Marx Part 2: Capitalism's Consequences | Philosophy Tube
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- čas přidán 10. 03. 2016
- More economic philosophy from Karl Marx, talking about the problems of capitalism, Alienation, labour, and business.
Part 1: Labour & Class Conflict - www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWF_0...
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Recommended Reading:
Karl Marx, Das Kapital
Karl Marx, The Paris Manuscripts
Karl Marx, The Fragment on Machines
Judy Cox, “An Introduction to Marx’s Theory of Alienation,” in International Socialism, 1998.
That Article I wrote on Marxism and Being a CZcamsr: wire.novaramedia.com/2016/02/v...
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I work in a daycare and I love my job and the kids I care for, but I can't afford to send my own son to the fancy daycare where I work EVEN AT THE HALF PRICE EMPLOYEE DISCOUNT.
Just run a daycare from your house.
@@benjaminr8961 You'd live in the same place you run a daycare?
@@ActionGamerAaron If the difference was my child getting adequate child care then yes.
@@benjaminr8961 We aren't talking about your one child, we are talking about 10+ children. It's a *daycare*. You don't make money from taking care of only your child.
@@ActionGamerAaron No shit. She is already taking care of children. If she has a fenced in yard and a decent sized living room she can do that from her own home. She can make money from taking care of other peoples children while giving her child the attention they need in order to develop properly.
When I first read Marx as a student I didn't really understand alienation... now, after working for years in shit minimum wage jobs with no end in sight, I completely get it.
Take your experience and get a better job you are oppressing yourself. Chasing your goals might be uncomfortable sometimes but you have the ability to push yourself.
@@CosmicReapzZ just stop working minimum wage jobs you need to survive and get a better job because life is that simple.
@@CosmicReapzZ your logic is like homeless people should just buy a house.
You knew that trump is the Anti-Christ.
The US and global economies are about to SUBMERGE.
Neither of the establishments controlling the GOP and Democrats, nor the Trumps and Bidens among them,
want real political party competition. They seek to retain their 2-party monopoly and keep sharing power 100% between them.
US elections have NO effect on the FAILURE of capitalism.
The failure: A select few make all the key decisions.
These decisions determine the distribution of all wealth.
The history of that distribution is based on politics.
Who owns Washington ? The select few
(majority share holders, the FED, the filthy rich)
directly shaped our government’s POLICY.
the system is rigged, T
the seeds of racism are present.
Risk is a move to the left.
The most memorable pages in Das Kapital are the descriptive passages, culled from Parliamentary Blue Books, on the misery of the English working class.
Marx believed that this misery would increase, while at the same time the monopoly of capital would become a fetter upon production
until finally “the knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.”
The truth is the United States lost. What won was a constricted politics defined by the range between the GOP and Democrats, Trump and Biden.
Voters chose between two similar fantasies differentiated by two names: a return to “greatness” vs a return to “normal.”
How ironic that Trump’s greatness and Biden’s normal both name the recent history that drove the US to its
current scary conditions. In the ever more hyped blame game that this election was, US politics truly became
“the evil of two lessers.” Fundamental questions actually confront the US now. Is US capitalism in terminal decline
amid China’s ascendance? How do we do better than capitalism as our economic system given its inequalities,
instabilities, and gross failures to safeguard public health? How can we best undo capitalism’s environmental damage?
What can really overcome the centuries of damage done to African-Americans and other indigenous and people of color
via white supremacy? On such basic questions, this electih questions and the parties’ alternative answers to
them become inescapable centerpieces of US politics and subject to democratic decisions.
Correct Pardoner.
The US and global economies are about to SUBMERGE.
US elections have NO effect on the FAILURE of capitalism.
The failure: A select few make all the key decisions.
These decisions determine the distribution of all wealth.
The history of that distribution is based on politics.
Who owns Washington ? The select few
(majority share holders, the FED, the filthy rich)
directly shaped our government’s POLICY.
the system is rigged, T
the seeds of racism are present.
Risk is a move to the left.
The most memorable pages in Das Kapital are the descriptive passages, culled from Parliamentary Blue Books, on the misery of the English working class.
Marx believed that this misery would increase, while at the same time the monopoly of capital would become a fetter upon production
until finally “the knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.”
The truth is the United States lost. What won was a constricted politics defined by the range between the GOP and Democrats, Trump and Biden.
Voters chose between two similar fantasies differentiated by two names: a return to “greatness” vs a return to “normal.”
How ironic that Trump’s greatness and Biden’s normal both name the recent history that drove the US to its
current scary conditions. In the ever more hyped blame game that this election was, US politics truly became
“the evil of two lessers.” Fundamental questions actually confront the US now. Is US capitalism in terminal decline
amid China’s ascendance? How do we do better than capitalism as our economic system given its inequalities,
instabilities, and gross failures to safeguard public health? How can we best undo capitalism’s environmental damage?
What can really overcome the centuries of damage done to African-Americans and other indigenous and people of color
via white supremacy? On such basic questions, this electih questions and the parties’ alternative answers to
them become inescapable centerpieces of US politics and subject to democratic decisions.
DUDE.....thank you for this little series!! I am reading Marx now, and, as someone who graduated high school by the skin of his teeth, then went to work immediately (in the labor force) and hardly has read a book in the past 15 years, IT'S A F**King DIFFICULT READ. Your explanation is helping me along to understand the clusterf*ck that is his writings, as I'm sure you know.
Cheers fella, subscribed now and looking forward to diving in to more of your content!
The little part on the use of machines to make our lives better (ideally, anyway) reminds me of Oscar Wilde's "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," where he embraces such an idea and runs with it, imagining a future where all the tedious tasks are done by machines and we are then free to become the individuals we have so long been unable to be.
I know this is four years old but a correction: Marx said that the contradictions of capital would result in workers' revolution and the establishment of socialism, not that the safety net would eventually collapse and capitalism would be replaced by socialism (in Marx's view, if the safety net collapsed before workers' revolution, we would have barbarism and not socialism -- hence the slogan "Socialism or Barbarism"
"But because those mechines were being used to maximise profit rather than reduce labour, people were actually working harder than ever"
this is so good and clear i honestly worship you. thank you so much
Capitalism was born of an effort to overturn feudalism. Unfortunately, we replaced the Lord and Serf pair, charming as it was, with the Capitalist/Employee dyad
this is such a simplistic representation of history it doesn't even deserve to be addressed frankly
@@danmartin313 why’s that?
@@DragonWinter36 markets existed within feudalism. And feudalism isn't really as simple as Marx thought it was. Also, there have been lots of capitalist states before and during the time when England was feudal. Basically markets have always existed, they emerge naturally
@@danmartin313 do you have a source for this? I don’t know much about feudal economies but I’d like to learn
@@NoaWatchVideo both Athens and Rome were capitalist for example. It really is the "default" economic system. They had private property, banks, credit, interest rates etc
The confusion comes when someone like Marx starts adding extra attributes to capitalism in order to criticize it. Capitalism isn't a form of government, not does it require a specific political environment. He starts bundling in criticisms of democracy onto capitalism, which doesn't really make any sense
I really want you to do marx but with your new, awesome theatrical style
I remember Sargon of Akkad saying something along the lines of "When you live in a modest lifestyle, in a house 'built' by Capitalism, you start thinking 'Oh wouldn't it be nice to have Socialism/Communism" Its a total lie...
If you lived in Victorian England and were basically... anybody, you would of had to have worked in apauling conditions, long hours, shit pay etc, and you wouldn't just want Socialism, you'd be gagging for it!
Its only because of improvements in living standards, state indoctrination, and certain Socialist style policies that were implemented that allowed people to have okish lives in the western world.
+BadMouseProductions That Capitalism has produced modern comforts, technology, etc. isn't contrary to any Marxist theory.
+Chris x
I'm no expert on Marx, but didn't Marx predict that socialism is the inevitable outcome of the social conflict that capitalism must create? That's not compatible with capitalism producing modern comforts because people love modern comforts and a desire to keep modern comforts will surely counter-act whatever forces are supposed to make socialism inevitable.
People are not mere predictable automatons. People try to predict the outcomes of their actions, and if people dislike the consequences of socialism then they will actively avoid socialism. If a desire for capitalist comforts stabilizes the capitalist system and prevents the class conflict, how does that work with Marxist theory?
Ansatz66 Alright, keeping in mind that I am by no means an expert either, just a Marxist, who isn't even a lay expert, let's look at some of the points you made.
As far as I know (again, not an expert, might be wrong) that Socialism is inevitable isn't the primary prediction made by Marx's analysis, but that Capitalism has internal contradictions that are inherent to Capitalism that must, at some point, cause Capitalism to collapse. This is something practically all Marxists agree on. As Ollie hinted at, Marx did not, and probably could not have, predict the degree to which Capitalism is able to adapt. As Ollie said, Capitalism has methods to maintain stability, but Ollie somewhat hinted at but didn't exactly say, these methods are largely about a couple things. One is externalizing costs, which is making something cost less to produce by forcing part of the production cost to be taken on by something else. For example, polluting the environment instead of paying whatever it would cost to reduce or eliminate pollution. The other big one is juggling the consequences of Capitalism. By doing things such as employing debt, which shifts the cost of things in time, and aggressively expanding into new areas, which shifts the costs in space, Capitalism can push its consequences into the future for awhile. Eventually, however, all of this stretches too thin and breaks and you get something like the 2007/8 crisis.
As a remedy to these contradictions that will eventually cause the collapse of Capitalism, Marx believe a revolution of the united working class was both desirable and likely. Though not necessarily inevitable. An example of a severe Capitalist crisis not producing Socialism is post-WWI Germany where it produced Fascism as the petite-bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie did anything necessary to preserve Capitalism.
Capitalism itself producing comforts is entirely expected in Marxist theory because Capitalism is excellent at developing and deploying production technology because the more every worker produces per unit of labor, the more profit there is for the Capitalist. Modern comforts, however, don't change the fact that Capitalism has internal contradictions which cannot be resolved.
Chris x "Capitalism itself producing comforts is entirely expected in Marxist theory."
In that case, why did Marx think that the revolution was desirable? If capitalism produces comforts, then it seems plain that capitalism is desirable.
"Modern comforts, however, don't change the fact that Capitalism has internal contradictions which cannot be resolved."
Isn't it the contradictions themselves which produce the comforts? Based on this video it seems that capitalism forces people to produce more than they gain from their work, and that ought to lead to wealth and plenty. In contrast, if people were paid the actual value of what they produce then they would have less need to work and would choose to work less.
If the contradictions are what is compelling people to be productive, then we shouldn't want the contradictions to be resolved or remedied. The contradictions seem to be the engine powering our society.
+Ansatz66 Alright, first and foremost, you're ignoring the point that Capitalism has inherent internal contradictions which CANNOT be resolved. They can be juggled, displaced in time, and softened, but NEVER resolved. This means that, at some point, Capitalism will collapse once the internal mechanisms Capitalism uses to manage those contradictions permanently fail.
Capitalism only forces people to produce more than they gain insofar as most of the value they produce is siphoned off by a non-producing class. I'm not sure you fully realize what you've said. What you've said is that unless people were exploited, every single person would do literally exactly as much work as is necessary for them to continue existing. That's bullshit.
Also, all of these comforts you and I enjoy from Capitalism come at the cost of aggressive imperialism and exploitation of "developing" nations. Some child lost an arm or a leg to mine the rare earth minerals used to manufacture both our smartphones and computers. What do you think they think of the comforts of Capitalism? How super awesome do they think it is?
Ah so there's words for this. I used to film weddings for a company that I could not possibly hire myself to film my own wedding, nor could I possibly have a wedding as extravagant as the ones at which I worked (admittedly I didn't want something to expensive but if I were pulled into the trap of aspiring to be another class that capitalism sells us as a usually unrealistic goal then it would've pained me with longing).
Your "Gattungswesen" really sounds funny to a German language native ;-) besides that: Great series!
Sounds weird to a Scandinavian as well. As in that's not how German is supposed to sound to me.
Kartons-wessen :-)
It sounds ridiculous to me too, and I'm an Americunt who doesn't even speak Deutsch fluently.
I was thinking the same thing haha but at least he tried
I think I know what happened, it seems like he looked up the French pronunciation instead of the German (probably on accident)
Scooters Videos Actually VEY not WEY
Can I request a remake of these. You have much better production quality now.
With better means of productions comes more valuable stuff for the same labour!
I request a remake of these for reasons of trans.🌈🌹✊🏻
I'm trying to learn about Marxism and this introduction of his ideas shows how insightful he was. His theory of alienation is scarily accurate even to this day.
I live for these old Abigail videos
I'm two videos into the series, and I'm already sold. I feel like this is what I want myself but Marx, as explained by you, outlined it in detail.
In my ideal world, I imagine people with all their needs met. We still have to work, of course, especially for our needs. However, we can also work for what we want and not be stuck working for these capitalists.
I too have worked, of course, and in slightly freer conditions too since I worked at home. However, the wages were shit (good in comparison to other developing country workers), I get a lot work outside of my hours, and the rules were unending. They want us to smile all the time too.
It really does feel like a slave life under a dictator in the guise of rules and money. And you have to pretend you love it too.
i personally think that the bare minimums for living, food, water, basic clothing, cheap shelter, and healthcare should be covered by the government, while if you wanted luxuries, you would need to work, and the value of your work could increase the luxuries you could afford, because, unlike what Marx believed, humans, at a core level, are lazy and greedy, so there needs to be incentive to work and to have a higher work value
Newsflash: you also have to work on something you don’t like under socialism. It only refers on who should own means of production. If you work on something that doesn’t add value to society, you still starve. Marx embraces labor and didn’t want a society for lazy people in which nobody worked.
@@matthew7307 I'd honestly love the scientific evidence of humans being naturally greedy. Where are the studies proving that humans, at core, are lazy and greedy? Please provide them
@@Stinoco Don't like, like what? Also no, you wouldn't starve because everyone would get food as a human right. It's not a commodity. Also people can like jobs that add value to society and if all low skilled jobs are gonna be taken over by robots, why not just have socialism so a huge part of the population don't go homeless for being replaced by a robot
this marx guy is making a lot of sense
Loving #MadMarx! Are we gonna talk about how Hegel inspired Marx at all? When I was in high school the core ideas of Marx never really made sense until we get around to Hegel's Dialectic and that Marx genuinely believes that humans actively want to work on things we think are cool (but capitalism makes that nigh-impossible). You should also check out CGP Grey's "Humans Need Not Apply" video about the future of automation, you'd be surprised at how many jobs can be done by machine (though I understand there are some valid criticisms of the video).
+Thomas Zei Marx is such a huge topic, Ollie didn't really have room for anybody other than Marx. I kept pestering him to do a Marx video after he mentioned to me he had read Capital recently, and he told me he was working on one. Then it was two. Then it was Mad Marx Month. I asked if he was covering anybody besides Marx (because I loves me some Lenin) and he said he was pretty much only covering Marx.
I'm loving the font with which you wrote Alienation
if only my lecturer explained it like this!!
Great series - loving it.
It would be nice to hear this on talk radio.
in business studies' microeconomics and market analysis, this part is known as isoquant vs isocost metrics. This is how you literally determine how to efficiently undermine labour in favor of capital
I studied philosophy. Guess what my job perspective has been since.
GATONNNGGGG SWHESEN! As in HADOOOOKEN!
No seriously though, it's GUH-toongks veh-zen. With a short "oo" and a primary stress on the first syllable and a secondary stress on the third.
+Penny Lane He really should have looked that up how to pronounce that word, my ears were bleeding by what he did to the German language there.
I think he actually looked up the wrong pronunciation, I've heard French people pronounce it like he did before. He might've accidentally looked up the French instead of the German.
I've read The Communist Manifesto twice and this series makes it so much easier to understand
What do you think about the Zeitgeist movement (or the Venus Project/One Community for that matter), Ollie?
Hey Olly! Great series. But isn't reification, in Lukacs, used more in relation to social systems, such as the economic system, turning into something that appears foreign to the people living under it, more so than in relation to human labour turning into actual commodities?
Great video to get my points through to my dad.
I love this channel so much! :)
There could also be said to be a fifth kind of alienation: Ownership alienation. In capitalist systems we are expected to own things to the point where ownership itself becomes a form of alienation. To use an extreme example, by owning a house, one ties themselves to a region. The only way this imposition could be made more explicit is if you found a nice piece of land somewhere, drove a stake into the ground, and shackled yourself to it. The act of investing becomes a necessity rather than something we do because we want to.
Been following Philosophytube and Novara for a while now and always thought you lot could have some interesting debate. You should totally do a collab video or the Novara podcast if you get the chance
This was Marx's best insight, especially the innate need of humans to contribute their work in communities. Also the alienation of the masses which results in the large majority of the population not logically rising up in a horizontals anarchist revolution (that last part my editorializing) but instead are discouraged to do so via things like marketing, oppressive hierarchies, etc.
Quick thought:
Technological progress (for example during the industrial revolution) can be used to reduce labour, or to increase profits, as mentioned in the video. But what about the alternative that it is used to increase production without increasing labour (or, necessarily, profits).
Looking at the last century human living standards (both globally and in the west) have gone up dramatically. Hours worked haven't, definitely not by degree of output/GDP. Neither have profits--the rate of return on capital isn't dramatically higher.
Oh oh! I got a joke for you guys, you gonna love it. “Dad, why the house is so cold and we don’t have coal to burn?” Asked the son. “ because dad is unemployed, we don’t have money to buy coal” answer the dad. “Why are you unemployed dad?” Asked the son again. “Dad was a coal miner, because we produced too much coals and the price go low, the coal mine I work at bankrupt and I’m fired”
I feel that customers can get alienated from products in a similar manner, though not in the narrow sense you mentioned in the video, namely when distance is created between the product and the customer (at least in a world with automation and globalisation). When I go to the supermarket, the products will come from all over the world and it is really easy to be unaware of this fact. Take a box of cookies for example. It is quite difficult to find out where the ingredients come from, where the packaging was made or which company ultimately owns the brand. So, in a way, customers also become foreign to the products they're purchasing. (Another example for this, I think, is meat. We intentionally put a great amount of space between animals and us, so that we don't identify the meat with the animal anymore.)
Thanks, this is the first time I get alienation. Mostly because the term in Spanish is misguiding. Well done!
thanks, so helpful!!
I like how the techno music builds a sort of #exitthematrix #resistcapitalism vibe. Edgy!
Great videos
Hey Ollie. Great videos, big fan.
I thought there was some link between alienation and the environment through concepts like social metabolism and metabolic rift. Is this a type of alienation similar to the four you presented here? Will what Marx has to say about capitalism's relationship to the Environment be covered at all? I'd really dig it if it were.
+ChaZ Ooooh, that's an interesting idea. The environmental angle isn't really gonna come up except in terms of capitalism being bad for it, but that sounds really cool!
What about alienation between your customers need and expectation and the shareholder value?
God bless you man! perfectly understood :3
Marx 2: Electric Boogaloo
HAHA
lmfao
Idk if I'm being dumb but the way I see the organisation of labour under capitalism is more like 2+2 =5. Like by himself, the worker is not able to produce nearly as much value as he can in a company and so by working in a company, he produces much more value, part of which he receives, and part of which the owner of the company takes in exchange for facilitating the whole process.
Imagine a society ruled by a single dictator with ultimate power, a person who has full power to eject you from society at any point they wish, who alone can determine the rewards they receive for their work. Perhaps you argue that all people should have a say in how the country is governed, as you live in it and any choice made by the dictator directly impacts your life. But the dictator's supporters turn around and say "If you were by yourself, without the dictator, you would not have roads, or hospitals, or homes. Without the dictator being able to organise everything, none of these things would exist, so it is only right that they can control everything." To you, it is clear that this is a bad argument-you can imagine a society where everybody has a say in how the society is run, and yet the organisation of society runs as usual. You would just have to elect an individual who could perform the current dictator's roles, but was entirely answerable to the people that voted them there, rather than having unquestioned power.
The same is true of capitalism. Yes, if we were living in a world where companies didn't exist, our ability to organise ourselves would be difficult, but we do not live in that world. We don't have to accept a dictatorship when we could demand a democracy instead. We can continue under the current system, whereby an individual has complete power to tell us what job to perform, who can fire us at will, who can make decisions independently that could jeopardise our working conditions, who has all the power to determine our reward, _or_ we can push for the people who are impacted by any decision made from the top to have a say in what those decisions are, through the election of an individual for a period of time who can help organise the company but is directly answerable to the people. If you wouldn't accept a dictator in your country, why would you accept one in your workplace?
@@justtheouch That's a very good point
I have such an attitude about being able to make my own schedule. If I can't, I quit my job. I'm a socialist who has just started reading Marx. This all makes complete sense 😅
Hey Ollie - I'm a junior doctor working in the NHS. I was wondering if you could do a thing about whether access to healthcare is human right, or something along those lines - basically thinking about the whole "Free at the point of use" aspect of the NHS vs. the nightmare that the American system of private insurance appears to be. Just a thought. Love the channel, only recently discovered it when you collaborated with PBS Idea Channel, slowly working my way through the videos on my annual leave. Cheers!
+Rory O'Kane I did do a video a while ago on whether people responsible for their own medical conditions should be prioritised for treatment, but yeah a healthcare video could be a cool one.
Also, total solidarity with you: thanks so much for everything you do and best of luck if you choose to strike!
Pretty much every Western country except the US disagrees with you. Actually, it's more they agree that if we pool our resources, if anyone gets sick, they can be looked after without having to worry about money.
"workers of the world, unite" is a bad translation. It should be "workers of every land, unite". Its an important difference because internationalism and nationalism aren't opposed, they actually require one another.
Hey love you Olli but it seems like you stopped at vol. 1
Just watched your first two Marx videos and had 1 point I wasn't completely clear on.
Marx was saying that a products worth is the value of its labour, and I was wondering whether he tracked this right up the 'value chain' of a product. I.e. A house might take a small group of people a few months of full time work to build, however, it also takes other products to build it. Wood, bricks, metals. Would he add in the cost to the builders of purchasing these products or would he add in the original mining/lumberjacking labour cost?
I just see the value of something being very complex when you look at the labour of the full value chain.
Also, say you built a machine that could produce a product, and build a replacement for itself before it breaks, would you have a product which had a value of X / infinity? X being the labour cost and infinity being the lifecycle.
+Bryn Walker Yeah he would, and you're right that the value of complex things can go up like that.
And you have absolutely hit the nail on the head for Part 4! That's gonna go into machines and automation a lot, but it wouldn't make a product with infinite value - it'd make a product with zero value! If the machine takes no labour to build (because it was copied from another machine automatically or at zero labour cost) then it can't transfer labour to the product, so the value of the product slides towards zero. Part 4 will go into that; great thinking!
It's really interesting to think about increasing automation as a gradient towards post-scarcity. At that point, capitalism breaks down but so does Marxism because there is no more wage labour. It's a kind of labour singularity where the value of machines goes to infinity while the value of labour is undefined.
Scaenicus Well yes, good points. I also ignored the unknown number of new jobs that are created from work that as of now nobody pays for. But the closer you get to that "labour singularity", the more pressing radical societal changes become even pre-post-scarcity. First a basic income, then a total cap on consumption.
+Penny Lane We will have social revolution long before that. What are people going to live on under capitalism if they are not employed? The "industrial reserve army" (the unemployed masses) are hugely important in Marx's work.
Scaenicus I just restored your second comment from CZcams's "spam" folder (it's never spam in there but whatever). The first one, however, is nowhere to be seen :/
Scaenicus Well, capitalism also proves that the price of products the market comes up with doesn't correspond in any way with what a sustainable consumption would look like. States can regulate that with artificially increasing the price of certain resources while still letting the market solve the optimisation problem. But when labour and therefore resource consumption becomes virtually free, I can't see that approach working anymore.
Olof Olofsson The basic income I mentioned. Dunno if you're replying to the thread or just my first post.
3:25
Alien Nation was a great TV show
Premise: alien slave ship emergency lands near Los Angeles. How does the US deal with it? Integration through the immigration and education systems of course.
we love to see it
Capitalism doesn't need brakes when you got a money printer going brrrrr
I love this :D
On a very non-Marxist note, I would like to comment that Olly is hella cute sans the whiskers. Just sayin...
Agreed.
Good news, lol.
Does anyone have a link to the article he wrote? The one he linked doesn't work :(
It's interesting how many people miss how much Marx and Adam Smith agree on. Both had the basic building blocks of labor theory of value... Smith, like Marx, even thought that the division of labor created a situation where ultimately people didn't live up to their full potential. Most people I know who have actually read Marx's criticisms of capitalism, even capitalists such as myself, recognize that there is a lot of truth to Marx's criticisms.
Good stuff. I wish I had these videos to watch when I was in school.
where do you think they disagree?
Knitting a sock while I watch this in a desperate attempt to own my labor
I'm a very confused person, and finding you channel months ago was one of the best things that happened to me, period.
I started out as a naive, good-welled-yet-not-so-very-educated-on-the-subject socialist.
Then after a while, and for some reasons even I am not so sure about, I gradually changed into identifying as a capitalist, just for me to start the reverse process a few years after that.
Now I'm not so sure where to stand...
Long story short, do you think you can touch on the problems of Marxism, and socialism in general, just like you are touching on the problems of capitalism?
That would make it a lot easier for us to fully appreciate the work of Marx, because every system has problems, and when people usually talk about Marxism they fail to address that.
In my opinion this what makes it sound "Too good to be true", and that's why a lot of people think socialists are naive unrealistic people.
+Malek Badareen The problem with communism is that is has never been realized in actuality, despite what the stalinists, maoists AND anti-communists claim. Marx's definition of communism is "from each according to ability, to each according to need". It is very hard to find anything problematic with this outlook, except that it might be a utopian vision of society. None of Marx's anti-capitalist prerequisites were realized in "real existing socialism"; the workplaces were not run by the workers cooperatively and the law of value still operated more or less uninterupted in these societies. And by the way, accepting capitalism ideologically does not make you a "capitalist"as an individual, you are probably still a proletarian :)
+Malek Badareen No, the man who replied to you below is wrong. There have been so many instances of workers owning the means of production especially the anarchists in catalonia the worker councils before the bolsheviks took over in russia, the paris commune, the several other communes within france at that time, in italy you can legally make worker co opts, we lived in primitive communism for 200,000 years.
Think of this, a baker makes bread but the capitalist forces him to buy his own bread and takes his money and extends his wage so he has to use DEBT to buy his own product perpetually putting him into debt and overall forever poor.
+AnCom Commie but he is right when it comes to marxist leninist worker states never achieving socialism/communism
Bigdawgphilleep Precisely
See, gents, this is why people don't buy it...
Obviously, judging by your usernames and views, you are Communists/Marxists, but you can't criticise or identify the shortcomings of the system you identify with.
There is no perfect system, and I was interested in Olly's take on this because I view him as a balanced, honest man, who is able to criticise an idea even if he adhered to it.
And I'm not by any chance hinting at the poor examples the USSR and China "presumably" set for communism. I'm more interested in a philosophical critique rather than an applied one.
And about the "we lived in socialist societies for 200,000 years" well we also killed each other for food and women, raped children, and worshiped the weather for 200,000 years, so that is not really a valid point...
„You produce value but you are prevented from sharing it.“
Can someone elaborate on this or give me a link with a good explanation?
I might be a bit late, but I will try.
When you work and produce, the only way your employer will have a profit is if he pays you less than you actually produced. Si basically, when you get paid less, you cannot share in the full value of your production.
You make something that took you an hour to do, your boss sells it for $500 and it cost $50 to make parts and all. But you only get $10 an hour for making it. Welcome to capitalism
0:10 I thought that effect would be on his shirt the whole time lol
You know Ollie, socialist philosopher Charles Fourie had a solution to the problems from unfulfillment. He suggested that the laborers should be allowed to work a different job every single hour that the worker liked and with a little entertainment, sex, and excess to go along with it. Fourier called it Attractive Work!
When I worked at Mariano’s in the deli I couldn’t afford to grocery shop there
I have a better job now and I can shop there now lol
I'll bet the tendency of profits to fall is controversial. It runs counter to some of the core concepts in finance. From a cash flow perspective, we would purchase a machine if and only if we thought it return more profit than the required rate of return.
Marx is totally right that machines dispense their value over time, it's called depreciation and businesses have to keep track of it in their accounting records. However, the depreciation on an assets is usually going to be less than the reduction in operating expenses they provide. Lower expenses means a larger margins, so as long as the accountants and financial analysts are doing their jobs, I'd expect profits to go up with the purchase of new equipment.
Commenting to save.
+NickCybert Aren't the lengths that business owners go to avoiding the tendency of profits to fall an example of how unsustainable and exploitative capitalism is? For instance, Apple could probably release a phone which would blow all competition out of the water. A new one would not be required for several years, until which that time when new technology is developed. But because of this, they would have a tremendous fall of profit as nobody would require new phones, as everyone would have the best possible technology available.
In order to avoid this, and still make profit, Apple creates phones with problems which have all kinds of easily-solvable solutions in order to rope you into buying the next best thing the following year. In this way, they keep their profits high and exploit the labor of the working class. Of course, you can choose not to buy the next phone, but even if you take good care of your phone, the quality of it will lessen over time. Some think this is done intentionally. While we have no empirical evidence to back it up, it certainly makes sense- the amount of money people spend on new chargers alone is a bit alarming and indicative of this.
Also consider that phones may one day be obsolete as new technology becomes available. By that point, the smart phone industry may be so huge that it can actually stifle the growth and implementation of that new technology, delaying it by several decades! This isn't as far-fetched as it may seem- we can observe this occurring in energy, television, and transportation.
Aside from the anti-competitive practices you mention at the end, nothing you describe is particularly objectionable.
If Apple made a superphone, they price it at a margin that made sense for them. It doesn't matter if the lengthen the replacement cycle, they can plan for that if they really want to.
Consumer goods suffer from depreciation just like capital goods do (nothing can last forever). There's nothing nefarious about that. It's only exploitative if the goods depreciate faster than normal when compared to other similarly priced goods. If that happens, then you know you got screwed.
Anti-competitive practices are a problem. And I do believe they naturally arise when economies are too loosely regulated. But that just means we need regulation, not that capitalism requires anti-competitiveness in order to sustain profits. It's still perfectly possible to run a successful business in a fair market.
NickCybert
Markets are not exclusive to capitalism, though. I do find it objectionable that companies slowly leak new technology instead of giving us the best possible, especially when prices are inflated far beyond their actual usefulness.
Why does a typical MacBook cost $1500? I realize people choose to purchase it when there are better, cheaper alternatives. However, there is a sociological aspect to this that I believe is largely dismissed or ignored altogether. People are ignorant because the companies with the most influence want them to be, because that's how you maximize profits.
I'm not suggesting this is inherent to capitalism. I am suggesting that capitalism sets up the conditions wherein this is possible. Private ownership over the means of production means that people don't really have a say in the process of production or the products made. Technically, they can choose not to support the industry, but then they don't get technology. If nobody supports the technology, then there is no more profit for it, hence the tendency of profit to fall.
Companies do sell the best technology possible, it's just really expensive to produce, and only a niche market (the people who _really_ need super computers) can afford it soon after its development. As the costs to produce come down, they lower the price accordingly and the average consumer can eventually afford it.
Prices are determined where supply meets demand. I don't really think they're inflated beyond certain governmental influences like patents, copyrights, taxation ect. And those seem like necessary distortions to various degrees, so I'm willing to live with that.
The sociological aspect isn't ignored either, it's called brand value/loyalty. Companies work spend lots of time & money building it, so it's really just another expense that gets figured into their margin. If the value of their brand allows them to increase their prices and reclaim some of that margin, hell yeah they'll do it.
I don't really see this as a bad thing, companies manipulating media outlets to build their brand would be bad, but this is less and less a problem with the internet. Today, companies are more accountable than ever in the court of public opinion. You can destroy a brand in less than an hour if you really try to piss off the internet.
I don't think that your final paragraph demonstrates that profits have a tendency to fall. What about companies that specifically cater to people who disagree with process of how goods are made? We can by organic/ slave labor free/ eco-friendly stuff if we really want.
Só não entendi uma coisa, a descrição do vídeo está português rs
So economists think the tendency for the profit to fall isn't correct because there are countermeasures to it? It is correct BECAUSE there are countermeasures to it!
Despite the countermeasures, Mark Glick published the following figures for the long-term rate of profit in the United States:
1899 - 22 per cent
1914-18 - 18 per cent
1921 - 18 per cent
1929 - 12 per cent
1932 - 2 per cent
1939 - 7 per cent
1945 - 23 per cent
1948 - 17 per cent
1965 - 18 per cent
1983 - 10 per cent
It still falls, you can counter it all you want, but it's an uncomfortable iron law under capitalism - where production rises, profit falls over time despite fluctuations.
You keep posting these videos in which you're right.
How many parts will this be?
+ilker yoldas Four. He's doing Marx Month.
I think one more problem exists that was not mentioned... People have been conditioned to want more and more things. If you look around the average american house hold we have more things than ever. This means we have to perhaps labor more to get these things. We need to channel thoreau if we wish to break free of the chains of capitalism.
Just caught something in your article you might want to change:
"We’re also at liberty to use our platforms to generate additional revenue: some sell T-shirts, I have a crowdfunding page and offer tuition to fans who want some extra help."
I'm assuming you mean tutoring.
Thought I should warn you before you get hundreds of hungry students emailing you :P
+Tyler Graham I mean it's too late to edit now but is tuition not a synonym for tutoring outside the UK?
+Philosophy Tube Not in the US. Tuition is what you pay to go to college, and we don't call any tutoring fees tuition.
Same in Canada. I had no idea you guys used the two words as synonyms for one another. Nifty!
When it comes to the point of alienation between workers I don't think your correct on the assessment on foreign workers. In Norway, workers unions are quite strong (not as strong as they used to be). I think that the free flow of people in EU is significantly hurting the average worker in Norway, especially blue-collar workers. Companies are (illegally) hiring construction workers, plumbers and others from Eastern Europe, and gives them wages and living conditions that are not in line with what Norwegians would accept. This benefits the worker from Eastern Europe, but hurts the worker in Norway and society as a whole.
This class analysis yielded three definite predictions. First, it predicted that the proletariat would both increase as a percentage of the population and become poorer: as capitalist competition progressed, more and more people would be forced to sell their labor; and as the supply of those selling their labor increased, the wages they could demand would necessarily decrease. Second, it predicted that the middle class would decrease to a very small percentage of the population: zero-sum competition means there are winners and losers, and while a few would consistently be winners and thus become rich capitalists, most would lose at some point and be forced into the proletariat. Third, it predicted that the capitalists would also decrease as a percentage of the population: zero-sum competition also applies to competition among the capitalists, generating a few consistent winners in control of everything while the rest would be forced down the economic ladder.
Yet that was not how it worked out. By the early twentieth century it seemed that all three of the predictions failed to characterize the development of the capitalist countries. The class of manual laborers had both declined as a percentage of the population and become relatively better off. And the middle class had grown substantially both as a percentage of the population and in wealth, as had the upper class.
Why had the predictions not come to pass? Even more pressing was the practical problem of impatience: If the proletarian masses were the material of revolution, why were they not revolting? The exploitation and alienation had to be there-despite surface appearances-and it had to be being felt by capitalism’s victims, the proletariat. So what was to be done about the decidedly non-revolutionary working class? After decades of waiting hopefully and pouncing on any sign of worker dissatisfaction and unrest, the plain fact was that the proletariat was not going to revolt any time soon.
This sounds like the main problem is system regulation coming from the outside(governement) and from the inside (the people). Socialism is inevitable because of population and standards dependent on resources that the world cannot keep up with. The question is whos going to hold the power of regulation?
Dam part 1 is unavailable?
Oh wait I'm dum
Wait, how can government be *outside* capitalism if Marx's theory of primitive accumulation relied on the state to some extent to help modern day capitalists (in Marx's day anyways) get where they were from feudalism? Am I misremembering his theory of primitive accumulation?
And regardless of whether it's true or not, the idea that the government is *in practice outside of capitalism* seems highly controversial to me. What good reason/s do we have to believe this is the case, exactly?
+RageAgnstThClampdown What he meant was a non-market force. States are very, very much inside Capitalism. States are what enforce class relations.
+Chris x
Right, well:
1) Capitalism and markets are not the same thing. (we can get into this if you want but it is a major premise for me)
2) Even if they were the govenrment would be, for the exact correct reasons you helpfully state a poor resource for ameliorating the consequences of capitalism.
+RageAgnstThClampdown You're right to note the connection between states and capitalism: it's a relation that's changed over the last 100 years and it'll come up in Part 4.
+Philosophy Tube
Cool, thanks!
Enjoying the series even if I am not a Marxist. ;)
You seem like Young Engels.
4:10 omg at first I didn't understand the word at all, than I read it and.... it is called "gut-toongs-we (like in "welcome")- sen (like in "sense"). wtf. u Stress the first and third syllable, mit the second. sorry for correcting, u spelled it correctly.
+Guufie Story Close, but still wrong. The "w" in German is not read the same as in English, it's a "v". So it's something akin to Got-oongs-vei-sin
But if I say it's like in "welcome", it sounds the same
where is part 3 ?
+Shirsho Mukherjee It comes out on Friday.
I do wonder what marxist theory can tell us about the proper pricing of products.
Will you touch on the objections to Marx or only on his side of the debate?
+AFamiliarForeigner When has Ollie ever talked about a philosopher and not covered some of the objections? Never. I'm a Marxist and I'm happy he will.
+Scaenicus In what way have you seen Ollie support the idea of utopia? Not even fucking Marxists advocate for utopia.
I got an Amazon ad in front of this
"Gettoongswessen" XD
you should have put the emphasis on you not getting paid for giving knowledge, rather than us having to pay for knowledge; people disagree on whether univeristy should be free. But everyone can agree that teachers should be paid. (for your patreon thing)
The link to your article might be broken. It is leading to a protest on Heathrow airport.
+welwitschia Huh, weird. I fixed it, I think.
+Philosophy Tube The ghost of Marx is messing with the CZcams-links.
+Philosophy Tube I have to ask... who owns the means of production with youtube videos? Isn't it you, the creator? It's on your shoulders to obtain the necessary equipment that lets you film videos, granted, it's fairly easy to film with a phone nowadays but higher production value drives costs way up. If that is the case, in a way, owning the means of production is actually an additional burden on behalf of the worker. CZcams in a way feels more sinister than a factory, because in a factory at least, it is not you who needs to pay for repairs/buying new machines.
+maggit The main problem is to figure out if a youtube-video is a commodity or not. I'd say it is not since it is a unique work, not reproducable in the sense that Marx analyzes the commodity. FUrther, the video is not made to be sold in the market, another main definitional part of commodity production. The commodity is the advert-space that youtube sells to the advertisers, not the video that the viewers consume i think.
+Scaenicus When Marx talks about commodity production and accumulation of capital, he does so withi certain limits. One aspect of commodity value is that it is not derived from the actual labor that went into production, but the labour >socially necessary< for its production. And the only time this makes sense is when the commodity is of the nature that it can be reproduced by other capitalists. I don't really think that a video is of this nature, but rather that it is an original work from which the creator can demand "monopoly rent" or something similar. And Marx really only discusses means of production in relation to the production of commodities, not in relation to the work of artists, etc.
(I assume you were told this before, but GAhT-tungs-wehsen. Not ga-TUNGS-wuhssn. (Transcribing English pronunciation is stupidly difficult but I hope that's clear enough))
Darn.
_"ga-TONGUES-Wessn"_
😂 aww anglophones
And Marx was correct in his thinking, having thought about this (and many other things which most people don't ever think about) myself for a few years, I see the exact same thing.
I'll mention Bitcoin system for example, it is what threatens Central banking and Fiat & Banking system, which is based on PoW (Proof of WORK) Principle, which is what makes it into a system which is decentralised, with same rules for everyone, and enables us to abolish scam that Central banks are (especially Private central banks, which all pretty much all Capitalists nations have, and people don't even know this, and those nations that don't have them, and there are only a handful of them, are being attacked economically through economic sanctions and militarily bu straight out war aggression or indirect through arming and creating terrorist groups who pretend to be organic uprising) and there are many benefits that we the people can benefit from.
Capitalism and before it Feudalism, Slavery and Monarchies, are all systems based on private ownership of land (which by the none of us ever created, mother nature did, which means this land and its resources belongs equally to all of us and no one should own any of it) and they are all based on PoS (Proof of STAKE, ie money/capital) principle.
Bitcoin system has the potential to change the world, this time, for the better... and if we are to awake from this brainwashing that Capitalists imposed on us (as everything in this society is owned and controlled by them, educational system included) you would see it also, and you would participate... but then also use the very same PoW principle to base the economy on it as well, which would again create an evolution of the economic system, into what Communism is meant to be, where the workers own and control means of production collectively, and not have some rich people who got their wealth from past lootings of their past generations, that they use to buy out and control everything we have today (politics, education, health, military, you name it) which is the exact reason why everything is corrupt in this society.
I think it isn't capitalism that's driving up work but rather a desire to raise one's status. The ultimatum game in game theory suggests this to be the case, and so does the GINI and GDP. This hypothesis suggests that if you get rid of capitalism AND basic necessities, you don't actually stop the competition because evolution inherently selects and changing the environment selection pressures will just change the traits to be selected. The organisms will still compete in relation to those traits. :( Basic biology man T-T
Edit : I think UBI giving people basic necessities is not going to be enough for this freedom. People are going to want to close the status gap.
Edit 2 : It'd be great if we can switch up the worker capitalist dynamic so that capitalists had to fight for quality workers so that they had to pay as much as possible without going into a deficit. Doesn't that shit already happen in companies? o-o
I think the left communists, like Rosa Luxemburg, understood that what Marx called"primitive accumulation" is a constant and not one off process, but in order for this to work it needs the state. Without governments who start wars, destabilize regions for resources and enslave peoples, Capitalism cannot produce anything. The "primitive accumulation" of the early modern period (enclosures, colonialism, slavery etc) were state ventures but without them industrial capitalism couldnt exist. Similarly, without prison labour, neocolonialist resource wars and other forms of modern slavery our modern "postindustrial" capitalism couldn't exist. Because Marx sidelined this fact, he misunderstood how revolution would happen and how capitalism would adapt to challenges to its domination.
Hard mode: watch this without headphones
If production was entirely automated, all labour might go entirely toward art or innovation, rather than static creation of existing products. If capitalism progresses to the point of total automation (which it won't, because it needs the exploitation of people), it might circle around to some form of communism, albeit an oligarchical version. maybe marx was just early?
Fortunately, now we know that our gattungswesen is fucking, and particularly, fucking up.
If all the work was being done by automation, then the idea that automation would be used for profit doesn't work any more, because money will become meaningless. You wouldn't need to buy anything, because a machine would get it for you. An example of this was depicted in the Disney movie "Wall-E", where all the people just sat around, and there was no money, since shopping itself had become obsolete.
Also, I don't think Marx could have possibly predicted the existence of worker owned businesses. A few years ago, I took a brief tour of a bread factory, which I can't remember the name of, where the workers of the business were the owners of the business. Everyone from the janitors, to the machine maintainers, to the manager all owned part of the business. The workplace itself was one big democracy, which is neither capitalist, nor socialist. When I asked how this system could possibly work, like if someone wanted to give themselves a raise, I was told that such a thing would not really be logical, because the person wanting the raise had no more say about profits than anyone else, and everyone else would just ask where this sudden surge of greed was coming from.
+Ben Crispe That's an interesting story, and automation is gonna come up a lot in Part 4. But democracy is consistent with both capitalism and socialism.
Ben Crispe Actually Marx wrote an essay called the Fragments on Machines in which the 99% control automated machinery and where the STEM fields and the Humanities are forms of leisure. Though I think he couldn't have predicted how the STEMs and Humanities would contribute economically.
"Marx didn't believe in a fixed human nature independent of social and economic conditions, but he did observe that the desire to labor creatively was universal among all human societies."
Read that sentence slowly and see if you can find anything wrong with it. I'm a leftist, but the Marxist belief that there is no human nature is, in short, absurd. What's more absurd is how commonly the belief is repeated in continental philosophy of all sorts.
that is exactly the biggest problem with marxism, and socialism in general. people fail to understand that all humans, at base level, to some extent, are lazy and greedy. while there may be people willing to work for the greater good of society, there will always be a large portion of people who will not work, as there is no personal reward, and their base living necessities are being "paid" for by the workers, so for marxism and socialism to work, humans would need to have no drive for personal benefit or making things easier for themselves. this is why i believe that a sort of mix of capitalism and socialism is the best possible solution. for example, food, water, and healthcare, the basic necessities for living, would be covered by the government, and if you wanted luxuries, such as personal shelter, high-quality food, electronics, etc, you would need to work, and the value of your work would increase the amount of luxuries you can afford, providing an incentive to be educated to work specialized jobs.
Now do Bakunin.
Or u can do it yourself
4:40am 05/22/2023
Yup. That answers my question from the last vid. Of course, machines in Marx' time didn't usually produce products of vastly superior quality to a hand-made equivalent or do jobs which are detrimental to organic health or physically impossible for human labourers to achieve.
I'm a little surprised that he doesn't seem to have recognised that a machine is just an advanced tool though. (at least until it contains significant artificial intelligence... and probably, self-awareness) If a bow is a tool of war, then so is a machine gun. It's just a more efficient version. Equally, if a hammer and anvil are a blacksmiths tools, then so is a sheet metal roller and pattern press... It's just more efficient. If a slide rule is a tool for mathematics, then so is a personal computer.
Each still needs a human operator, though you move more and more towards "supervision" rather than active engagement with the tool. I suspect that's where the vast majority of the "leisure time" industrialisation was supposed to give us goes. We spend it at work, supervising machines so carefully that we can't really afford to be *doing* much else. Certainly, I'm often struck by the number of times I end up with 4 or 5 different processes running on as many as 20 or 30 different machines before I conclude that, while there's nothing for *me* to actually _do_, if I start any more machines working on jobs, I'll not be able to respond quickly enough should any of the existing tasks require my attention. Or rather, the risk of two incidents going off at once, and the potential consequences of that situation are too high. Even though it's still _more likely_ that there will be no incidents at all and I'll just have to sit there, watching. :\
It reminds me of the receptionist in Arnie's original Total Recall film, who obviously has some form of liquid crystal nail polish and is switching out colours from a digital tablet all the time while she deals with customers at the desk. Her nail polish re-application and tint change is clearly far more productive than contemporary methods, but she's still spending more time actually doing it. XD
Thanks Olly.
I actually find it surprising that Marx didn't think machines were a betterment of the human condition. If machines take the roles of humans in the lower/lowest tier of production, It does 2 things:
1) Some workers are being laid-off
2) Production potential is increased
In order to achieve #2, you will need more workers to develop more products to pay for your machines which means you will need to hire more people on upper echelons of productions. Those people require training, which means their labour is worth more, which also means that they'll have access to better wages (Even though Marx thinks prices don't really affect the value of a product).
What automation encourages to do is to educate ourselves, train ourselves to make our labour worth more since, at some point, manual labour may be something that becomes obsolete. The workers being laid-off will only need to train to become relevant again.
+IrontMesdent You're not understand Marx correctly. He didn't say automation is bad. He described the relationship of Capitalism, automation, and labor.
Chris x What I understood from what he said is that automation forced the workers to work faster since they have to keep up with the speed of the machine that increases the potential output of products. These conditions, as said by Olly in the video, seem to lead to alienation. So how are machines not bad for workers in his view?
+IrontMesdent He does talk about that: he says he's not against automation, he's against how it's corrupted by capitalism rather than used as a liberating thing.
Philosophy Tube Then Marx assumes that putting a machine somewhere is automatically liberating because the machine does the dirty work. While it saves some hard work, there are a lot of restrictions with machines that forces the product designers/engineers to work harder and longer for the same result. The machines merely transfers the work somewhere else. What was asimple instruction: "Just polish it until it's shiny" becomes a nightmare in calibration and programming and requires more work for someone else. That doesn't take into account the people who work to design the machine and have to decide key elements like: What features is the machine going to have? How can we benefit from selling that machine? How is my hard work going to be paid by this machine? So even if the goal was to reduce the workload and not maximize profit, there's always a need for a new machine to reduce the amount of dirty work. And the more liberating those machines are on one end, the more complex and time consuming their design is. Same with their breakdown. Complex machines break more often than simple machines. So, I totally disagree with Marx. Machines don't liberate humans. The only way a machine can be liberating for someone is if the output in time is lower than the input in time. And the less products created by the machine, The lower the time output is to a point where the machine requires more maintenace and design time than time given to the item.
IrontMesdent What the fuck are you talking about? Are you actually arguing that automation does not improve total output per unit of labor? If you are...I'm not sure anybody can really help you since the data are so clear.
What about very complex products. Such as computers? There are so many components to a computer that are complex in their own right. How could it ever be possible to make a computer without alienating the worker from the product they make? Given that they play only the tiniest part in the production of a computer you can't really give them a whole computer to take home. Do you just throw some RAM in there and say off you go. Without abstraction and layered complex organization creating a computer is virtually impossible. You can't just expect people to band together and make one from sand one day. Those workers will always be alienated from the products they make because they couldn't have ever made those products by themselves even if they had a millennia to do it...
straw man defeated!