There is no perfect system there is no Utopia.The first rules of libertarianism consist of self ownership you own yourself and also the non aggression principle. Good citizens as I’ve seen have taken in old folks, kids the homeless etc. Before social security and welfare people figured it out you don’t get to take other peoples money to support your lifestyle no matter the cause that’s theft. And no it doesn’t sound good on paper. Freedom sucks sometimes. Freedom doesn’t promise you free healthcare, free college or free retirement. It boils down to do you want to be slave where everything is promised or free where you have to do the work and might not make it or barely scrape by. Freedom sucks, its uncomfortable but I’d rather that than be held at gun point forced to pay for stuff I don’t believe in.
Partly. So, I can see putting some limitations on say, safety features of aircraft.
But such examples are pretty few and far between.
I can also see limiting the size of any individual company. Monopolies tend to be bad for consumers, and can actually act as political bodies, which is dangerous for all citizens of the host country.
It's so funny listening to this clip because my mother and grandparents came to the US as refugees from the Soviet Union- they were obsessed with fruit! LOL!
Years ago, I met a woman from East Berlin. It is funny because she said when she came here, she was amazed at how easy it was to get fruit. She said the rare times they had fruit there it was already going bad. She used to get angry when her American friends would throw away fruit.
Strawberries in January! Is there no end to the wonders?
@@User-54631 sane people would agree with you. I know people who are self declared communists. They simply say that was propaganda. They think that anyone who would leave the communist country can't be trusted.
The way they are talking about fruits should get any socialist to reconsider their values & ideology
@ungratefulmetalpansy
So you suggest we throw capitalism to prepare for those days?
Do not worry. The market will find a solution for that. Life is always going forward and never back.
@@dr.lyleevans6915 too optimistic...the climate and ecosystem, and civilization, will likely be destroyed long before energy production is wrestled away from fossil fuels and the profit motive
@@coldsnap999 How can people say with a straight face that the market will "solve climate change." It makes me feel lost and hopeless to see these things.
How so? Do you understand that there is a wealth of socialist literature and debate regarding the soviet union? Do you realize how much the left has historically trafficked in critique and analysis? An anecdote about fruit from someone who lived a few childhood years in the twilight of the ussr cannot hope to contend with any sober Marxist, Socialist, Communist, etc. Get a grip.
@@user-jg6xu1kk1i There's no pure capitalist system out there, and government intervention is inevitable. For example, Im pretty sure whatever country you live in has antitrust laws - that is literally government intervention in the market.
I like that Lex his microphone stand is parallel to the edge of the screen
Edit: also nice discussion
My Mom was in Moscow in 1969. She said it took forty minutes to get coffee in the cafe on Red Square. Why? Because the waiters were all talking with each other. They got paid regardless of how fast they worked. She was also shown by a local the hidden microphones in her room at the Hotel Rossya
Everytime you liberal idiots talk about communism, its all the same story. Maybe come up with something original?
Bring on Andrew Roberts, eminent British historian who can shed a lot of insight on Hitler and Stalin if you’re interested in delving deeper
@@ukjw2 Napoleon: A Life, Walking with Destiny (Churchill bio), and Leadership in War: Essential Lessons from Those who Made History
I remember going to Vyborg as a child around 8, where my grandmother was born (conquered from Finland in ww2), and my grandmother's face seeing the city and kids my age begging in the street vaccinated me against all communist romanticism later when all my friends were into rage against the machine and wearing che-shirts.
Lex. I was born in Lvov, Ukraine in 1980.
i'd rather have wealth inequality than a freekin' gulag. sorry man.
if someone "feels" like someone else has more than them due to flaws in a capitalistic system...then the onus is on that person to work on themselves...ie their envy/jealousy.
this is what Communism thrives off of. this human sentiment called envy.
totally toxic. about as toxic as Chernobyl itself.
Lex was born in Russia in 1986, his father was born in Kiev shortly after the Second World War, and his grandfather, who passed away roughly two years ago, was a veteran of that war. To say that Lex is unfamiliar with Communism would be wrong, but I also think that Lex might have a romantic idea of it, because Lex's father was- as he put it in the interview Lex did with him- "ranked 2nd in physics in the Soviet Union" and went on to study at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. His father also worked under Valery Legasov and was involved in the aftermath of Chernobyl. Considering that, how his father was far from the common Soviet citizen and how they lived in Moscow, as well as his own commenting on how at the age of 13 he hated leaving Russia, might color his opinions.
He's not exactly your typical American, either. Anyone in my family would quickly designate him as "rich", based on the way he carries himself, his job, his clothes, the expensive-as-all-hell place that he lives, the education he has and so forth. The general sentiment from the rest of the country toward those in the coastal metropolitan areas (in which he resides) is that they are wholly detached from basic American living and ideology. I think that he tries to develop a good understanding of the country, and of the world, but the people he surrounds himself with are, more often than not, Leftist American Coastals from a well-to-do background.
haha yeah, Ukraine sure made huge progress after it wasn't controlled by "enny" anymore
So a wealth/poverty gulag then?
The gulags were abolished decades before you were born, during khrushchevs destalinisation. Your comment is like would be like a supporter of soviet communism saying "I'd rather have a suboptimal planned economy than the transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery".
The gulags were terrible, but so was colonialism. Colonialism by western europeans was responsible for more deaths, than soviet gulags, lasted for far longer, and was abolished at a similar time. The aftermath of colonialism is still very much present today, and is why many third world countries are so incredibly poor "despite" having capitalist market economies. Yet we don't dispell the idea of capitalism just because of colonialist past, despite the fact that it is specifically because of colonialism that Western Europe and America are so wealthy and successful. If it were only capitalism, most of Africa and Latin America should be just as wealthy!
The soviets, took control in what was a essentially a third world country in the form of the russian empire. They industrialised and modernised the country within a generation. They built homes, schools, and hopsitals. Gave people free primary, secondary and higher education. Within 50 years literacy went from 16% to over 95% literacy. They started the space age. They did a lot to improve the material coniditions for their citizens, which is more than can be said of capitalist colonialists.
That is not to justify the suffering they caused. But it is worth pointing out that the wealth and success of Western Europe and the U.S. did not come about without the exploitation and deaths of millions as well. And which still carries on today. The human rights abuses of U.S. troops in Abu graihb are truly disturbing.
@@GenericPurpleTurtle Thank you man! I was not expecting somebody reasonable in this comment section :D
Any time i hear "the drawbacks of capitalism" i can't help but to replace it with "the draw backs of reality".
You might want to look at the reality of "capitalism" and the current manifestation in America...when 3 people (Bezos, Gates, Buffett) have more money than the bottom 50% (over 150 million people) you are not dealing with capitalism.
@@yew2oob954 That means they have generated more wealth than the bottom 50%. Its not as if they taxed people to build that wealth, they provided services, that we happily paid for. Inequality is a horrible meaurement of justice. And besides that sectors with the least government intervention have the most equality. Me and kanye probably have the same phone.
@@EMO_alpha Wealth inequality is a very real problem, not just because of the violence it brings but it is a symptom or corruption. Don't defend corporatism by hiding behind capitalism. Free markets are untenable where there are huge corporations who not only control the government, but also span multiple facets of the economy (e.g. logistics, media, manufacturing, finance). Not to say that this is an argument for economic socialism, that would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But there are terminal problems with the economic system in America today.
@@yew2oob954 Capital isn't a zero-sum game. Those 3 people haven't taken from a limited size pie. They have made the pie larger. The quality of life of the poorest in the west is way better than at any time in history. The answer to the issue you mention of corruption is to take power from centralized governments so they don't have so much influence to be bought. Local governments can be open to corruption as well, but they can be monitored and replaced easier.
@@toobnoobify 1. wealth inequality is not a inherant measurement of corruption. If i offer a group of children a dollar per bag of dog poop they pick up individual characteristics will factor in to how much money i give each child. 2. Nobody likes monopolies. But all of the leftwing arguments for progress are creating massive public monopolies that are totally unaccountable to market forces. Single payer healthcare. Centralized education. Public transportation. Corporatism is only as possible if the government has the authority to enforce it. 3. Your only facing the private sector. When the public sector is just as dangerous and even more so because the government is THE ULTIMATE CORPORATION and only generates revenue through the plunder funding of its citizens.
I think it would be a good idea if you brought on modern communists and socialists, like Slavok Zizek or Richard Wolf, to talk about their views. It's not enough to just hear from one side.
@@tear728 Zizek is not a neo-marxists, he's a Communist. And, if you're going to quote, please stick to the facts. "Who are these post-modern egalitarian neo-marxists?" - Zizek.
czcams.com/video/mZufBtcgshw/video.html
Peterson lost that debate because he showed up to a debate to critique Communism without reading the Communist Manifesto or any of Marx's work that he has spent half of his public career railing against. It ruined his credibility.
Peterson spent the rest of the debate taking notes and asking questions, because he really has no clue what Marx wrote or much about Marxsim or Communism. It was embarrassing.
Lex I commend you for such a cool topic to bring to life. sometimes we all feel that we are impostors and we completely forget from we come from. Great to see that history is not forgotten.
I'll tell you something. When I was a child in the USSR, we studied full time, we had more than 10 hours of classes a day! We studied trigonometry, Latin, Greek history, the history of European art, Russian literature, German classes... We played sports; football, hockey in winter... dance and shoe classes. During the holidays, we went with the communist youth league to summer camps in Kaukaso. We were away from home for a month. We swam in the rivers, learned about agriculture. We worked harvesting wheat, learned to plant and set up tents. It was 1985, and I didn't know a single person who used any type of drug. Children were children and adults were adults. That simple! So how can I say anything bad against the USSR?
I read Rise and Fall of the third Reich this year and found Shire's editorializing distracting, like calling Goering "the fat man" etc.
My grandfather grew up eating grass and bark as a child in Russia. He was later sent to a labor camp in the deep forests of Siberia the day he married my grandmother (who was equally poor) because he was a Baptist pastor. My father was born in the labor camp, my grandmother gave birth alone. She would have to leave my father alone as a baby so she could fish in the frozen lakes for food. You could not even grow potatoes where they lived. Communism not only meant death to God but it also made everyone equal...equally poor, equally hungry, barely surviving. Especially if you were of any faith. I get PTSD just worrying about this country turning socialist. Vote capitalism or maybe a free market society. But never communism! I thank God every day that we were granted religious asylum and I've friends who live there that can only dream of living here too.
Who ate bark in the USSR after 1946?
How many homeless do you have in the USA today?
I was born in 1956. I remember in the US, when I was kid it was hard to get fruit that wasn’t in season. Transportation networks for food have very much improved so that in a big American city you can get most fruits whether they’re in season locally or not.
1:50 That "feeling" is called JEALOUSY.
Jealousy? The middle class is almost non existent... Maybe so if that wasn't the case...
@@seventeen9718 I stated a FACT. It is called Jelousy. Nothing more. You can spin in whatever form you want.
@@seventeen9718 and it's the goal of the communist to deliberately destroy it, in order to CONTROL everything and everyone.
we lived in Lvov. in the winter, my father had to travel to Moscow to get fruits that we can get around the corner from our house today.
I saw bananas and oranges once a year...when my father brought home in a box from Moscow.
Read about the Pareto Principle. Jordan Peterson brought it out in one of his lectures. More than one.
Lex, they were just trying to spread "love."
I love the argument socialist make that capitalism leads to massive wealth inequality. Mass inequality exists in a socialist state. Unlike in socialism, in capitalism the chance to move up from the lower class exists, while in socialism it rarely does. What capitalism does is provide a large middle class that is obtainable for the lower class. In socialism there really isn't a lower class. Only a lower class and the government. That's it.
"move up from the lower class exists" wow. Go to politburo members biographies. Most of them are from peasant and worker class families. Then take a look at US senate members. Tell me it has lots of men and women who "moved up from the lower class". I mean, stop using mantras that doesn't work and correspond to actual reality. Capitalism works and works well. But for the few. Socialism in USSR made a huge difference for millions of people. Regular citizen could get an education an average american cannot afford, period. Medicine was not on the highest of levels, but it was FREE for everyone. Do you get that? Of course people could not live as wealthy as middle class citizens in top european countries and US. But you know what, that WEALTH capitalist apologists are bragging with was achieved by decades of colonialism, slavery and genocides.
@@nikogdatakogo while your point may be true, the USSR resulted from Russian colonialism and genocide.
@@user-fy6xv6xw7n resulted from failed russian capitalism. You can argue about genocide. While being authoritarian russian monarchy did not wipe out native population of siberia, far east and caucasus. There were conflicts, true. But there was no genocide.
I wouldnt say one or two people brought so much evil, they just rode a wave. They were brought up by a bunch of people with evil already in their hearts.
Exactly and that's exactly what is happening here.
It's interesting that hardly anyone mentions free higher education and medicine for all, 28 days of paid leave, respect for science and scientists, teachers, doctors, workers... I remember that deficit of everything wery well, but I also remember my family had things we can't afford today: a car, expensive jewellery, tailor-made clothes; there was a great market in our town with cheap good-quality food.
Lex, If you have not done so already, read _The Master and Margarita_ by Bulgakov.
All of the comments in this section are shallow for the most part. My mom and grandma were the most happiest during the USSR days than when it collapsed. More than 90% of population were poor, yes that is true, but they had everything they needed. Grade school education was focused on actually making "creators" and "highly intelligent" people, compared to most of the republics of former USSR now. I was born in the USSR, Russian SFSR and I remember that the best stuff I ever learned in school was rooted in soviet education style, you know biology in 5th and 6th grade, geometry and algebra starting about the same grade. We also had woodshopping class that the boys of the class went to, while girls in the same class went to cooking lessons, that was like grade 3 I think. We learned foreign language for three years starting in third grade (for me it was German), we had ballet class, choreography class, gymnastics class, painting, literature, Russian language writing and comprehension and history. Basically, I left Russia after completing 6th grade and had taken previously mentioned classes.
Sadly enough that people on here see the world through black and white lens. I'm not a pro communist or a pro socialist, but sure enough I appreciate things that I was able to have under that system, because many of the thing that were offered there grade school are the things that in capitalism only the rich could afford to send their kids to. What I liked about soviet system of grade school education is the fact that they actually had encouraged knowledge, compared to the current west, not that many could solve basic math problems when they graduate high school but they all know how to pin point racisms and oppression even when they are in the room by themselves. Although, soviet school system was present in Russia in the 90's but the political climate was the biggest shame and disaster, in particular aggressive liberalization of Russia that was pathological to the point that the word liberal is synonymous with some curse words.
As far as the West, capitalism could only prosper properly if there is a concurrent anti-capitalist system (like USSR was), the minute USSR had fallen so was the stability of capitalism. The biggest problem with capitalism is that it always needs to expand somewhere in order to take over the market, but when there is nowhere to expand, there is always an economic crisis. The collapse of Soviet Union was created in order to help the West escape severe economic crisis. In the case of capitalism, the best thing about it is the "small business" and freedom for individuals to start one, but when it comes to huge corporations that take over, well its just economic totalitarianism.
I’m reading The Gulag Archipelago right now and this brings so much of that history to light. Thanks for your work, Alex!
Just remember this is a fiction book.
@David Vazquez What it it then? A study with references to documents? It is hard maybe to believe, but soviets, had a "case" for every opressed, which still can be found in according archives (available only to relatives if there are).
@David Vazquez This is funny but on En wiki, there is no genre for book, whilst on russian wiki there is, and it is officially: " artistic study" hahaha.
Capitalism is the "free speech" of business. You can charge what you want, and most likely you'll find someone to pay it, otherwise yes your competition will succeed over you. Not like communism where the government is business.
I think a good example of that is the fact that products had prices stamped on them in factory. Cast aluminum kitchen utensils had "3 kop." written into the cast. No wonder the system collapsed. It had no sense of accountability. Capitalism adjusts, communism is stubborn and blindfolded and always dies eventually
this is the dumbest thing I've ever read. No it's not the "free speech" of business. Speech is a fundamental right and money is a concept. And does this same approach work for roads, public transportation, the military, the police, K-12 education? These things are collectively funded (taxes), not a free market. These things will exist because we decided we need them to exist, and we pay for them as needed, and that list expands or shrinks but the bottom line is many things in society cannot be treated as a product in a free market. Does Amazon operate in a free market? Some might call it a monopoly, some call it a great outcome of capitalism. It's not as simple as you think
I don’t think communism has anything to do with fruit
love your stuff Lex. Keep it coming...
Good to see this conversation happening
Marx envisioned that communism would replace late stage capitalism, in particular in Germany. Russia and China, being backwards feudal countries, were in no way positioned to succeed in a communist project. Not to say communism would succeed as a replacement to capitalism, but you have to admit that communism as intended has never been explored.
This is a key point that goes unmentioned in such debates.
As a person in the comfortable middle class, I couldn’t care less if someone else is rich. What I do care about is losing my autonomy for the sake some arrogant ideologue’s “plan.”
How much autonomy do you have in the modern capitalist world between insecure employment, mortgages, credit card debt and all the other critical dependencies that make life hell?
@@GM53946 - Indeed, in contemporary economies everywhere citizens are losing autonomy largely due to top-heavy government imposed restraints. No matter how pathetic a “capitalist” economy devolves it’s hardly a justification for the adoration some have for authoritarian collectivism. Communism is a cruel punitive system that puts a few ideologues in charge of everyone. Its result is always dictatorship.
I got interested in Indian struggle against British, and how Bose wanted to find alliance with German, Russia and Japan.
ive married 2 Russians......and ive had extensive conversations with their parents.......what this woman says doesn't jive with what they described.
Mail order? Lol
Dual citizenship Russian here with russian residence and I can assure you this woman is making a buck. One of the most common business models for post soviet immigrants is writing horror stories on their time in the USSR. The real horrors were in the 90s, no gov, no police, no army, no guaranteed anything, only crime, corruption, and poverty. At its peak the USSR topped 5 of the highest quality of life places in the world, 2nd economically and a leader in medicine, science, and technology (although we sucked at making cars lol.) The fact that it was able to achieve such feats only decades after being invaded and losing 15 million civilians and 12 million military is the greatest mytery in human history. I don't know a single family member who is satisfied with the collapse of the USSR, not one, and not even a single person on the street, they literally don't exist, maybe in sub-hipster areas in moscow..
@@kutuzovm3215 this is exactly what all of my wives' family described. thankyou for speaking the truth!
Many old soviets miss the glory days of the USSR. Many have become unimaginably poor.
I have experienced it. Its pretty horrible. But i do not believe capitalism is better. A healthy mix of both ideology is needed to create balance.
Lex please have Richard Wolff overr
The last madman clinging to the grass for fear of falling into the sky. I wonder if Lex could get anything coherent out of him.
@@SevenRiderAirForce from this comment alone I can tell that you know nothing about politics, much less socio-economics
@@diegoarcelay8705 😂 Spoken like a true intellectual!
The problem with capitalism isn't that it inherently leads to wealth inequality and that's inherently an issue. All anyone really needs is a nice home, enough food, and a good car, and maybe a few fun things too; it doesn't matter that someone else has ten of those things. The issue is that wealth buys political influence and favors because money is needed to win elections and there's too much power in "Hey, we will give you a tax break if you bring your company to our state." A highly unequal distribution of wealth concentrates the power in the hands of a few special interests.
Communism doesn't have that problem quite as much because there's one party, so there's no elections and no way to gain influence with money by hanging an election over an official's head. But that doesn't solve the corruption problem: there's one party and no accountability, so anyone who wants something only has one place to go and the officials know it and that they can do anything they want with impunity. In other words, bribery and cronyism, other favors and all that. In the end, it doesn't benefit the people because only those who can afford the bribes or have the ability to make the government look good get what they want. They're probably the same people who would profit under capitalism.
Really, the problem is the tying of government and special interests. Neither system solves this issue.
@@GCKelloch The Libertarians (I assume you mean the party and not the concept) are too idealistic. They think if everyone has all the freedom, it will all just even out. Except some people won't play by the rules and then it will end up like pre-TR America, which was obviously pretty bad. The richest men who have ever existed lived then and it was virtually all obtained with strongarming and corruption.
Small l libertarianism is a good concept but it can't be unbridled. It kinda wants to be classical Liberalism but give a bit too much to economic freedom.
god this is spot on
> All anyone really needs
Thank you for telling me what I really need. That's why non-authoritarian communists don't exist.
@@freyrnjordrson1418 Huh? "Need" means what it says: what you _require_ to have a base-level comfortable life. We actually need very little; but we sure like a lot. But it doesn't mean we need all those things.
The reason non-authoritarian communists don't exist is that the system doesn't work if everyone doesn't comply. Since that isn't going to happen and diversity of thought ends up in people diverging from "the rules," communist governments end up oppressive or their entire economic system ends up collapsing. (And since you can't really force mass populations to do anything, it ends up doing so anyway.)
Having worked for the BBC World Service pré & post 1989 the politics of mental health is ignored. Many people who defected from the Soviet Bloc developed severe mental health problems once they were in the West because: how would their family be penalised & suddenly they were free to think without fear - any monochromatic system destroys your mental health because you’re not allowed to think beyond the belief systems remit - which is why the enlightenment & the age of reason changed our lives - we were given choices & options. Which is why the synergy of pluralism is so significant - perhaps the word democracy has had its day
“But Soviet Russia wAsN’t TrUe CoMmUnIsM!!!”
-some random 20 year old sociology major probably
Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it
She talks about fucking strawberries and papayas, now talk about health care, education and retirement in former Soviet states. This is borderline funny.
She is one of those neo rich technology entrepreneurs so basically the system is going well for her
Im reading that too right now. On page 908
I kinda feel like if Karl Marx were alive today, he'd look at what communism has done to it's countries and essentially say "Well that doesn't work out well in the long run" and move on to thinking about a different type of system.
Unlikely, he'd probably critique later theories of individual Marxist/Communist leaders, but he wouldn't abandon his own theory entirely
Maybe. Or maybe he was a psychopath.
My hometown in Germany, Wuppertal, experimented with Marxism, Nazi and middle of the road. The place got flattened in WW2 and rebuild with capitalism ideas.Now they try Socialism. I ran away.
Bananas, gummy bears and yoghurt (not to mention snickers) meant the world for kids in the 90s moving to Western countries. Теперь всё наоборот, где взять квас, шоколадное масло, леденцы петушком на палочке....
Lex: “Did you know I’m Russian?”
Funny thing is he's a Jew, but for some reason likes to say he's Russian, which is a different ethnic group. A Russian Jew is the right term, if he wants to point out the "Russianness".
@@MW-vg9dn Jesus took that a little far don't you think?
@@bide7603 Why? Is being a Jew something bad?
no that's totally normal, Russians will just tell you they're Russian, then in later conversations they'll go in more detail and you'll find out their more specific ethnic roots. Russia is a huge place with a total melting pot of ethnic groups so if that's not the main topic of the conversation you just say Russian.
M W Well he’s both, but the he was born in Russia and probably not really connected to his jewish roots.
I’m a Russian Jew too, and I live in Israel, so although completely agnostic I’m a little more connected to my Jewish heritage. So in Israel I’m Russian, when I visit Russia I’m Jewish, when I visit any other place in the world I’m an Israeli from Russia.
The median Chinese in 2020 has HIGHER standard of living than the median American.
Kind of proves standard of living has little to do with political systems and a lot more to do with purely material factors such as access to resources, raw industrial capacity and wealth distribution.
Where did you get that info?
Please help me understand. I'm from south Africa. Fruit and vegetables are like natural staple food. Why cundt ordinary people in Russia grow their own veggies and have their own fruit trees etc etc. I grew up with peach trees in the back yard etc. Is the weather too bad in Russia? I'm now totally at a loss of understanding. What fruits grow naturally in Russia?
Climate, you can't grow exotic tropical fruits in Russia. Also communism and collectivization, which harmed Russia's food production quite a lot. USSR imported grain for its whole history (nowadays capitalism Russia exports it)
the Soviet Union is the most humanistic and free country in the history of mankind. 30 years of total capitalist horror have shown this.
Disparity?? The "poor" get richer too!
I think the biggest reason for why any political system fails is counterproductive incentives. The Soviet system would tell people to do A, but in practice encourage everyone to do B. And B usually involves stealing, lying, black market trade etc. The individual incentives have to align with society's goals.
And yet there are various youth political groups in America who unironically call each other 'comrade'.
While she is describing the old soviet Union. I'm thinking to the actual situation of Cuba and Venezuela. Really sad if you really think that we are in the 21st century!
The president of Venezuela was democratically elected, and they were not more socialist as a share of GDP. You are mistaking propiganda from oil companies for reality. The stated western goal is to steal their oil for mega corps, and the oligarchs who control our government.
Wealth inequality is not inherently bad. No one cares about inequality between millionaires and billionaires. That must mean it is a different issue regarding those in poverty. Meeting basic needs is the problem, not inequality.
It matters because a billionaire has 1000 times the power to accumulate more wealth than a millionaire, and one million times as much as the average median income human being. Since there is not an infinite supply of money and goods, wealth is hoarded by a few which creates scarcity for many.
@@oregonsbragia Seems you have missed my point entirely. Also, the market is not a zero sum game.
@@ronaldp.vincent8226 How is it not a zero sum game? The monetary supply is fixed. We live on a finite planet.
@@oregonsbragia So you're just going to ignore my point entirely then? Your zero sum game argument only makes sense if we are at the end of our resource supply, which we clearly aren't. Economics 101. Reassess, and come back with a better argument.
@@ronaldp.vincent8226 There are volumes of data that show that inequality is bad for a multitude of reasons. Perhaps you should reassess, and come back with a better argument. You missed my entire point that there is a very big difference between a millionaire and a billionaire and their potential to accumulate more wealth. Billionaires are close to becoming Trillionaires now, and yet most people are working harder for less. This is a problem whether you chose to accept it or not.
Stalin extensively read Mein Kampf according to Stephen Kotkin
When I was growing up in America in 80s we had Christmas break and Soviets had winter break. Now we have winter break and Russia has Christmas break. Today, We want to be the communists here. Crazy.
Why is it so hard to understand that a child born into wealth has a much better life than a child born into poverty? The adversity one would have to overcome from poverty versus being from wealth is hugely immense, and we are only entrenching those concepts further with this idea that it's unmoral to regulate wealth distribution.
Ok, then raise them, instead of complaining about no money while you use Netflix buy a 1k iPhone, buy a jacket and spend it on strippe R$ actually raise the kids, I haven't seen a family be "normal" maybe ever in my age.
@@artair70 what are you on about? Are you saying I single handedly am responsible for all the world's ilk, or are your personally upset because you can't change anything yourself?
@@laykefindley6604 Way too put words into my mouth, I certainly don't care about anyone else, almost all are replaceable.
Thats life. We can't make everyone equal. Some people are born with defects or are born in a warzone. We just need to work hard. Communism nor socialism is not the answer.
Born in a communist regime..adopted 94. Blessed to be living in America. American Vietnamese married to an American Irishman living our best life. Free world will stand cause they got two humans on their side. Trump2020...We have Hope,Faith and Love in our hearts, and we root for the good guys always.
To me it seems like people from my generation would have communism run like a cold and calculated machine. Say if I’m farming, they would calculate my calorie intake I need to perform the job..there would be some government approved study that they would reference that has figured out some kind of energy output to calorie intake ratio. The ratio would determine what calories I need to perform the work without dying but only slightly above dying.. so I can work to an appropriate age they have determined for me. If I eat more or less than what they tell me.. then I’m committing something close to like a moral sin because I’m depriving someone else of my work because I’m not able to provide for their allotted calorie intake. If I miss my quota farming food, then I’m committing a mortal sin because I’m not providing food for someone else i don’t know of their daily calorie intake.. which I will be punished for. If I don’t use the exact government approved tools or use the government approved form/technique of walking,standing,sitting,bending,etc.. then I’m breaking the rules and will be punished because I’m causing undo stress on myself which will take away from my ability to work and provide for someone else because they have determined the most efficient ways to perform actions with my body...
My day consists of rules and more rules to remember,taking over all of my thoughts and causing huge amounts of stress because I’m depriving my fellow man of food and hard work from my body that essentially belongs to them/other people. I have allotted time for socializing with my loved ones.. a time amount that is considered sufficient and approved by the government. A time amount deemed appropriate by a government study to meet my human requirements of socialization without going crazy.
I mean I could go on and on but it sounds absolutely crazy to me…. The point is to help all of humanity but completely lack any humanity. I don’t care about other people this much. Just the pure single mindedness of it would drive me nuts man. Everyone would definitely be trying to skirt the system to get ahead and I wouldn’t blame them! You can’t make people care about other people this much. You will never make peoples goals align with the goals of the idea. I keep seeing people saying that’s the problem. It’s way way to robotic. It’s sounds like what Leto II implemented in dune or the emperor of mankind in war hammer.
I think you misunderstand capitalism. The "rich" is a fluid grouping. Those that were "rich" last year, may not be "rich" this year. Some unknown student, with a world changing idea, can be "rich" under capitalism, and "poor" if he wastes his assets.
This is true under free market capitalism. Unfortunately, we do not have that. What we have is a heavily regulated mixed market economy. As a member of the lower class, I understand their frustrations with the rich, however, their anger is misguided. It's not capitalism they should be angry at - it's the government. This of course upsets them because they want to use government to correct the mistakes of - wait for it - government. It doesn't work out well of course, but the emotional rhetoric from the fiscal left whips them into a fervor with ease.
Printing money creates the inequality not the free market. Socialism has the calculation problem which is why it doesnt work. Free markets and no central banks and no govt debt. Thats the solution. Read up on Austrian economics.
Ludwig von Mises worked for Austrian fascists, before the Nazis invaded Austria and praised Mussolini and Hitler for saving Europe lol.
Brotherman...It isn't hypothetical. The inequality. And it also isn't about people having things. Respectfully, this is an understandable misconception held by people with wealth. Poor people don't sit around envying the rich. That's just not a pressing consideration when you are trying to survive. Rather it is that struggle to survive itself that eats you up. Poverty is a life full of unacceptable absurdities that are lifelong, largely inescapable(the fact that our culture here proclaims the opposite is one of the most emotionally destructive things for people living in real poverty) and caustic to the mind, body and soul. The thing that is mistaken for envy is just the existential rage at living day to day in a calliope of necessities that can't be met, shortages that can't be avoided and opportunity costs that can't be paid. It is absurd and infuriating. And that is what's worst about it. In the end, we(most of us) are good people and so cannot act on that self consuming rage. Instead, we get up and go to work at jobs that mean nothing to us personally AND that leave us in fear of the next flat tire, or routine illness or accident. Then we have to internalize the giant portion of anger, fear and helplessness and go to bed with it. And get up with it. And go to work with it. And try to wrestle with it through the day. And go home with it. And over and over. It is here. It is now. And something we should be examining and trying for something better as a society. One of the primary facts that divides us all in this capitalist society is that, at all times, all across the economy there will always be economic losers. It's a fact and a requirement of our system. Some people think that's fair and good. Other's of us recognize that the acceptance of that is sociopathic. A spectacularly callous willingness to accept that other people are in pain. A lot of good people have very bad lives. I don't suggest the paranoid suffocation of the Soviet Union. However our disparities are leading us to something as dark as that. We can do much better than we are with a Scandinavian style social democracy and letting people own or benefit more from the value their work creates.
he's understanding and humble.
Stalin did read mein kampf before ww2
We all know that since the beginning of the Russian Revolution of 1917, every attempt to establish a socialist/communist society on this planet has been systematically hunted down and destroyed by the much more powerful and established at that point Western/Imperialist/Capitalist system. Soviet Union, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela. Every time a country chooses this path, it is immediately followed by embargo's and economic suffocation. I wonder if those countries were just left alone ( I am not even talking about supporting, trading with, etc.), would we be able to see a different picture?
good point I think, you'd end up with 3 options, scandinavian like countries, china or vietnam
Traveler Culture Scandinavian countries are not communist and are a mix of capitalism and socialism
Ok so how did the capitalist forces, convince Mao to execute 85million of his own people ? How did it lead them to create the prison gulags in soviet union, where political dissenters were executed. People claim naz-is bad, but soviets executed everyone. Another idiotic communist apologist who has 0 clue as to how these collectivist ideologues always lead to mass scale genocides. If your system is this fragile to foreign influence, your system isnt good enough in the first place.
@@dakshchauhan2446 a) Mao did not execute 85 million if his own people b) The Truman administration pursued a policy of encirclement and economic strangulation of the People's Republic. In the early 1960s,
a collaborator in the Kennedy administration - W W Rostow - boasted of
the victory secured by the USA, which had succeeded in retarding China's
economic development by at least 'tens of years' . Mao pursed an overly ambitious project to make China self-sustaining. It backfired. b)Soviets did not execute everyone. c) this stuff does not have anything to do with the ideology or the govt system, it's politics, geography.
@@egemenbirben8601 Mao did not just "pursue an ambitious project". Chinse people in the countryside had their houses demolished or taken away so that they could be forced into people's communes and work for the state. They had to fulfil quotas. When the famine hit, the people who did not fulfill their quotas were left to starve.
“1996 Americans really helped Russia with elections”.......lol
Seriously. Under Gorbachev, America looted Russia. Like a huge garage sale, where someone else is selling your property and keepsakes and keeping the cash. This is why all of those 'Russian billionaires' had to get out of Russia after Putin took charge and tried to stop the corruption.
Quid pro quo
The way i see it we should be learning the positives and negatives of each form of government and try to form something that works for us and the environment without the excessive abuses that we see in usa in therms of individual wealth(which spills into politics to create laws to gather even more individual wealth at the expense of other peoples well being health, wealth etc) or excessive in terms of china soviet union etc no freedoms etc.
European social democracies like scandinavian country have found a good balance though theres already plenty of right wing parties trying to copy usa which to me is insanity. Scandinavian countries have highly educated and stable societies with a lot of imnovation and plenty of very wealthy aswell. Just not obscene like usa. Usa seems to just have doubled down on capitalism while the world moved forwars by taking positive aspects of socialism and of capitalism and make it work for everyone
Very well said
woof beast I like you
woof beast The person you replied to was not saying that mass death and misery have some positive aspects as you seem to think he or she was claiming.
woof beast I’m not disagreeing with you on that. I’m saying that Grokh who you were replying to was not saying what you are mad at him or her for saying. You might as well get mad at him for saying that he’s glad kidney stones exist because he also didn’t say that. And to answer your question, gaslighting is trying to gain power over someone by getting them to question their reality by using unethical tactics such as lying and emotional manipulation.
You may want to consider that non of these socialist countries can safeguard their system from hostile foreign influences. Germany, where I come from, has to kiss a*s with Russia and China. The Scandinavians are helpless if one of the major powers plays hardball. All of them have problems maintaining their culture because of low birthrate. You will not recognize Germany in one generation for example. The present problems here may be deadly for these countries.
"This is capitalism ? It's delicious!"
The nature of man is to be free. Fairness and equality are constructs of being prosperous. As soon as communism destroys freedom the prosperity disappears too.
Augusto Pinochet Chile was capitalist was that a free country then
@@asherif3893 Were people allowed to freely exchange their labor for money and were the markets free from government control? I love when socialist claim non capitalist are actually capitalist while always saying "that's not really socialism" describing failed socialist/communist economies. From my understanding he was actually closer to fascism than capitalism.
@@liberTvalance capitalism is a economic ideology and within that ideology you can be fascist, racist and segregated like america before civil rights, colonial like French Algeria a dictatorship like suharto indonesia or a monarchy like Thailand. And all those places would put a boot up your behind if you dared speak your voice and challenge them so it is not just a communist thing. And freedom is not assured with capitalism
@@asherif3893 OK.... so absolutely the opposite of what I was talking about. Thanks for making point.
@@liberTvalance you said capitalism allows freedom but colonized africans weren't free while being exploited, or Vietnamese so capitalism as it is today was not the capitalism of yesterday and if you want to trade horror stories of comunist I can also trade horror stories of capitalism and its exploitation.
I like this kid! Very humble
5:45 I gather they did not live in a food deserts. Good for them.
My grandparents came from a socialist state. What is disappointing is all my jewish friends whose grandparents came from russia all think socialism works. Dont get that.
Socialism works and capitalism doesn't. However Socialism only barely works. Modern economies are mixed economies(Capitalism + Socialism). There is a government market, and a free market. Show me a country with no government market. Haiti, and a few failed African states are the closes to capitalism.
@@abram730 If capitalism doesn't work then how did the USA become the richest and most powerful country in the world under capitalism? And now that we have this great mixed economy and are so much more socialist than we used to be, how has that been working out for us? Our economy must be growing faster than ever and our standards of living must be rapidly increasing as well?
Watch the videos of Yuri Bezmenov. Highly important.
Dhruva Mukhopadhyay Very true. He must have been quite bitter to have come to the west for a free life, only to discover the headway the marxists had already made
@@amk1689 It is right to assume so. Today speech is often suppressed. Sad reality of our world. Even when most of the statement is based on logical thinking and not on fascist ideology ideology but against it. Fascism and communism are the two sides of the same coin.
He's a fraud and never had high level access in the KGB, a low level bureaucrat looking to cash in on the 'inherent credibility' of the defector persona, telling people what they want to hear for personal gain
@@coldsnap999 What he said is absolutely true. He does not require high level clearance but true. Its even more dangerous than clandestine stuff we see in movies.
@@dhruvamukhopadhyay1931 What exactly is absolutely true in that fraud's speech? For instance, in that interview he said that he never took alcohol when giving it to his "clients" but Wiki treacherously says that he died of alcoholism at the age of 54.
It's no coincidence that his interview got brought up in the eve of the elections because back in 1984 when his interview came out there was also a presidential race between Reagan and Mondale, in which the latter advocated a freeze on the nuclear programs of the United States and the USSR, supported an amendment for equal rights and was against Reagan's economy, which was costly for the state budget. That was the same Mondale that Bezmenov tried to scare the audience with. Spoiler alert: Reagan won and ran for a second term.
Lex, you are using the wrong vocabulary when referring to "communism". The dictionary defines communism as stateless organization.
I quote: "A system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs. "
So there is no state in a "communist" system. The closest we got to communism was when there were small communities which used to interacts with each other when humans used to be hunter gatherers.
You should call USSR a Soviet system rather than a communist system. It was a centralized and totalitarian state. It was a dictatorship of a bureaucratic and military class, a sort of authoritarian State capitalism. They used Marxism as a religious symbol but they did not implement it.
Noam Chomsky explains it well in this video:
czcams.com/video/06-XcAiswY4/video.html
The3Pragmatic It’s called Bait and Switch. They hold out a utopian dream to get enough people on board, then they institute a totalitarian regime. Where was communism attempted where that did not happen?
@@amk1689 The issue here is the author of this video, Lex, is using the wrong word to define Soviet Union's political system.
It wasn't a communist system. That's all I am saying.
It's a complex topic which requires more tool than what CZcams's limited comments system has to offer us for a serious discussion.
@@The3Pragmatic communism cannot work in reality. Trying to prove me wrong only proves me right. Hunter&Gatherer societies of the past were not communist either.
@@dabartos4713 The question isn't whether it works or not, but whether we are using the right vocabulary. USSR wasn't a communist nor a socialist system. They were also calling their regime a democracy. Does it mean it was?
No of course, it was part of the Propaganda.
Your claim about hunter gatherer societies show also a lack of understanding of the definition of primitive communism. I invite you to read the basics, start with this definition:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_communism
I quote from that article:
"Egalitarian and communist-like hunter gatherer societies have been studied and described by many well-known social anthropologists including James Woodburn, Richard Lee, and, more recently, Alan Barnard and Jerome Lewis. Anthropologists such as Christopher Boehm, Chris Knight and Jerome Lewis ..."
@@tear728 check a dictionary if you have a doubt about the definition of communism
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This guy interviews people for a living? He can barely articulate the most cliche question about communism over 3 minutes. "Umm hey you think....maybe.... It looks good on paper....but then.....it's like hey? What goes wrong?"
It's wrong to say that capitalism only creates inequality. That suggests that everyone has an acceptable level of wealth but some have more which could be seen as an acceptable situation. If that were true no one would dispute capitalism. What capitalism does is it creates wealth for a small group at the expense of the larger population and over time this disparity makes it so that most people live in abject poverty while a small group has more than they could ever use. This is not a moral judgement, it's just an assessment of some of the effects of capitalism as a system.
Your "assessment" (which is really just an assertion) of the effects of capitalism is incorrect. You need to explain how under free market capitalism the rich generate all the wealth at the expense of the poor? By selling poor people products they wish to buy? Giving poor people jobs they wish to work at? If what you are saying is true then why don't poor people under capitalism just band together and not buy anything from or work for the rich people and just create their own businesses to serve one another? There are no rules under capitalism that would prevent that. In fact socialism or communism would be completely allowed under capitalism if groups wanted to band together and do their own thing. The socialists and communists just wouldn't be able to steal from other people at the barrel of a gun. But that is of course what all socialists and communists really want to do so they don't bother trying to make their wonderful society work on their own.
@@freddieg7131 You have no clue what you are talking about. This isn't some moral treaty of the value of free markets or hard work. Your first assumption that free markets are inherent to capitalism isn't true. Free markets have always existed. They existed under feudalism, they existed under slavery, they existed under communist regimes and now they exist under capitalism. However, capitalism in the long run does undermine the free market because it always leads to an oligopoly or monopoly situation as we saw with the Standard Oils and US Steels back in the early 20th century and we now see with the Googles and Facebooks.
Your second assumption that one could ''walk away'' from capitalism and start something new is also wrong. You simply can't. In the end one needs money to sustain life in the system we have set up. So one needs to work to sustain life. On top of that, there are no alternatives. What can you do if you don't like being exploited by a company? Leave and work for another company to be exploited there. There is no escaping the system.
And now you will finally yell out that no one gets exploited. Well that's where Marx comes in. Everyone gets exploited for the benefit of the capitalists. You go to work, you produce 20$ worth of goods and services and you get to keep 15$. 5$ goes to the company (owned by the shareholders aka capitalists). Those 5$ is called the surplus and that is what is being taken away from the worker. That is the fundamental exploitation of the worker built into capitalism as a system. You can jump up and down but this is true and over time, as the science has shown, this leads to massive inequalities in a society. This has happened in the 18th century, in 19th century, in the 20th century and is now happening in the 21st century. Every single time it ends with bloodshed.
It is ridiculous to think that this neo-Feudalism that we live in is somehow moral. A small amount of people at the top (shareholders and boards of directors) make the decisions and reap disproportionate benefits to the detriment of society. They use their money to influence politics to cement even more power with them and make any alternative system impossible to set up.
Americans are so lucky but most of them complain about how bad it is. Being so Spoiled is what it is.
Really man? The issue with unbounded wealth inequality isn’t “the feeling that others are doing better”. *It’s the threat to democracy itself.* Its the power to affect political incentives in a way that yields further power to affect political incentives. Unless we solve this inherent negative feedback loop of capitalism, we’ll continue our march from democracy to oligarchy. Forget politics, this is an ENGINEERING problem. You would never design a thermostat that responds to a room getting hotter by then raising the temperature of that room.
Two solutions:
1) Cap wealth accumulation. (Not ideal)
2) Design a positive feedback loop version of capitalism with a stable, self reinforcing incentive structure. (Highly nontrivial)
2 might be something like a decentralized blockchain based economy and government, with direct democracy. Either way none of this can be tried in the states we’re too far gone lol.
Just wait till lex starts reading about Mao and China. It reads as one long depression novel
“Capitalism leads to massive inequality” when in reality the government intervention from both left and right wing simply makes the inequality worse. Also the poor in a capitalist society are better off than most in socialist/communist societies.
Your last statement was incorrect the poor in the USSR was definitely better off then the poor in capitalist countries as the rich don't care about them and they offer no value at all
In the USSR every person no matter social class had the same benefits and trust funds from the money that was equally distributed
She is flirting with him.
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bruh did he just admit his own theory was a "slippery slope" LMFAO
People won't understand until its too late.
Wow didn’t think Lex would have a romantic notion of communism!! Worse, he seems to think capitalism simply leads to inequality which is the source of people’s unhappiness. That seems insane to me. It always surprises me when educated people still think communism is a good idea and can’t see why it will never work.
These two need to collude.
Resources will last only for so long, yes we can innovate and keep increasing the size of the pie but for how long? After all earth is a closed system with only so much resources which aren't renewable. I'm no advocate for communism, but socialism is definitely something humanity should experiment with, along with good aspects of Capitalism. A lot of countries have done it successfully.
I come from such a place. Germany. It is not always pretty. At age 22 I ran away and did not regret it. Germany and all socialist countries have systemic problems. Hint: look at birth rate and ability to defend their society from ruthless competitors.
The world we live in is not always fair by some idalistic model. It is often dog eats dog. Perhaps not in a short run but study history. You may get discouraged.
hereticmorte666 bullshit.
We have not even scratched the surface in terms of resources available to us on earth. Maybe when the sun burns out we will be in trouble. But I think we have some time before that happens.