#8 Marxism and Power

What if the key to understanding our world today lies in the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx? Join us as we explore the impact of Hegelian philosophy, property rights, and Marxism on our society. We'll start by examining Napoleon's quote about power being his mistress and its connection to Hegel's views on history and the dialectic process.

As we trace Marx's journey from his middle-class upbringing to his time in poverty, we'll delve into his groundbreaking theories on religion, property, and the power dynamics between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. With discussions on the origins and co-opting of ideologies like liberalism and communism, we'll show how these branches from the same tree differ only in their arguments regarding private property and individual rights versus state rights.

Lastly, we'll take a closer look at the lasting impact and legacy of Marx, as well as the continual evolution of his theories. From power struggles within communist governments to the influence of Marxism on disciplines like political science, literary criticism, and art criticism, we'll reflect on the importance of understanding and engaging with these complex and influential ideas, and the role they play in shaping our world. Don't miss this fascinating episode that dives into the life and revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx!

Twitter is @ThePanopticon84

Chapters

• 0:01 Hegelian Philosophy and Property Rights
• 16:54 Marx's Biography and Revolutionary Ideas
• 26:53 Marx's Philosophy and Concepts
• 38:55 Marx on Religion in Society
• 56:21 Abolishing Private Property With Marxism
• 1:16:39 The Origins and Co-Opting of Ideologies
• 1:33:42 Communism and the Power Struggle
• 1:42:11 The Impact and Legacy of Marx
• 1:49:52 Marxism and Its Continual Evolution
• 2:01:10 On Power

Transcript

Speaker 1: Good day, welcome to the Panopticon. It is June 4th 2023. I saw the Emperor here with same old it. As we typically do, we will describe our names. I will go first. I will open with the quote Power is a mistress. Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me. Let me continue. I saw the Emperor, this world soul, riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual who concentrated here at a single point astride a horse reaches out over the world and masters it. This extraordinary man whom it is possible or impossible not to admire.

Speaker 1: The first quote was by Napoleon Bonaparte. The second quote was by one of the great German philosophers, hegel, talking about Napoleon. Now, many have read into the quote. I saw the Emperor by Hegel and have gleaned numerous meanings from it. One person in particular, terry Pinkard, who is a historian philosopher, knows that Hegel's comments about Napoleon are all the more striking since at that point, he had already composed the crucial section of the phenomenology in which he remarked that the revolution referring to the French revolution had now officially passed to another land, in this case Germany. That would complete in thought. Quote what the revolution again? the Russian revolution, i'm sorry, the French revolution had only partially accomplished in practice. So Hegel saw Napoleon on reconnaissance in Gena the day before the battle of Gena. Napoleon was at his apex at this time. But more importantly, i think what Hegel saw was all the values of the revolution embodied in one man, napoleon, who was in many eyes the continuation of the revolution itself. But what Terry Pinkard notes was it was at this point a transformation from the revolution had moved, at least geography wise, from France to Prussia.

Speaker 1: In Germany Now there was a gentleman who also admired Hegel in many ways, and this gentleman was Karl Marx. And I would like to read a short kind of story on Karl Marx and his influence, i'm sorry, hegel's influence on Marx. And this is a dialectic view of social development Hegel and Marx. Marx inherited a view of history from the German philosopher Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel thought that all of history is following a brief, predetermined path that would ultimately lead to the final, perfect state of human freedom. Hegel is known for his dialectic. This path was determined by a process called dialectic.

Speaker 1: In each era, the reigning state of the world would create a fundamental, fundamental opposition. For Hegel, this dialectic was the mind of God coming to understand its own being. At first, god is the subject, the thing that thinks, but then to think you need an object. That is something to think about. So God is both the subject and the object. One state always creates the opposite. You can't have a master without having a slave, since without the slave the master wouldn't be a master. But when you put a thing and its opposite together, the two would clash, each wanting to be free of the other, the thing that exists in and of itself. Ultimately, this conflict between them destroys them both, leaving only the core commonalities they share. That would then become the basis for the next, higher stage of reality. This too would create a fundamental opposition. And on and on the process goes until, ultimately, the universe ended up where it needed to be.

Speaker 1: So what did Karl Marx do? Well, he kept this picture of reality as a historical process working itself out. But instead of everything being in material mode of God's consciousness, as Hegel thought, marx claimed that the universe was made of material things rather than abstract states of being. Marx suggested that the dialectic process of cultural and economic development was a result of class on class struggles. Each new socioeconomic stage would provide both the advancements in human life as well as the seeds of its own destruction. The revolution that would destroy the state of socioeconomic being was necessary to allow humanity to advance to the next stage. Many people call this today progressivism. Hence I saw the emperor Same old it. Do you want to talk about your name at all?

Speaker 2: Um, yeah, i'm just the same old. It's the same old it, every day Same old it. I have a question for you. Yes, when one of your neighbors dog shits in your yard, they bag it up and then they proceed to put that bag in your empty trash can, because trash was collected yesterday and I haven't picked up the trash can to put it back by my house. Is that a violation of my property?

Speaker 1: I would say, well, is it your property? The own the property? That might be irrelevant, i mean you, you, whether you own it or release it at that particular time, it's in your possession. Now the trash can itself is actually public property, right, this is one of these green, big green ones. Or is this your own personal trash can?

Speaker 2: So a homeless person could squat on it on your trash game.

Speaker 1: Is it a? is it a city trash game or?

Speaker 2: in my trash can.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah, if the city allowed that And I can kick it out, kick him out of it. Or he, she or she, him or her, they are them.

Speaker 1: I don't know, we would have to look into the laws. If it's public property, I would say no.

Speaker 2: Shit. Maybe, instead of paying rent, i should live in my trash can for free.

Speaker 1: If that's what you so choose.

Speaker 2: I mean be like Oscar the Grouch.

Speaker 1: He was a little grouch, wasn't he? He was grouchy. I mean, you would too, if you're living in a fucking garbage.

Speaker 2: Yeah Yeah, I know He's fucking and he never left, though That's the thing Like well, if you don't like it, leave.

Speaker 1: And it was actually he liked. it was full of trash too, It wasn't like an empty one. Yeah it was all his trash.

Speaker 2: His home, his home, his things. You know he's a hoarder, but so you know, i don't really care when people leave, i do care actually when they leave their shitty shit bag, their pet shit bags, in my empty trash can because it stinks.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. It breaks a kind of unwritten rule at the very least. I mean, why would you put shit in someone else's trash? Did that happen to you?

Speaker 2: It's happened multiple times And I just saw. I didn't see them put it in, but I saw their dog shitting in my yard and I was going to watch them to see if they picked it up, because they don't always pick it up, cox, maybe, maybe this is a passive, aggressive way of telling you to put your trash can up, because you could be Yeah, and that ain't going to work, because how lazy do you have to be?

Speaker 2: Just carry the bag like a decent citizen until you get to your own trash can and throw it in there, dad do you know that these are your neighbors.

Speaker 1: Do you have anyone in particular in mind?

Speaker 2: It's a lady and, let's face it, it's always a lady. A lady is not a term I would use. It's a woman. I'm not misogynist.

Speaker 1: Does she come off aggressive?

Speaker 2: She's bigger and she I saw her at the. I'm going to get into specifics. Let's just face it this way She's very like a cervic or she's very disagreeable, have you? She's loud, she talks on her phone like no one else is there. You know type of thing Yeah. Have you taught And I think she's in the mafia in the protective witness program? Why is that? It's just a feeling I get Have you ever talked to her.

Speaker 2: No, but I've heard her multiple times because her mouth is very loud And the cars they drive suggest there was once money involved in whatever enterprise lifestyle they had before. But now, if they're living where I live, something happened to their economic status, and for the negative. Yet they still have those nice cars. So I'm just curious, anyways so I liked your intro about the Hegel.

Speaker 1: I thought that question was supposed to was going to be tied into like prop private property rights versus communal rights.

Speaker 2: Oh, I slipped a little bit in there. I said the word property. That wasn't that enough.

Speaker 1: Well, you said. I think he also said yeah, is that a violation? But I think it was a good, good talking point to lead us into our topic for the day.

Speaker 2: Well, marxist would say she, she, even she could shit on my lawn, because it's not actually like with no property. you know, in the Marxist revolution, It's communal. Her toilet's my toilet, my toilet's her toilet, my yard's her yard. Well, we can get into that whole discussion of a commune type living and how freaky they are probably. I think they're all twisted probably And they all want to fuck each other.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: At the end of the day. But back to serious matters.

Speaker 2: I think I liked how you're Hegelian. tie in to what influenced Marx and how Marx was different. Yeah right, marx, he didn't talk about this sort of consciousness. that's sort of not really earthly. It's more about the individual making a change, philosophy making a sort of revolution. He brought it to practical, materialist terms by, by supplanting the consciousness which was Hegel, the individual, with the proletariat, that the proletariat is the revolutionary change that's going to happen. So I like that, i like how you did that. Now, napoleon, right, I saw a death mask of him.

Speaker 2: He was kind of good looking. According to what the death mask revealed, he had nice cheekbones.

Speaker 1: Yeah, i think. I think I read one of his biographies And I'm reading another. He was an oddly looking person, but his look was enchanting to many. His eyes, especially his angular face, was not beauty in a traditional sense but certainly enchanting for both men and women. And of course having power absolute power also helps with that. But his physical features were one of description or one of interest for many around him Short, short, portly. Later in life, certainly portly.

Speaker 2: He had bad gas, not attractive qualities, yet those eyes can go a long way, you know, and then cheekbones. But nevertheless, let's get back to revolution, right? Because initially, people I mean they kind of liked some of the romantics like Napoleon We're talking about maybe 20 years after the French Revolution, napoleon came to be, there was this whole revolutionary spirit in the air Because they're still relatively free, new in terms of free from the shackles of aristocracy, uprises the capitalists, the industrialists. So when Marx is writing it's in the heat of the Industrial Revolution, which are basically the industrialists, are the capitalists. So that's the, that's kind of where Marx is when he starts writing this, let's get.

Speaker 2: can we talk like a brief history of Marx's life? Did you, did you read anything about that?

Speaker 1: Somewhat. I mean, i think I think this is a good transition. We're talking we're kind of talking about the roots of Marxism through Hegel and Napoleon, leading back to the revolution itself Equality, liberty and so forth And many claim where we're at today is still still the revolution And certainly through communism, socialism and Marxism, so that I think we've established kind of very briefly, kind of a historical and philosophical and ideologically ideological history or seeds of that. For for Marx, i'll let you go ahead and get into kind of his actual biography a little bit if you want to, in his history and his background and how that affected his thoughts as well.

Speaker 2: Well, he was born in Germany or what was Prussia I guess, at the time, and he, his father, was a lawyer Jewish who changed his Jewishness, i guess, to converted to Catholicism, and so he, he was sort of middle class, i guess you could say born into that. The parents had enough to send him to college. He was smart enough to you know, excel there.

Speaker 2: He, i want to say he, he was going to write his dissertation or his doctor dissertation, what have you? And he did. But then his dad died, if I'm not mistaken, and that subsequently he led him into some sort of poverty At a young age, i want to say in his late teens, early 20s, something like that.

Speaker 2: He became a young Hegelian, they call it, you know the people who were sort of fascinated with an idolized Hegel at the time. Hegel who, as you said, viewed history as a sort of series of conflicts or struggles. Marx didn't quite come to the realization or the his idea of class struggle, yet it was more about struggles in a general sense, i think, like Hegel is known for his dialectic theory of history, which is you have a thesis, something happens, there's an, there's a force here, and then an antithesis which is an opposing force. Those two clash, fight it out and something new is born out of that and that's called the synthesis of it, and that history is just a series of those. So, after being you know, after he starts getting into Hegel, i think he has to move to somewhere else, in Berlin or something like that He starts writing for newspaper. He's poor, he creates his own newspaper actually, and he immediately starts talking about like poor people and how the aristocracy or the bourgeois is like kind of eliminating them. in terms of these.

Speaker 2: one of his articles talks about these young these little small groups of wine orchard people making their own wine, and how the big industries around them were pushing them out, basically strangling them in terms of their their ability to make money. And so he starts, almost like a socialist voice, he starts giving voice to these causes. Immediately he's shut down. He's by the Prussian police. You don't want any wind of that getting around. you know they don't want any talk of that. He is in some ways forced to leave. He goes to he's I think he has a wife at this time and he goes to different places Brussels, paris And in Paris he starts writing again and sort of mixing with the milieu of these communist type folks.

Speaker 2: They're on the outside, basically they're in the city, but they're, you know, they're kind of bohemian, maybe even intellectuals who are trying to come up with this new way of living. That also is where he meets his lifelong friend and writing partner and fellow philosopher Engels Engels, is they both write the communist manifesto eventually.

Speaker 1: And.

Speaker 2: Engels is also born to relative wealth. His father is a manufacturer in Britain, i'm gonna say Manchester, and which is an odd, interesting thing. Okay, so both of them are born into relative money in class right Now it could be that there, that gives them a certain vantage point. They're mixing a little bit with the bourgeoisie, or they've even been part of it. Marx dad dies, he loses money, he doesn't have any money, so he's in abject poverty almost, which gives them the different vantage point on what it's like to be not inside the bourgeoisie or be, quote-unquote, the oppressed. I would almost argue that that might have given him a sort of an impetus to start his whole, a fascination and obsession with wealth, with money, with the dynamics therein, with the economics. Would you, could you see how that would the fact that he was once in and then out?

Speaker 1: Yes.

Speaker 2: I guess we'd have to read his biographies to see if that was actually his psychological. You know what was he? I mean, it's probably very little. It would all be guesswork unless he actually had diaries and whatnot which he could get it insight into his psychology at a very young age. But I mean, you could look at what he wrote about for his whole life. He wrote about money, you know. So it's obviously obsessed with it. But of course his I guess concerns were more about how people are oppressed and kept down by money and the capitalist system. Anyways, we can get into that later. So Hegel and Marx. So here in Paris is where Marx and Engels start not Hegel Engels start really formulating their what would become kind of their lifelong work and and theses and and philosophy, which is the communist manifesto, communism, their revolutionary ideas. What were some of their revolutionary ideas? Drew, or sorry, i saw the emperor.

Speaker 1: Okay, well, if we can continue to frame this a little bit first before we get into kind of the revolutionary ideas, well, wait, okay, let me, let me finish just real quick summary of his life.

Speaker 2: So he writes some of the major works in Paris one of those I believe being the communist manifesto That brings attention to Germany again or the Prussians, and they go into Paris and say get and get them the fuck out of there. He writes because he writes there for a French slash, German or Prussian newspaper.

Speaker 2: He's constantly in debt, like getting money advancements for these publishings, but then it doesn't work out. So he's losing money and meanwhile he's having kids constantly, his fucking, impregnating his wife constantly and they end up having like overall seven kids, but many of them die in youth. in infancy He banged his nanny, he got her pregnant and during his poverty he started developing a horrific condition called something superitiva.

Speaker 2: It's where you develop boils under your arms and your groin, your buttocks, your anus. It's like Jesus Christ. Could you imagine being broke, having screaming kids all around, boils every day, painful. You're broke, you know what I mean, and you're obsessed about money and capitalism and all this shit. Anyways they. so they eventually get to London because he's he's pushed out by the Europeans, the French and the Prussians, and in London is where he kind of ends up for the last 15 years of his life finishing his great work Das Kapital, capital and ends up dying shortly after his wife and his eldest daughter dies. And on the tail end of his career and tail end of his life he actually sees his work starting to be taken seriously and translated into other languages and kind of dispersed around and talked about. So he saw like a little bit of it. He probably had no fucking idea how influential he would become. Maybe he did. He was egotistical or something, but you know he had.

Speaker 2: if you could only imagine his influence and his impact on Western thought and culture and politics, i'm sure he would have been amazed. Yeah, so that's kind of his life in a nutshell A life of poverty, of intense, ambitious, just fiery drive to compose this philosophy. this philosophy and these concepts like capitalism, the proletariat, all those things we know It's a I appreciate. I watched a biography on him that video I sent you. I appreciate his. He's like an artist almost really. I mean you could say his one, you could.

Speaker 2: We could argue about the theories and the philosophy, but it's kind of like how people say Freud is more of an artist than an actual scientist and that's kind of how, in one way, you could look at Marx is like not necessarily a scientist, i mean, it's philosophy, it's theory, it's politics, but to me it's more of like an artist's production. He led a life of an artist, it seems like to me. So yeah, so how do you want to go about this? We've kind of summed up his life. Do you want to get into? we know the influence of Hegel. In terms of his concept of history.

Speaker 1: Yeah, i mean, if I could just kind of continue to build off this. The frame here of the dialectic Hegel's dialectic and then also Marx's dialectic and I think they both agreed on this is an idea of progressivism leading to the perfect state. Hegel was kind of more of the mental and godlike state and for Marx it was more of a state as we know it, a governing state. But both with the, you had the thesis, the antithesis, which led to the synthesis. The overall framework of that was progress. You had the, the main character, the protagonist, and then you have the antagonist, and I think what Marx came up with was the permanent antagonist for capitalism, or what Tatsatski eventually kind of reinterpreted Marx coming up with the permanent revolution.

Speaker 1: But the whole idea of the dialectic itself is that friction between the thesis and the antithesis. There's always that friction there and but it's a positive and where that friction of two opposing forces meet to create a synthesis of a better state, as it was before. And this continues on and on for infinity. And I think you know Trotsky we can talk about him later, perhaps at a different podcast kind of took that with the permanent revolution. You're always fighting, there's always going to be that friction. So that was kind of the theoretical background with Marx.

Speaker 2: But what Marx thought was, i believe, is that the proletariat rising up against to basically take over from capitalism was kind of the apotheosis, the kind of end of the struggle, is that he saw it as a benevolent or a that it's the basically the ultimate goal of the struggles would end once the proletariat which to me is very naive seeming, but of course that's just a naive reading of him as well, but that seems to be less about permanent struggle, like maybe Trotsky's, different in that way, oh yes the working class.

Speaker 2: Getting control of the state was the remedy, at least in simplistic terms in Marx's eyes And Marx thought it was going to be like immediately and he was like struggling. he was anxious that it wasn't happening.

Speaker 1: It never happened and so then we, that's when you had reinterpretations or adaptations, with Stalin, with Mao, with Trotsky, with and even with the Cuban revolution a little bit. But Marx's basis was the working class. You had the working class, which he called the, the proletariat, and you had the elite, which he called the bourgeois, or those who owned the means to production, the bourgeois. And then he further classifies, breaks these down into subclassifications, where you had the petty bourgeois, which is basically the higher middle class, middle class, the proletariat, which were the workers. And the workers produced not only the means necessary for their own survival, but they produced a surplus that they never enjoyed the profits from, they never consumed any of the surplus. It was the bourgeois who took advantage of that surplus off the workers backs and made money and continued that relationship on and on and on, where the workers were essentially slaves to the bourgeois.

Speaker 1: And these ideas again stemmed from the French Revolution. He twisted them a bit, or adapted them to his, to this economic, socioeconomic framework that he established, but it was all built in the kind of equality, fraternity and liberty for all, not just the elite, not just the monarchy, not just the aristocracy, but for everybody within. You know, again, starting in the French Revolution And that was bore out as unrealistic. The liberals not, not, not, i'm not talking about the, you know, domestic politicians, but liberal thinkers took the equality and liberty part and ran with it John Locke's of the world as an example, or at least his theories, and ran with it, and that has become pervasive, at least a bedrock of of American liberalism, if you will. And it has a relationship with the American Revolution as well. So those are tied in.

Speaker 1: But Marx took them, took equality, fraternity and liberty, and applied it to the, the industrial phenomenon that he was experiencing, in this case the bourgeois and the workers, and came up with an answer, an antidote, like I stated, with the working class taking over, rising up workers unite and actually gain ownership of means, of the means of production. That never happened And you have adaptations with that. You have Russian, more so Soviet, adaptations of Marxism, lenin's interpretation, then Stalinism, and then Mao and so forth. So has this struggle continued? I would argue you can. You can follow this, this line, this theme, all the way to. You know US politics, domestic politics, that we've been talking about on both our podcasts.

Speaker 2: Well, before we get into the influence that he had, i think we still need to nail down some of his details, of his thought, in the main aspects of it, because I mean, we I think in subsequent podcasts we can do more of his impact or the, the adaptations, the evolution of his thought and, someone say, the bastardization of his thought, the fleshing out of his ideas. And one of the main critiques, like one of the overall, i think, characteristics of his philosophy, is that it's anti-religion based, you would say maybe even secular. I mean, some people have even, you know, tacked on to his idea that there's this, gonna be this rise in the proletariat, freeing themselves of oppression is almost like a Christian type of Judeo-Christian type of idea. You know that there's, that there were oppressed, the majority of people are oppressed, and through these various means there's gonna be salvation, there's gonna be an end sort of heaven that we get to go to.

Speaker 2: You know that will be, an ultimate victory for these oppressed people. But the critique of religion, so that's a huge part of his, the formulation of his philosophy. He was influenced by this guy named Feuerbach who wrote a book called Essence of Christianity, and in this book he criticizes Christianity. right, but for Marx? let me just read this little passage here. Hold on, let me look, let me get to it.

Speaker 2: In terms of the development of Marx's thought, the importance of this one essay is that for the first time Marx sees economic life, not religion, as the chief form of human alienation. So on the one hand, Marx comes to realization that religion is in fact oppressive and that it causes alienation. So Feuerbach, who influenced Marx in that, in his book says that religion causes alienation because what it does is the subject. Like the Christian, for example, puts on to God, the all, the goodness, all the purity, all the excellence that they put on to God is actually should be directed towards the person himself or herself, is that they're really deflecting it and putting it on to something else. And so what the effect of that has is that the person views themselves as some sort of dejected, impure, sinner type of thing, and that causes alienation and anxiety and all of that.

Speaker 2: What Marx is doing is he, although agrees with him in many ways, he, marx turns it on, changes it from religion to economics. So, whereas the alienation is in this economic theory of oppression, and alienation is that the person, the proletariat, the worker, puts all his energy and efforts into this product of whatever he's making at the factory and it gives it away. Basically, he's not doing work that's going to provide for himself, like, if he's making shoes, he's making shoes for someone else, that's those shoes are going to be sent away. He doesn't get the product.

Speaker 2: The product of his labor, and that's called alienation of labor, which we can get into here in a little bit. But what's that famous quote about religion that Marx is known for?

Speaker 1: The opiate of the masses.

Speaker 2: Yes, the opium of the people. It is the opium of the people. Marx portrays religion as a response to the oppression and heartlessness of the world, but an inadequate response because instead of challenging the oppression itself, it merely numbs the pain. So I mean, why? opium That's a good word. We can kind of think about that. Opium is a pain reliever, right. So in the system of capitalism or this economic oppression that Marx starts to find, people in religion is working like a pain reliever. So people are in pain right Of some sort, more like spiritual, existential type pain.

Speaker 2: It's a numbing agent. lack of urgency. It's like a calming agent too. It's a temporary fix. One critic said that it's like masking the symptoms of something deeper that's wrong about the system, something systemic, and that religion in this environment is just masking a deeper problem, covering it up. It stabilizes, it's a quieting agent. It's a stabilizing agent and it shuts someone down, almost pacifies them.

Speaker 2: Remember we talked about how media you've mentioned Marshall Mollbug, whatever his name is He said the cathedral, the media, and the someone else he said was the cathedral, the media and academics, the media and academics, the cathedral. I feel like we can maybe make a little just a note of. It is like we talked about how. You know, what does one do in uncertain times? Well, you go to church and you kind of deal with uncertainty and anxiety. That way Marks would say, yeah, but that's a net, that's like a just a temporary fix. It's a venting, a pacifying agent. It's not going to really get to the heart of the problem. Does media do that now for us? You know, is it temporary venting or pacifying agent? Yeah, it could be Right.

Speaker 1: Well, for me, i mean I would argue that he wasn't. he was getting, he wasn't getting rid of religion, marks, he was. he was replacing one religion with another. And again that goes back to the utopian view. I mean you could argue religion is utopian or unrealistic? Well, he just replaced it with the foundations and the principles of the French Revolution which is again equality, fraternity and liberty.

Speaker 1: Everyone are everyone's equal under the eyes of God or under the eyes of man, or what have you, and replace it with that. So from one utopian framework to another, and he and then he used that equality, fraternity and liberty as a foundation for well, if everyone's equal, then we live in an unequal or unequal world. In this case, or at least Mark's case, that was the bourgeois versus the proletariat. The bourgeois were on top, the proletariat were on bottom, and so, either deliberately or mistakenly, he established, or at least acknowledges there are hierarchies, and he would argue against Marx. I would say where Marx argues everyone's equal, and he would say no, no sir, equal inequalities exist in the universe, including between people and cultures and so forth. So I would argue that Marxism is just as religious, or at least unrealistic or utopian, as the traditional religions of Christianity in particular.

Speaker 2: It's like a secular new secular religion.

Speaker 1: Right. He takes it away from God. He takes it away from the like intellectual.

Speaker 2: He takes it away from the sort of platonic type split where it's another world it's another or consciousness change. It's like he brings it down to earth and that's why he involves it around economy and politics.

Speaker 1: He takes it from the metaphysical to the physical, the materialistic much like he did with Hegel. With Hegel's dialectics. He take it where. Hegel was talking about God and consciousness. He brought it into the material world, the same concepts as Hegel, the same concepts as the traditional religions, particularly Christianity, but brought it into the real world and then established a ideology as opposed to a religion, a philosophy as opposed to a religion or God.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and part of that bringing it down to materialism like a practical level kind of ties into his whole idea that there's a famous quote, something to the effect that philosophers have spent all their time interpreting the world. Now it's time to change it is basically what he said, Something like that. Do you remember that quote? How does I wish I had that quote available.

Speaker 2: He's pretty famous. In essence, what he's saying is where his philosophy is different is, yeah, he's got the theory, but he's also got the practical, that something needs to be done in the actual world to bring about a change. That the theory highlights the problem that the theory highlights, And so that's. I mean, if you think about it, that kind of set up in a philosophy where there's not only a theory around what the problem is, but that there's also something to be done about it and there's maybe even certain things that can be done that are listed, then that would make sense that why it would work so well in the realm of politics and why people would co-opt it and how you see it evolve in history, is that it's actually something that people can rally behind, right In the ideology, that people can rally behind and actually group together and carry that with them as a sort of agent of change.

Speaker 2: And you see it even in the realm of academia. But I mean, you see it with the Bolsheviks, You saw it with other Marxists who are combating nationalism, colonialism, post-cult, you know, but in academia you see it a lot of times they're very protest-oriented. Do you know what I mean? And it seems like a philosophy that Marx is almost composing with that intention in mind, or something? Am I making sense?

Speaker 1: Well, i think it goes back to the kind of infinite conflict, infinite friction between the haves and haves-nots, the rulers and the ruled, and I think the quote you were looking for was the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it, and so you have the thinkers and the doers, and I think he's arguing, for we need more doers.

Speaker 2: Yeah, no, marxist doctrine is the unity of theory and practice, so theory being, you know, describing the problem of the oppression of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, That's in all the intricacies therein and the economic makeup of that. And the practice is like what can we do actually in the real material world to fight against that and to bring about that change?

Speaker 2: that's there in the theory, Which is a lot different to me than other theories, other philosophies, which seem to be more like he says, more about just description and an interpretation. Marxism is a fusion of that of theory and actually doing something, fighting.

Speaker 1: Revolution, yeah, a continual revolution. And acting Acting on the theories was important.

Speaker 2: And Nietzsche's work kind of is more like. I mean, he kind of is laying out a plan for future generations to do something, you know, like the overman, the ubermensch It's like. But it's not. His work is romantic, it's not practical. Actually, could actually see, okay, there's practical bits to it.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. Nietzsche, was was abstract. I would think on purpose He was. I mean, you could argue, Marx was an actualization of the Superman, of those you create. You have to create your reality. He was describing the abstractions in many ways Nietzsche, but he never gave a solution. That solution was left up to the Superman to come up with. Where Marx came up with it, He came up with an idea, an ideology, a framework, a theory, a philosophy. All those Now where he, I guess, misjudged or misanalyzed or his prediction came wrong, was like you had stated the masses, never the workers didn't unite and fight as he thought would happen or wanted to happen, And maybe that was out of his own personal realization.

Speaker 1: he probably wasn't going to live long and perhaps he wanted to see his thoughts. or this revolution happened sooner rather than later because he was running out of time and he wanted to see it, or he just misjudged it. But the foundation still remains. The thread still kind of ties back to the French Revolution, and Marx was an adaptation to that, and everyone that came after Marx was an adaptation. For me, what Marx gave the world was another form to control people, another mechanism or, more importantly, another form to control the masses and run a government. So are you the ancients are, but is? there is three, but is yet democracy? you had oligarchy and you had monarchy. Democracy leads to tyrants, and you know and so forth.

Speaker 1: But I would argue that communism because of the imperfections, or Marxism because of the imperfections, led to tyrants or dictators, at the very least.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's one criticism, I mean it started with the man I quoted, napoleon himself.

Speaker 1: He was not. I mean, you could argue that he was not the continuation of the revolution, he was the end of the revolution or the complete manifestation of the revolution, that it required to be a strong man to fulfill the principles of the revolution. You see that with you could argue that with Stalin. You could argue that with Mao. You could argue that with others that have kind of tried to implement communism.

Speaker 2: So well, this is the thing. Like his idea, he was idealistic, definitely. I mean, his whole philosophy seems to be founded on some sense of idealism, wouldn't you agree? And he doesn't actually list ways that the revolution can come about. You know, he doesn't prescribe a sort of plan on the actual details of how this thing's going to happen. It's just like he almost went with like a gut intuition Is this thing's going to happen no matter what?

Speaker 2: Because there's this almost self-destructive component to capitalism And it's almost like a vision. He had a vision in a sort of mystical way, although it's tied to also a deep scrutiny of economics and capitalism at that time. Nowhere does he really kind of give a detailed analysis of about how it's going to come about. I want to say he came up with a small list of seven things the way that capitalism will try to prevent it, like the bourgeoisie will try to prevent the rise of the proletariat. All of which happened, that the prevention actually happened, which is one reason why communism is never successful Well, other than maybe China we can get into that later But why?

Speaker 2: the realization of Marxist thoughts have never really succeeded. But so he never, which is very odd for someone who seems to be so shrewdly aware of how economics, human nature, works, that he was not able to see that this could be a breeding ground for tyrants And that there's very little understanding of how power it would seem, about how power can corrupt somebody. And so once this so-called proletariat rises and seizes control, how he doesn't really think about how that that's going to cause further stratifications. Once they get power, that there's going to be the cream of the crop, rise at the top, the most ambitious, the most tyrannical power, hungry, you know. It's almost like an ignorance of that or some sort of naivete, right?

Speaker 1: Yeah, i think it goes back into. If he's a true believer, it's. The naivete is that he's an idealist and his foundation is a world that has never existed, didn't exist at his time and won't ever exist. And so he either, you know, is so wrapped up in his own idealism he can't acknowledge real life and the real outcomes.

Speaker 2: Well, some of the things that he says that you know should happen, for this eventual outcome of the rise of the proletariat is Marx advocates the abolition of wages, alienated labor, you know, getting rid of that, and private property. Getting rid of private property. In a word, communism is what that's called. Let's talk about what is alienated labor. I mean, we did kind of discuss that briefly. Yeah, Here's a passage I just want to read regarding alienated labor.

Speaker 2: The more the worker externalizes himself in his work and he's talking about, you know, factory workers, working class who are working in an assembly line type of fashion for industrialists, manufacturers who are sending out these products elsewhere The more the worker externalizes himself in his work, the more powerful becomes the alien, objective world that he creates out opposite himself, the poorer he becomes himself in his inner life and the less he can call his own. It is just the same in religion The more one puts into God, the less he retains in himself. The worker puts his life into the object, And this means that it can no longer. It no longer belongs to him, but to the object. The externalization of the worker in his product implies not only that his labor becomes an object, an exterior existence, but also that it exists outside him, independent and alien, and becomes a self-sufficient power opposite him, that the life that he has lent to the object affronts him, hostile and alien. So that goes into the whole idea that, you know, people become a commodity. Everything has money tied into it, Everything has a monetary value, including the person himself, the product of that person's labor.

Speaker 2: This whole idea of surplus labor, I believe, is almost like a material manifestation of all that excess work that the person, the working class person, has put into this endeavor. It's almost like some parasitical thing. You can think of a vampire, right, A vampire being the capitalist and the victim being the proletariat. And the vampire sucks your blood, Take that blood as like your vital work, almost You can say your time, your energy, your creative drive and energy. All that's being sucked out of you in terms in Mark's eyes, And the capitalist hoards it and takes it away from you and stockpiles it. And the more that happens, the more the inequality happens right.

Speaker 2: The more bloody gets, the less powerful the proletariat, the more powerful the bourgeoisie, so further Marxist would take this in very interesting ways which I can't wait to explore in future podcasts. When everything is considered a commodity, everything has value. That gets into really some dark areas and fascinating areas. Marx didn't ever get to that point, to where you're talking about micro levels of time race film. You didn't foresee the artistic revolutions that would happen and how all that. The Marxist views of those are very interesting. So he offers some things that will need to be done for the Communist revolution to happen, those being the abolition of wages, abolition of alienated labor and private property. You said you read the Communist Manifesto a couple days ago. Yes, what'd you think? I agreed with the premises.

Speaker 1: I agreed with the analysis. I became hesitant with his antidote. in his solutions He was talking about removal of private property and so forth. That's where I started to veer away, or he started to veer away from me And I also was in my head.

Speaker 1: I was reading he's very again, the analysis that he makes is very similar to the analysis that the elitist theories make. They acknowledge hierarchy. They both acknowledge the haves and have nots. The only difference are not only the difference, but the primary difference between Marx and the elitist theories are where elitist theories state the iron law of oligarchy. There are always the ruled and there's always the rulers and there's a certain attribute and character of the elite that will always remain the same and therefore the people can never rule, as Marx said. no, the people can rule. In fact that is the in-state The people need.

Speaker 1: in his class he was more specific the working class, not just the people, but the working class. they can rule and if they can rule the state, they upend the bourgeois. They upend or they flip the hierarchy. The hierarchy remains or the structure remains, but it's flipped, as opposed to the structure as it stood or as Marx saw it was for the benefit of the elite, the elitist theories would agree with that or acknowledge that as well. I agree again on his premise or premises. I agree on his analysis. I don't agree on his conclusions. I side more so with kind of the elitist side, the Machiavelli side, the Italian school, c Wright Mills and so forth. I think that people can transfer power from one elite to another, but I don't think it's possible for the people to rule, and I think communism has proved that point.

Speaker 2: A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of communism. That's the first line of the Communist Manifesto. Very dramatic, that is one of the most popular first lines, or well known first lines, in all of Western literature. A specter is haunting Europe. He was relatively young when he wrote this too. That idealism when you're young is maybe part of this. They say. I haven't read Das Kapital, but critics that I've just kind of read a little bit of say that that one's more, less idealistic. It's a deeper, richer description of modern capitalism at the time. Whereas this one and it's very detailed, so it's very analytical, some three volumes, a thousand pages long. Whereas the Communist Manifesto is almost written with the intent to be inciting or dramatic, a polemic or, what have you, an attack. So the language is kind of that way. Also, the brevity of it is Well, what would you say? it's ideological, like propaganda. The Communist Manifesto.

Speaker 1: I can be used as propaganda. I think it's his and Engels, basically their platform, But it's built on idealism and utopianism And I just it's unrealistic. In my it morphs into something that either he never intended it to or never saw it to turn into.

Speaker 1: But he should have, And perhaps he did and he just he didn't acknowledge it. Here's some of the rules or some of his anecdotes. Antidotes, solutions abolition of property and land and application a heavy, progressive or graduated income tax. Abolition of all the rights of inheritance. Confiscation of the property of all immigrants and rebels. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state by means of a national bank with state capital. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries. Gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by a more equitable distribution of the pop is over the country. Free education for all children in public schools. And those are his 10. He's just replacing one power structure with another.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you're looking at it from Nietzsche's view, kind of of politics is like that's worse than democracy.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: It's like democracy times 10 in terms of its attempts to try to level everyone out to some sort of uniformity. That's not really natural. In fact, one of critiques of Marxist thought is that he attributes all this sort of competitive drive and competition to the market and that it's some sort of thing endemic to capitalism only. But he doesn't try to grapple with the fact that competition is a biological thing. It's written in our DNA, as we've said before. It's life is, if you look around you, competition It's human nature. It's not necessarily the capitalism that's grafting on to the human beings in humanity this competitive drive. Now, one thing it might do is like increase the competition. That's already kind of that. It might amp it up.

Speaker 2: But it almost seems like Marx has an idealistic view of human nature. That it's he definitely believes it's malleable, and subsequent Marxists would think this too that in fact identity is all social construction. It's all. There's nothing natural innate about it, about human nature. But in my eyes at least, it seems like someone like Marx is ignorant of this sort of human nature, or ignoring it intentionally. Well, i mean.

Speaker 1: Marx's solution is not much different than the solutions of the others Laws we talked about earlier in other podcasts Bentham, rousseau, locke and others the state of nature, where Bentham saw the state of nature as nasty and brutish. but his answer was the state. And Marx's answer is the state as well. The analysis is different when it compared to Bentham, marx to Bentham as an example, but the solution is the same. It's always the state, it's always a larger organized entity, actor that can help mankind. Now, again, for different reasons in Marx's case was it's the workers control the state. but he even says political power, probably so-called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing the other.

Speaker 1: If the proletariat, during its contest with the bourgeois government, is the only way to get the power out of the state, the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeois, compelled by the force of circumstances to organize itself as a class. if, by means of revolution, it makes itself the ruling class And as such sweeps away by force the old conditions of protection. So he's just arguing for the people to become the new ruling class. And the elitist theorist would argue that the people don't have the intestinal fortitude, the attributes or the characteristics to do that They can destroy, but they can't maintain power. They can change power, they can be used as a mechanism to transfer power, but not own power. So there are differences, but in the end the conclusions are the same it's the state.

Speaker 1: I think the realists, or at least the elite theorists, just provide a realist observation of this is always the case and always will be the case. But then you would argue well, in the United States we're just a branch of fraternity, liberty, inequality as well. And what are the lines between communism and liberalism? Have we been living in a communist state all along, just a different, maybe watered down version, or an altered version? We're under a different myth.

Speaker 2: Well, this is an interesting part that I can bring in in terms of his, some of his ideas about how revolutions come about. Marx thinks and this can I can tie in liberal democracy into this So Marx's idea he takes an economic materialist understanding of history right That it's all based on economic forces. That's how revolutions happen, that's how social structures comes about, and that it's these revolutions so-called revolutions, are triggered in many ways by technological advancements. So let me read this little bit about fuck, i can't.

Speaker 2: So the materialist conception of history starts with productive forces. Productive forces are technological advancements basically. So you've got the printing press, the cotton gin, the steam engine is one thing that really propelled the industrial revolution And with that Marx argues, is liberal democracy And there's reasons for that. That we can get into. But before that there was the feudal structure of society and the thing that kind of. I guess the technological advancement that brought about that was the what's he called it? the mill, the hand mill, and then so let me finish that thought. So the materialist conception of history starts with productive forces. Marx says that relations of production, which relations of production are? you know, in capitalism it's the industrialists interacting with the worker, that whole setup there and the power dynamic there.

Speaker 2: In the feudal society it's the king with the yeoman and the serf, the king being the equivalent of the capitalist, the serf being the equivalent of the working class. So that whole power dynamic there In one place. He puts this very bluntly, him being Marx the hand mill gives you society with the feudal lord, the steam mill society with the industrial capitalist. In other words, when the productive forces are developed only to the stage of manual power, the typical relation of production is that of lord and serf. This and similar relations make up the economic structure of society, which in turn is the foundation of the political, legal superstructure of feudal times. So everything stems from that technology and that that relationship, that imbalanced relationship, that that also provides, and everything else stems from that in terms of how society is made up at any given time, the laws, the mores, the norms, you know, the values, even down to the psychology of the individual himself or how his worldview. All of that's, in Marx's eyes, stems from this economic element, from this materialistic element.

Speaker 2: According to this view of history, feudal relations of production came about because they fostered the development of productive forces of feudal times, the hand mill for example. But these productive forces were not static, they continued to develop. The steam mill was invented, the most efficient use of steam power is in large factories, which require a concentration of free laborers, and this is where liberal democracy comes in. Feudal relations of production restrict the ability of serfs to leave the land, so the productive relation of lord and serf breaks down to be replaced by the productive relationship of capitalist and employee. These new relations of production now constitute the new economic structure of society, on which a capitalist legal and political superstructure arises with its own law, religion and morality. Freedom of contract and freedom of movement become legal rights, along with the freedom to dispose of one's property.

Speaker 2: The privileges of the landed nobility are whittled away and individual rights, including freedom of conscience, are increasingly recognized, along with greater acceptance of competitiveness and the pursuit of self-interest. In essence, what he's saying is this whole idea of liberal democracy, of being free, liberty, egalitarian, all that bullshit was really a almost like a functionary of this new development and this new technological development steam engine and this new power dynamic between the bourgeoisie and the others. That it was just kind of like a grist, like a lubricant, these new legal freedom laws and all of that, these ideas. That's kind of an interesting way to look at it. I think It subverts the sanctity of those ideas which I kind of like, just for the intellectual experiment of it.

Speaker 1: Well, i mean, like liberalism and communism are branches from the same tree, or you could argue that, that tree being the age of enlightenment, liberalism is based off the equality in the law or equality before the law.

Speaker 1: And I think the only difference, or at least the primary difference between liberalism and communism, is the argument of property, private property in particular, and individual rights versus state rights, where communism is the only difference between communism and Marxism even prefers more state influence than kind of individual influence or individual rights. And how capitalism fits into that is, i think, a manifestation of liberalism and the freedoms of liberalism, but, more importantly, of just realism is But Marx thinks the opposite, that those ideas of freedom, liberalism, egalitarian liberty are manifestations of capitalism.

Speaker 1: If that's the case, then capitalism had to been around since the very beginning, and it hasn't. What about?

Speaker 2: What do you mean? What do you mean? What about if?

Speaker 1: inequality comes from capitalism, then what about before capitalism?

Speaker 2: No, the ideas of equality and liberty that promulgated prompted the revolutions in late 1700s, the French Revolution, that that was really almost propaganda in a way. These ideas that they're fighting for, oh all the freedom and blah, blah, blah, are really just masks for what's behind it, with the economic drive behind it, which is capitalism, industrialism, even though what we know as the Industrial Society, the revolution, was in the 1800s, but it started earlier than that. I'm not exactly sure of the year, but that's the whole reason why the capitalists and the bourgeoisie were able to overthrow the aristocracy in the first place is that they had economic power and they dressed it up in this fancy philosophies of freedom and whatnot. But I can see where Marx is coming from on that and that a lot of these sort of ideologies and I would put liberal democracy into that is that it come from something more practical, like money and economic setup and structure.

Speaker 1: Yes, and that goes back to the real aims and real language versus the formal language that we talked about is these platforms, these ideologies hide the real aims of whatever group you're talking about, and I think what I get from what you're saying is the aristocracy, or at least yeah the aristocracy in the because last time we talked about the friction between the aristocracy and the monarchy and there was always a friction there and one would go to the people to overcome the other, and oftentimes the monarchy would appeal to the multitudes to overthrow the aristocracy, or vice versa.

Speaker 1: And the aristocracy won over and won out in the age of enlightenment and used liberalism as an opportunity. these individual rights, these human rights, consent of the govern, bringing the people, the masses, into politics where in the past it wasn't like that. And now I would agree with you that they use that. they use that to gain power. And I think Jovenal would argue, they use all these platforms and platitudes to get the people on their side to gain more power. This is essentially what I see it And I would agree with you and Marx if that's his interpretation of it. But I would also argue that Marx came up with the ideology and the theory and a philosophy to do just the same. He's just advancing the principles of liberalism and applying it and giving the power, taking it from the bourgeois and giving it to the state, is what he's doing.

Speaker 2: Yeah, no, i agree with that. Now, whether his intentions were, like you said, with this Machiavellian view, which was he prompt? what did he really have? sort of ulterior motives in mind? Or was he more of a shrewd thinker than we think in terms of? was he not as naive as his philosophy would suggest? In other words, was he coming up with these, this grand sort of narrative of the Communist Manifesto, with the intention really to be part of some power grab? I don't know, but his philosophy was definitely used with that, to that effect, i think to the Machiavellian type of effect, especially with the Bolsheviks, stalin, lenin and also with Mao, i would assume.

Speaker 1: Yeah, i mean, if you look at this, the 10, 10 list that he has I mean, how is that different than feudalism or monarchy, where the? I mean he's putting the people back into or at least transitioning one's form of slavery to another, or serfdom? because I don't know if he didn't do the thinking of what the state would look like and who would control the state. In theory, he was just as naive as potentially our forefathers were, where the state would be ran by the people in theory, but it always leads to someone on top.

Speaker 2: And that person's on top of a hierarchy. I wonder how likely it could have been that because his theories and philosophies weren't accepted.

Speaker 1: Keep talking, I'll be right back.

Speaker 2: Oh no, i'm just thinking with a conspiratorial lens. Maybe after so he dies, his theories start just catching on right at the end of his death. Maybe the Marxist ideology, and the plan therein in terms of how the state would be the ultimate ruler, maybe that was co-opted by these capitalists that are the so-called enemies of Marxism and the enemies of the proletariat. Maybe the capitalists somehow hijacked it throughout the years, in the 1800s and the early 1900s, as a way to shed what we would call those liberal democratic views or the ideals of liberty, equality and freedom. Maybe it was a way for them to slough all that off and to kind of step into the skin of Marxism and grab even more power at the top. Maybe not, though. I mean because, well, in the early 1900s you've got the Bolsheviks, marxist, leninism driving that Stalinism.

Speaker 2: You've got the idea that capitalists at the time were definitely anti-that were anti-Marxist, anti-leninist, anti-communist, and that was the whole idea of the Cold War, that it's a fight against communism, that communism is trying to destroy capitalism. That's one reason why Hitler became so powerful, because the capitalist industrialist at the time in Germany and elsewhere saw him as an easy way to kind of squelch and stifle the communism that was existing in Germany at the time, which had actually way more power than the Nazis in the 20s. In fact there were, I would almost say, a little less than half of the cabinet or what do you call it, the parliament in Germany, were communist-leaning, and the industrialists. The theory goes that they gave Hitler and the Nazis all this money as a means to overthrow the or to get rid of the communist, that communist threat. So my idea that maybe communism was hijacked or adopted by capitalists, it runs counter to those theories. But then you have a, you have a, then you go ahead.

Speaker 1: Now I was going to say that even Marx acknowledged that potential and he had a definition for that. Give me one second here.

Speaker 2: I always find it interesting how theories like Marx you want to believe that they're they kind of develop organically in their, their. Their rise to popularity is sort of natural because it speaks to some greater human development or evolution. But I also like to think that maybe there's more conspiratorial elements behind it, that there's these certain rise. They rise because they're brought to the top by the people in power at the time that there's some. It's facilitating some stabilization of power or what have you Kind of like. You wonder why do certain works of literature stand the test of time? Why are they brought into the canon? Well, they're selected most of the time by an elite, you know, and because for reasons we can get into later. Did you find what you were looking for?

Speaker 1: Yes, all right. So Marx recognized this kind of hijacking or co-opting of of, you know, of Marxism or socialism. He called them the conservative or bourgeois socialism. A part of the bourgeois is the xyrus of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society. To this section, along the economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organizers of charity, members of society for the prevention of cruelty, animals, temperance fanatics, whole and corner of reformers of every imaginal kind.

Speaker 1: This form of socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems. The socialist bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions, without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeois without a proletariat. The bourgeois naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best, and bourgeois socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems and requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system and thereby to march straight way into their social new Jerusalem, it requires, in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeois. Then he goes on But that is very similar to what you were talking about is basically these fake socialist who use kind of the formal and platform and kind of idealistic talking points of socialism but in reality they're just using them to maintain their own status.

Speaker 2: Well with. So let's take the Bolshevik revolution for an example. It's not a co-opting of communism or of Marxism for by the bourgeoisie to keep their power Right. Well, in fact, no. So Russia was aristocracy, was it not?

Speaker 1: No, it was the monarchy.

Speaker 2: Nicholas, i was a monarchy, okay, and the Bolsheviks were the people, supposedly The from the vote, the white trash, yes, the working class, but really I mean the Bolsheviks were the most, i guess, power hungry of that white trash. Lenin, i don't know much about him, was Stalin, was he born into money, or was he poor white trash?

Speaker 1: Lenin, i think he was upper middle class.

Speaker 2: Stalin was the goon. Yeah, i don't know.

Speaker 1: I have to go into into the details, but you have to remember there was a couple revolutions Russian revolution, it was the one that the first one was the one that over through the monarchy, and then the second one was between the Bolsheviks and the whites.

Speaker 2: Oh the, what are they called the Mensheviks?

Speaker 1: The Mensheviks? yeah, so it was, i'm sorry. Yeah, the Mensheviks. And so what was your point with respect to the? where that my point was from? where was the?

Speaker 2: Well, yeah, my point was like, because running along this idea of, like communism and Marxist ideology being co-opted by, already, the elite, you know, structures, as a way to kind of shed those, those values of capitalism or of what's the word liberal democracy, as a way to kind of slough off that skin into an even tighter control or structure of power, because you know, you said, marxism is really leading to this power of the state, giving all power to the state. You know, and I'm imagining maybe if the capitalists saw that, like, okay, well, here's an opportunity for us to to consolidate power even more so, and we have ideology behind it that will, that will convince the masses, the working class, to do it, and we'll just step right on in once they fight or do this sort of almost revolution, mock revolution, you know? do you know where I'm going with that? and so I was thinking Lenin and them, i don't know what, so what social strata they came from, and and.

Speaker 2: I guess I would have to read up on that for sure is like were they agents for capitalists who had that plan in mind, or were they actually working class? and who were they actually the ones in power too, throughout that whole time?

Speaker 2: because you know, there's ideas that there's this theory that Hitler was really sort of somehow created out of the muck of Germany, the mess they're in, by Anglo-American elites as a way to not only to basically disrupt the relationship between Germany and Russia that could have developed, because there the idea goes that the fear was Russia and Germany. If they were to combine themselves and become allies in the 1920s, what have you that? they would definitely be a huge threat against the British and the Americans, and so the you know they created Hitler out of this soup of Berlin and Germany to fight communism and to come up with this battle between Germany and Russia. That ultimately happened in 1940s. So I'm bringing that kind of way of looking at it, which is conspiratorial and, you know, not necessarily established by research yeah, i mean Lenin.

Speaker 1: Lenin, it appears, came from surfdom or leases.

Speaker 2: His father was a family of former surfs, and so I would say they were lower, you know, lower class surfs, former surfs and to kind of play off that another thing is a criticism by Jordan Peterson about Marxism is that it's a naïve way of looking at the proletariat, because what he's doing is saying all proletariat good all bourgeoisie.

Speaker 2: Bad because they're oppressing the proletariat. Well, sometimes the most oppressed people become the worst people because of you know just the nature of it. They become the most ambitious evil type of people because they've been oppressed, you know, and so they're there's, they're fighting something and they want power. So bad because they've been denied in their whole life. And so he Jordan Peterson says he takes a kind of what the woke isms doing right now is like all white people bad, all minorities and oppressed are good. That's simplifying human beings into tribes and black or white. And in fact that way of looking at you know groups and tribes and what does it do it? it kind of white paints over a whole group of people as being bad or evil, without any real justification for it, or there's no. What am I trying to say? it's not true, basically, and so that leads into the criticisms of one mark when the proletariat does rise and they do attain power.

Speaker 2: If you think all of them are good, well, that's not realistic view of human nature. A lot of them are very evil, and the evil ones, with with the means and the, the drive, are going to take over and create just as much oppression as the capitalist system. And that's, i think, what happened with Stalin, don't you think?

Speaker 1: I think it it's the national conclusion of forms of government like socialism and communism. It's. I mean, you had the Russian revolution, you had the February revolution where the proletariat overthrew the monarchy. Then you had the October revolution where those victors, the Bolsheviks versus the, the other groups within that communist subset, started fighting each other. And then, once the Bolsheviks one out and then Lenin died, then Stalin, that that fight continued. Stalin purged all his competitors and became dictator. And it's just kind of the natural progression where it always seems to lead, or it will lead, to a single man who was able to manipulate and rise to the top of the hierarchy. And so if liberalism and communism are very similar, or maybe the same thing shaded differently, is this the destiny of? and assuming that liberalism is the foundation of the US Constitution, which is the foundation of our whole way of governance, is the end that going to be the same as communism? it just has taken a little longer that in being ruled by one man, a dictator maybe it already is.

Speaker 2: We would never really know. I don't know what it is, and maybe it already is and it's like clouded by all this other stuff about elites.

Speaker 1: We don't have to answer it now. We can ponder on that and kind of address the future podcast, but that's something to think about for sure well, i mean, stalin was much more okay if it happened.

Speaker 2: If it's happened already and there is one man controlling everything, well, it's definitely not, at least in America, as brutal as Stalin was, or who else, mao or I guess you know it's not. It doesn't appear to be totalitarian right now.

Speaker 1: So here, at least in the United States right, but there's shades of it. Yeah, coming in, there's always there's always the future, and that's I think. I think something we can talk about in future podcast is where does this lead?

Speaker 2: and.

Speaker 2: I think just the way we have the podcast set up is like next week we can get into, continue to talk about Marx, but also get into now the interpretations of Marx and the application of Marx, that being Lenin, stalin, mao, and then we can talk even about liberalism a little bit in its relationship well, because there's certain things Marx didn't foresee, one being China, one being that, you know, the almost realization of his vision and the skewing of it as a result of when it when it, like you know, left his hands into the world's hands, so to speak, it became there were factors that he could never have imagined. Globalization was one. Further inequality, capitalists, capitalism's, one would say, deflecting of Marxism, and what that did to capitalism itself, or also, what we're basically talking about now, some of the co-opting of Marxism into capitalism and the effect that that has had as far as some thinkers think about it. So there's also Marxism delves into, you know, criticism, literary criticism, there's.

Speaker 2: So what I, what I'm amazed by is that this one guy, marx, and maybe a couple others angles and whatnot, primarily Marx, that his, the impact he's had, is probably one of the great influencers in Western civilization, at least in the last 300 years, because it's seeped into every area of academic life, pretty much every area of a political, the political sphere, you know, into art criticism, literary criticism, film criticism, architecture.

Speaker 2: Even there's this guy named loose, who we can talk about later in Germany, who started designing based on these theories of Marx, designing the buildings in a certain way that stripped off ornamentation, because ornamentation was in a manifestation of the, basically the aristocracy, versus this, the birth, the manifestation of oppression and the wasting of materials on all these ornate things that shouldn't be done because it's, you know, it's wasteful and it brings, and with that is wasted labor on these ornaments on a building, you know, so it's. I'm I'm shocked and I'm continually amazed by how this little old guy, right with this intense obsession with this ideology, he's creating, with his philosophy, that that had such an impact on the world yep, you gain an appreciation for them as intellectuals and thinkers and it breaks and it shatters some of the characterizations, that of these people that we've lived with.

Speaker 1: You know, marx is this evil, evil guy who came up with communism. You know, and doing a little research, do doing a little thinking and reflection and I'm conversing about it like we are now helps you appreciate the man in his, in his genius, regardless of how his thoughts were applied. I, like you're saying, once his theory is out there in the world, once his ideology or thought, it doesn't belong to him anymore. And I've heard artists talk about this and it goes back to what you're saying with these folks is once I wrote that song, it became theirs, it became the universes or what have you. Or once I wrote that book, it wasn't mine anymore.

Speaker 1: Because of various arguments, people read and interpret a book differently than the author ever intended it and that's great. But there's also the dark side. People start to apply your theories on the political side for their own power and greed and so forth. So bottom line is you and I and others are sitting here talking about Marx, reflecting on his works. That's because he was not only a driven person but also a genius when it comes to these type of things, or else we wouldn't be talking about it now. You could get into the conspiratorial side, like you're saying. Why is he presented to us vice other people? how is he able to ascend to some of these, you know, to the highest of political theory? we can get into that too. It might not be solely on genius, but it's certainly on destiny, because it happened, and so we talk about the likes of Napoleon and and Lenin and Stalin and Mao, and you can call them good, evil, bad.

Speaker 1: They've done evil things, but they weren't stupid, they were geniuses in their own right, in their own time and regardless of the sort of completeness or incompleteness of his, his ideas, there's germ things, germane.

Speaker 2: There, there's seeds that were in the work that other people throughout the century centuries could grab on to and develop in ways that he didn't intend or or even they could warp it like life, does you know?

Speaker 2: warp it and twist it in certain ways off into these branches that have elements of his ideas but are also combined with other other, newer ideas and whatnot. And so there's something that he said about that too is like. It's like a great seed that was planted for whatever better or worse or whatever that grew, this huge movement. That might even be an overall subversion of what he envisioned at the time. Do you know what I mean? It might be the evil ghost of what he thought, of what his original ideas were, but I don't know.

Speaker 1: I think I think, i think, just let me continue this, your straight thought here is. I mean that's. I guess that's life. I mean, yes, you're right, people took his ideas and adapted them to their own time and their own perspective, but he did the same. We opened this podcast up with Hagel, so he adapted some of Hagel's thoughts.

Speaker 1: Didn't agree with them all. Hagel did the same. Hagel was influenced by Rousseau And, of course, the ancients Rousseau was, we were all. All the philosophers were influenced by the ancients Socrates, plato and others But the ancients were influenced. So it's like this continual narrative, or at least this continual framework, this perspective on life, and there's competing frameworks. So I think Marx has taken on this kind of equality, this idealistic equality, liberty, fraternity type of thing. that has gone back, if you traced, probably till the beginning of time, and so yeah.

Speaker 2: With wokeism. You know this deep hatred for Marxism that's going on right now. That's tied because people tie it to social justice warriors, blm, wokeism, all of that sort of pseudo Marxism which some people feel it's pseudo Marxism, that it's not true Marxism. And the hatred for Marxism is actually unfair some people feel because the manifestation, the things that are claimed to be Marxism like wokeism, social justice warrior all of those are not actually Marxist or Marxist thoughts. You know. So we can get into that more.

Speaker 1: Yeah, i'll be excited because it goes back to well then, they're arguing for the theory of Marx and not the application of Marx. The application of Marx might not look anything like the theory of Marx, And again it goes back to what we were talking about. Once that theory is out there, it doesn't belong to you anymore, And I think wokeism is just a continuation of Marxism, of Communism, of Socialism, of even going back further to the Enlightenment, to the equality, liberty and fraternity.

Speaker 2: But maybe it needs to be pointed out, if it's the case that it's not a continuation of Marxism In fact, maybe it's a bastardization or a warping of Marxism or a warping of Marxism or a warping of Marxist thought And that it wouldn't be fair, if that's the case, to say that it's a link like a clean link.

Speaker 1: In other words, that it's a But Marxism in application will never be Marxism in theory, hmm, Is it? Okay, and I think even Marx would acknowledge that. Maybe, maybe, maybe not, i don't know, but Marxism is if you're arguing well, this is not Marxism.

Speaker 1: Well, of course it's not Marxism. Or, I mean, this is not Marxism's thought, This doesn't apply to what Marxism was in his theories and so forth. Yes, I know exactly, This is the actualization of Marxist theory. Because, well, let's say, we were to start all over and say, alright, everything else, everything that came after Marxism, communism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, that was all a bastardization. Well, what would it look like if we started over? Well, I would argue that you'd get Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, all over again. This is the natural progression. This is the synthesis of the dialectic. It's not the. It's not In this case, it's not the thesis which Marxism is. It is the synthesis of a combination of Marxism and the application of Marxism. The application could be the antithesis, let's say, or Leninism or whatever. This is the result. This is progressivism.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and just to push back a little bit is like. This is why a lot of Like the faulty. I guess the error in Marx is that there's a Like, a solution to the critique of capitalism. That's where he went wrong or that's the problem. But where his genius lies is in his critique of capitalism. That that's what's Like. If he had only stuck with that and not tried to come up with this pseudo type of realistic, romantic rise of the proletariat and that the real goal lies in his critique of capitalism. But like you said, that doesn't matter anymore. He wrote it. He wrote the theories and the plan, or whatever the pseudo plan, that the proletariat are going to rise and people ran with it.

Speaker 1: And he's also a victim. Even his own philosophy is a victim of his time and place where, as we mentioned earlier, it was at the height of the Industrial Revolution, where that didn't apply and could not apply in agricultural China where Mao was. So Mao had to adapt Marxist thought to his time and his place and his culture and his surrounding, which were the peasants. So he took and kind of deleted out the workers, the industrial workers, the factories which China didn't have on mass scale or even comparable to Germany or England. But he adapted the Marxist thought and changed it from the worker to the peasant and it was successful.

Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's funny how China has the most factories now. The supposed Now yeah that capitalism, the communism of China. It had the opposite effect, you would think, because it's created more factories there and more slave labor, so to speak, more proletariat than ever before.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and then? So Lenin and Stalin did the same. They are also shaped by their time and place and their culture. So it's not going to be the same. Marxist thought is not going to be the same, especially if you're trying to make it international.

Speaker 2: That's why I kind of lean more towards the idea that Marxism is co-opted by these forces that have a capitalist mind frame, really, or the next capitalism, like where they want more power, a state power, and where China I don't know where I'm going with that That it's like It's really behind it, is like an Uber capitalist mentality and it's a seizure of power on a level that, like in China, for example, marxists never could have dreamed of in the US.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

Speaker 2: Where the fusion of state and capitalism is what happened.

Speaker 1: And sticking with the dialectic theme is perhaps what we see today in China in particular. China, and perhaps soon here in the United States, is the synthesis of communism and capitalism, because the communist state today has many characteristics of capitalism, but is not capitalism as we've known it. It still has many characteristics of communism, but it does not share the same characteristics as communism as we've known in the past. So perhaps this is the progress that Hegel and Marx were alluding to. Perhaps, either way you want to take it, it's. Perhaps capitalism was the protagonist, communism was the antagonist, and what we have today is the synthesis of the two the super state, power, capitalistic society, whatever you want to call it. What do you think? I think that's a good ending.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and next week we'll get in more details of that because, like I mentioned, globalization, further inequality, china there's more to be talked about And then also Stalin, Lenin, russia, the Cold War all of that we can get into.

Speaker 1: Alright, any closing comments.

Speaker 2: I cannot wait to get into or at least read more about, read more of the work from 20th century Marxists, you know, like Marxist children, so to speak. Those are people like the Frankfurt School who were from Germany, came to the US before Nazi rise, because they're the really like the academic Marxists. They're different than the political, i mean, they oftentimes meld. They're the same one and the same.

Speaker 2: You could have a very political, academic, intellectual, but there's also ones who are strictly academic or scholarly Walter Benhamene, adorner, all these folks, raymond Williams, david Harvey, slava Zizek, there's all these people who carried Marxism into the 20th century and into the 21st century in ways, like we said, marx never imagined or even never thought of. And I want to get into them because they specifically get into culture, where you know I also appreciate Marx because of that attention to the physical world and cultures are part of that. The productions of film or art are all of the aspects of culture that these critics and writers and thinkers start fleshing out in the 20th century are really interesting. I've read some of them, but not in any great detail or really understanding. So I look forward to that for sure.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: What about you? any last closing?

Speaker 1: thoughts. Well, i open.

Speaker 2: I saw the emperor have you seen the emperor recently?

Speaker 1: I see it every day in life.

Speaker 2: Did he fall the other day, or is that's not the emperor?

Speaker 1: That is not even close to an emperor. I opened up with a quote from the emperor On Power. Our series is On Power, so I will finish a quote from the emperor On Power. I love power like a musician loves music. I saw the emperor for same old it. This is the Panopticon Marxism and Power. We will see you next week.