Thank you for this! I love this series. Disco Elysium, believe it or not, converted me into a full fledged Socialist. I'm not kidding. I lost my job during corona and was going through a semi-crisis. I downloaded this game on a whim and went in blind. It effing blew me away. I was reading an interview with the creative team and they recommended several books and movies which they used for inspiration, one being the book "The City and The City" by China Miéville. Loving the book I did some research on the author, China Miéville, who turns out to be a radical Socialist. To make a long story short I fell down a Socialist rabbit hole, the theories really blew my mind in a good way. Thanks to this game
Late one year to this comment, but had a very similar rabbit hole like experience with the Wire ten years ago. I was on a pretty crappy mental place after working on a call center for 2 years and just binge watched The Wire. It led me on a rabbit hole of deconstructing systems of opression as well as my own latent prejudices regarding systemic racism and haven't looked back since.
I think that your Disco Elysium series is my favourite of your work so far, and that's an extremely high bar to pass. Thank you for bringing a serious and loving critical lens to this masterpiece of a game! I see people talk about how the game's ending was a disappointing anti-climax, but I think it's really perfect. It hammers home the theme that in any situation there are forces at work that we might not know or understand and certainly can't control, that history and truth aren't just some kind of escape room or busy box where you can put all the pieces together and call it done.
I feel like some of the disconnect between the role of real-life cops and the members of RCM in the game may be due to the regional differences. Like, the image, and to a degree, the societal role, of an American cop is quite different to a member of the Soviet law-enforcement, which was, similarly to RCM, also name militia, and was born under similarly "confusing" circumstances in how much it was actually influenced by the common folks. And the influence of that can be felt, at least I feel like, across most of Eastern Europe, like Russia discarded the name "militia" only in 2011. This isn't to say there isn't a reason to call this game a bit too sympathetic to cops, or that Soviet cops were any good, more of a context real-life history that probably partially inspired the game.
In the beginning you talk about how people were getting lost in the first one. I felt that way too. I actually feel that way watching this one. I don’t think it’s 100% your fault though at least in my case. I keep getting distracted watching the gameplay and reading the text. Then I sort of start listening to your voice again and realize I got left behind. Gotta play this game when I get a new computer. Gonna try to review these in the future while only listening to your voice and not watching the video.
Yes! I get exactly what you mean. I had to rewind some parts due to getting distracted by the in-game text too. Finally I decided to just listen without watching (unless it seemed relevant) and I can attest to the clarity increasing significantly taking that approach.
Videos are a double edged sword in that way. On one hand, visual aids can help. On the other, I had like an hour of screen time to fill, so there's bits of gameplay in here that aren't exactly relevant to what I'm saying. There's definitely room for improvement on my end. Thank you for the feedback!
Held off on watching until I finished this game for myself (just did) and I thoroughly enjoyed your analysis! I too went the communard route and I loved that connecting with other revolutionaries led me to a book club.
Great vid. On the topic of what the game might be supressing or mystifying I think the detail that Kraz Mazov led the Graad revolution shows that the character is an amalgam between Karl Marx and perhaps a Lenin/Trotsky type figure. He is not only the creator of the ideology but carries out the bloodshed of the revolution. It is also worth mentioning that this universe lacks a Stalin type figure that establishes an inbred, mutated version of the communist ideology. This would leave the Disco Elysium world less traumatised by leftist projects. In the large scheme of things The Russian Revolution wasn't especially bloody or violent so it would be an event, but not an atrocity. In this way Elysium is a much more hopeful world than the one we are in. What I think is supressed here is precisely the outcome of the revolution, something that is difficult to deal with as a leftist and it also mystifies the figures of Lenin, Trotsky, Marx by creating a single person driving history, this might be due to the writer not wanting to create too much of a backstory, but the resulting figure is more akin to an Innocence than to an instrument of historical materialism.
Just finished the video (I was 10 minutes late to the premiere and had to rewind some parts) and I just have to say: wow. I was really looking forward to this and you did NOT disappoint. Absolutely fantastic video, one of your best ones for sure. Thank you so much. Keep up the great work!
What do you think of the mystical worldbuilding? The pale and its effects, the hole in the world, the Insulid's memory of history, the alien background of Dolores Dei, the Shiver and Inland Empire? Although I am not surprised, that a neo-marxist framework for analysis of texts does not give immediate impulse to go there, I am still a bit disapointed, as almost no analysis I have seen so far goes into the metaphorical weeds on this apsects.
I think you failed to understand the Deserter. You saw him only as a revolutionary class agent, not as a human being. He was conscripted to defend his home city at the age of 15. This tells us the military situation at the time was desperate. We know his role was that of a political commissar. That tells us his government was both insane and fanatical, since no 15 year old could possibly have the mental maturity to successfully carry out such a function. We know he was assigned to the sea fort and that he was the sole survivor due to an act of self preservation. He has obvious survivor's guilt due to not dying with his unit. He considers his enemies inhuman for killing the people he knew. From the way he talks it is obvious that his ideology is not a tool for understanding the world, but a secular religion that has sustained him through his many hard decades. Although he has had the continuous opportunity to rejoin ordinary society, he has instead chosen to remain separate and bitter on his island, because he is incapable of surviving without the crutch of his faith. In many ways he is stuck in the role he was assigned as a child, having never achieved psychological maturity. His analogies in the real world are the soldiers of Imperial Japan who refused to end their personal war for years because they could not handle peace.
51:55 - END: The only reason the government is pumping money into the economy, is to protect their wealth, and the economic status of the rich. That includes the people who consume their wealth such as the unemployed, small businesses, and other 2 economic classes. What has been giving for a long time now, is the number of wealthy individuals under capitalism that could be sustained and considered rich. As businesses close, more and more people lose economic stability. Thus the value of even having wealth becomes less and less valuable if nobody can purchase it. The only way capitalism could ever sustain itself, is if the government set up laws to limit wealth, spread excess wealth to the poor and middle class, and make money un-necessary to obtain food, water, shelter, and medical aide . All these things go against a free market. The paradox is found right there. If a free market needs to be regulated to work, how can it ever be free? Why does such a paradoxical system need to be a mechanism for human survival? And more importantly, what are the first steps we can take to move towards a new direction? Spoiler alert. It's Socialism, Creating a UBI, and re-tooling the free market into a humans first market. Another excellent video NMC.
I'm not sure you know this, but at the beginning you mention how you gentrified those people's homes because you were "confined by the story." Ironically you are actually NOT confined into doing that. As I understand it there are several other options (one of which I did), requiring high skill check to become available or by having conversations with characters at key times. I think if you have high enough skill points in some detective type skill, and talk to relevant people, you can realize that Evart's plan is completely predatory. He does indeed intend to build housing there, but the contract they sign is simply theft with extra steps. I think you learn this from reading the fine print of the contract. What you can do to avoid this outcome is get a fake signiture. For instance I got Doom Spiral Guy to sign it, and because he actually doesn't own one of the homes it makes the contract void. You still mail it, and Evart still helps you find your gun, so you trick him into thinking you did it correctly. Additionally, you don't even need the gun to complete the game, but you do for the "good ending" of having your police superiors more happy with you.
dave i love you but your french is killing me. *oi* is pronounced like 'wah': *savoir* is 'sav-wahr'. *toi* = 'twah'. you put so much effort and research into your political theory and scriptwriting that it's a punch in the ears to hear *la langue de la guillotine* treated this way.
My simple interpretation of "reactionary" in this context would be: "giving up working FOR your own ideology and instead only working AGAINST an opposing ideology". When you're not acting on your own ideology, but reacting to a differing one. But I could be way off here...
Good videos, but just lol if you didn't get the commie revolution ending on your playthrough. (Also, that's not how you pronounce "savoir faire." It's french.)
I wish economic class was a unifying concept. It just isn't. The problem with a traditional communist lens is an assumption that only economic divisions exist,when many other designations have an impact on our lives. I'm not even really considered "working class" despite economic overlap. I'm considered an "art queer". In fact,this designation would remain even if I inherited many millions. Functionally,one's sociopolitical designation is always an intersection of economic and cultural factors. Hence,"working class" is most often applied to white, straight cis men with physical labor jobs. Designations such as "migrant" and "art queer" are functionally held separate. The myth of unified class culture is so utterly false that believing in it would almost certainly result in my violent demise.
One's class position is a consequence of their relation to production. Despite what others say, if you do not own the means of production and are therefore relegated to laboring in order to generate profits for another party, you are part of the working class. Conversely, if you own the means of production and generate profits based on the labor of others, you're part of the capitalist class. It has nothing to do with how you identify as an individual and everything to do with your relationship to production. Are there other cultural factors that effect people's lives? Of course.
@@NightmareMasterclass That's correct,so far as it goes. But there's an ambiguous nature to modern information age economics that Marx couldn't have foreseen. For instance,Anne Hathaway is a rich movie star, but she doesn't own Warner Bros. So where is she in Marx's binary? In an age when a copyright is worth more than any other creative asset,what are the means of production? If you gave Amazon employees the entirety of those assets,they still wouldn't have the core of Amazon's economic power,since that's built on brand identity and agreements between wealthy individuals. Marx's analysis was applied to a world that has changed allot in the years since he lived. His world was factories and the people who owned or worked them. Now, that's going to be robots. It's cultural knowledge that informs so much of how I live,that I might avoid a union in favor of a Hathaway fan club. Largely because neither the rich or the working class are on a team in the way Marx imagined.
You're correct that the world has changed in many ways since Marx's day. But the points you raise can be accounted for in a marxist framework. For starters, class society is not itself totally binary. There are other classes, e.g. small proprietors and the petty bourgeoisie. They're just not the drivers of the economy, at least not when the economy is stable. This was true in Marx's day and it's still true. However, fascism can be understood as a petty bourgeois counter revolution that occurs when capitalism undergoes a crisis. It is the ideology of small businesses owners who seek to scapegoat some group, "elites" or immigrants, for the problems created by capitalism. In the wake of a failed workers revolution in Germany, the petty bourgeoisie were able to seize power and commit horrendous acts. Intellectual property is an interesting one. Marx's understanding is basically that the entire concept of intellectual property is the monopolization of ideas, so it's inherently a drain on the economy, just like other forms of "rentier" capital (the same is essentially true of landlords). Marx doesn't claim that class must be a unifying force at all times. But he does say that all class societies have ended in either one class overthrowing another or the "common ruin of the contending classes." In other words, if workers don't organize along class lines, society itself is bound to collapse due to the inner contradictions of capitalism. As they say, it's socialism or barbarism.
@@NightmareMasterclass Those are excellent points. I was certainly raised by petty burgeoise. What would you say is the ethical way of dealing with economic success? If one wakes up and suddenly has more than others, what should they do?
That's a tough one. I don't feel qualified to tell you what to do from an ethical standpoint. I can barely manage my own life. What I can say is, Engels was the son of a factory owner. His patronage ensured that Marx's works would proliferate. It's not as though people with money are evil by default. Maybe try to find a cause close to your heart, something local, and see what you can do to help.
Capitalism in and of itself isn't the problem. In true free-market capitalism, the businesses which best serves the needs of the market are prosperous and those that don't are doomed to fail. This is not the version of capitalism that is currently dominant in america, it's crony capitalism. After the 2008 financial crisis, businesses that should've failed under free market conditions did not. Why? because the obama administration deemed them as "too big too fail". This lead to a bailout of the very companies responsible for the crisis. What could we have done instead? Let the companies fail but bailout the people affected, we could've let the banks die but made sure the people with savings accounts were made whole. This would have allowed them to redistribute thier money to institutions who had ethical and structurally safe business practices. So why wasn't this done? because these corrupt institutions who caused the economy to collapse are bankrolling the campaigns of the politicians who are in power. It's a mutual cycle of corruption. Politicians get elected with the backing of corrupt institutions, and then they protect the interests of those institutions in order to be bankrolled again in the next election cycle. This goes on in both parties. Money needs to be seperated from politics in order for capitalism to be "non-toxic" Once that happens, businesses will not be the ones running the show, and politicians can actually regulate the market like they are supposed to with the interests of the people in mind.
There is no pure form of capitalism which is separate from the ills we associate with contemporary society. It's a fantasy. Capitalism requires a state to enforce property law. Wealthy people have always essentially controlled the state under capitalism. The founding fathers of the US didn't even grant people without property the right to vote. It's a dictatorship of the capitalist class, and it has been from the very beginning.
@@NightmareMasterclass Thanks for the reply, but if socialism truly is the best alternative, then why are the countries who practice it not as successful as capitalist countries? Even china started seeing more success after Mao when they started incorporating more capitalist policies by allowing semi private businesses to compete with each other. Is it fair to say that capitalism would be okay as long as there are policies that socialzed healthcare and housing + food? I guess what I can't wrap my head around is the idea that redistributing money from companies who actively create value in the economy, to people who (on average) only consume products is ultimately good for society.
You seem to be operating with a very limited understanding of what socialism is, which I don't fault you for. It's a very common misconception. "I guess what I can't wrap my head around is the idea that redistributing money from companies who actively create value in the economy, to people who (on average) only consume products is ultimately good for society." What you have described is liberalism with a welfare state. I would not advocate for "redistribution" as an end in and of itself. I may do so in a given scenario to improve the lives of the working class. But it is not the end goal. You say companies "create value." This is called begging the question. It's a fallacy. Google it if you're not familiar. Essentially, you are making a circular argument. What Marx sought to do was get to the bottom of how economic value in the capitalist system is created. To simplify matters for our purposes, what he found was that our entire system depends on growth based on the productive activity of workers. This activity creates a surplus which is appropriated by the capitalists who have advanced their money towards the whole process. If you have a problem with the Marxist view, this would be the thing to focus on, not China or the USSR, or whatever country liberals are harping on at the moment. First and foremost, I advocate for the abolition of the capitalist arrangement. In essence, I advocate for the elimination of this type of economic value creation as the goal of our generalized mode of production. What replaces it is an open question, and there are many good proposals which you can google. It would suffice to say that the model of present day China has not successfully eliminated this arrangement, nor did the USSR. While we may learn some things from these systems, they are not models I would advocate moving forward.
Thank you for this! I love this series. Disco Elysium, believe it or not, converted me into a full fledged Socialist. I'm not kidding. I lost my job during corona and was going through a semi-crisis. I downloaded this game on a whim and went in blind. It effing blew me away. I was reading an interview with the creative team and they recommended several books and movies which they used for inspiration, one being the book "The City and The City" by China Miéville. Loving the book I did some research on the author, China Miéville, who turns out to be a radical Socialist. To make a long story short I fell down a Socialist rabbit hole, the theories really blew my mind in a good way. Thanks to this game
This comment made my day! That's awesome.
Late one year to this comment, but had a very similar rabbit hole like experience with the Wire ten years ago. I was on a pretty crappy mental place after working on a call center for 2 years and just binge watched The Wire. It led me on a rabbit hole of deconstructing systems of opression as well as my own latent prejudices regarding systemic racism and haven't looked back since.
I think that your Disco Elysium series is my favourite of your work so far, and that's an extremely high bar to pass. Thank you for bringing a serious and loving critical lens to this masterpiece of a game!
I see people talk about how the game's ending was a disappointing anti-climax, but I think it's really perfect. It hammers home the theme that in any situation there are forces at work that we might not know or understand and certainly can't control, that history and truth aren't just some kind of escape room or busy box where you can put all the pieces together and call it done.
I feel like some of the disconnect between the role of real-life cops and the members of RCM in the game may be due to the regional differences. Like, the image, and to a degree, the societal role, of an American cop is quite different to a member of the Soviet law-enforcement, which was, similarly to RCM, also name militia, and was born under similarly "confusing" circumstances in how much it was actually influenced by the common folks. And the influence of that can be felt, at least I feel like, across most of Eastern Europe, like Russia discarded the name "militia" only in 2011.
This isn't to say there isn't a reason to call this game a bit too sympathetic to cops, or that Soviet cops were any good, more of a context real-life history that probably partially inspired the game.
In the beginning you talk about how people were getting lost in the first one. I felt that way too. I actually feel that way watching this one. I don’t think it’s 100% your fault though at least in my case. I keep getting distracted watching the gameplay and reading the text. Then I sort of start listening to your voice again and realize I got left behind. Gotta play this game when I get a new computer. Gonna try to review these in the future while only listening to your voice and not watching the video.
Yes! I get exactly what you mean. I had to rewind some parts due to getting distracted by the in-game text too. Finally I decided to just listen without watching (unless it seemed relevant) and I can attest to the clarity increasing significantly taking that approach.
Videos are a double edged sword in that way. On one hand, visual aids can help. On the other, I had like an hour of screen time to fill, so there's bits of gameplay in here that aren't exactly relevant to what I'm saying. There's definitely room for improvement on my end. Thank you for the feedback!
Nightmare Masterclass I look at it less as a problem and more as proof that the games visuals and writing are completely engrossing.
Held off on watching until I finished this game for myself (just did) and I thoroughly enjoyed your analysis!
I too went the communard route and I loved that connecting with other revolutionaries led me to a book club.
Just finished the Final Cut and I'm addicted to analysis videos that cover it. Yours are the best I've seen yet!
Great vid. On the topic of what the game might be supressing or mystifying I think the detail that Kraz Mazov led the Graad revolution shows that the character is an amalgam between Karl Marx and perhaps a Lenin/Trotsky type figure. He is not only the creator of the ideology but carries out the bloodshed of the revolution. It is also worth mentioning that this universe lacks a Stalin type figure that establishes an inbred, mutated version of the communist ideology. This would leave the Disco Elysium world less traumatised by leftist projects. In the large scheme of things The Russian Revolution wasn't especially bloody or violent so it would be an event, but not an atrocity. In this way Elysium is a much more hopeful world than the one we are in. What I think is supressed here is precisely the outcome of the revolution, something that is difficult to deal with as a leftist and it also mystifies the figures of Lenin, Trotsky, Marx by creating a single person driving history, this might be due to the writer not wanting to create too much of a backstory, but the resulting figure is more akin to an Innocence than to an instrument of historical materialism.
Just finished the video (I was 10 minutes late to the premiere and had to rewind some parts) and I just have to say: wow.
I was really looking forward to this and you did NOT disappoint. Absolutely fantastic video, one of your best ones for sure. Thank you so much.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it!
Your music is HARD CORE TO THE MEGA!
What do you think of the mystical worldbuilding? The pale and its effects, the hole in the world, the Insulid's memory of history, the alien background of Dolores Dei, the Shiver and Inland Empire? Although I am not surprised, that a neo-marxist framework for analysis of texts does not give immediate impulse to go there, I am still a bit disapointed, as almost no analysis I have seen so far goes into the metaphorical weeds on this apsects.
This was a really illuminating analysis. Thank you for putting these 2 videos together
just finished the video (missed the start of the premier) great as usual!
Thank you!
- it is possible to succeed without forcing to sign.... u can either take the wrong signatures from the drunk or forge in your home.
I think you failed to understand the Deserter. You saw him only as a revolutionary class agent, not as a human being. He was conscripted to defend his home city at the age of 15. This tells us the military situation at the time was desperate. We know his role was that of a political commissar. That tells us his government was both insane and fanatical, since no 15 year old could possibly have the mental maturity to successfully carry out such a function. We know he was assigned to the sea fort and that he was the sole survivor due to an act of self preservation. He has obvious survivor's guilt due to not dying with his unit. He considers his enemies inhuman for killing the people he knew. From the way he talks it is obvious that his ideology is not a tool for understanding the world, but a secular religion that has sustained him through his many hard decades. Although he has had the continuous opportunity to rejoin ordinary society, he has instead chosen to remain separate and bitter on his island, because he is incapable of surviving without the crutch of his faith. In many ways he is stuck in the role he was assigned as a child, having never achieved psychological maturity. His analogies in the real world are the soldiers of Imperial Japan who refused to end their personal war for years because they could not handle peace.
51:55 - END:
The only reason the government is pumping money into the economy, is to protect their wealth, and the economic status of the rich. That includes the people who consume their wealth such as the unemployed, small businesses, and other 2 economic classes.
What has been giving for a long time now, is the number of wealthy individuals under capitalism that could be sustained and considered rich.
As businesses close, more and more people lose economic stability. Thus the value of even having wealth becomes less and less valuable if nobody can purchase it.
The only way capitalism could ever sustain itself, is if the government set up laws to limit wealth, spread excess wealth to the poor and middle class, and make money un-necessary to obtain food, water, shelter, and medical aide .
All these things go against a free market. The paradox is found right there.
If a free market needs to be regulated to work, how can it ever be free? Why does such a paradoxical system need to be a mechanism for human survival? And more importantly, what are the first steps we can take to move towards a new direction?
Spoiler alert. It's Socialism, Creating a UBI, and re-tooling the free market into a humans first market.
Another excellent video NMC.
Thank you!
Finally!!!
I'm not sure you know this, but at the beginning you mention how you gentrified those people's homes because you were "confined by the story." Ironically you are actually NOT confined into doing that. As I understand it there are several other options (one of which I did), requiring high skill check to become available or by having conversations with characters at key times.
I think if you have high enough skill points in some detective type skill, and talk to relevant people, you can realize that Evart's plan is completely predatory. He does indeed intend to build housing there, but the contract they sign is simply theft with extra steps. I think you learn this from reading the fine print of the contract.
What you can do to avoid this outcome is get a fake signiture. For instance I got Doom Spiral Guy to sign it, and because he actually doesn't own one of the homes it makes the contract void. You still mail it, and Evart still helps you find your gun, so you trick him into thinking you did it correctly.
Additionally, you don't even need the gun to complete the game, but you do for the "good ending" of having your police superiors more happy with you.
dave i love you but your french is killing me. *oi* is pronounced like 'wah': *savoir* is 'sav-wahr'. *toi* = 'twah'.
you put so much effort and research into your political theory and scriptwriting that it's a punch in the ears to hear *la langue de la guillotine* treated this way.
guilty as charged, haha. I'll work on it!
Underrated vids
Clap...clap...clap...clap...
*Noice reeeed" 🤭
Awesome
what does "reactionary" mean in the context of this video?
My simple interpretation of "reactionary" in this context would be: "giving up working FOR your own ideology and instead only working AGAINST an opposing ideology". When you're not acting on your own ideology, but reacting to a differing one.
But I could be way off here...
@@GamerKey91 hm!
Never thought of it in that sense, a welcome interpretation to say the least.
Good videos, but just lol if you didn't get the commie revolution ending on your playthrough. (Also, that's not how you pronounce "savoir faire." It's french.)
don't care, didn't ask
>trying to learn how to be biggest comunism builder
>reactionary gameplay everywhere
I wish economic class was a unifying concept. It just isn't. The problem with a traditional communist lens is an assumption that only economic divisions exist,when many other designations have an impact on our lives. I'm not even really considered "working class" despite economic overlap. I'm considered an "art queer". In fact,this designation would remain even if I inherited many millions. Functionally,one's sociopolitical designation is always an intersection of economic and cultural factors. Hence,"working class" is most often applied to white, straight cis men with physical labor jobs. Designations such as "migrant" and "art queer" are functionally held separate. The myth of unified class culture is so utterly false that believing in it would almost certainly result in my violent demise.
One's class position is a consequence of their relation to production. Despite what others say, if you do not own the means of production and are therefore relegated to laboring in order to generate profits for another party, you are part of the working class. Conversely, if you own the means of production and generate profits based on the labor of others, you're part of the capitalist class. It has nothing to do with how you identify as an individual and everything to do with your relationship to production. Are there other cultural factors that effect people's lives? Of course.
@@NightmareMasterclass That's correct,so far as it goes. But there's an ambiguous nature to modern information age economics that Marx couldn't have foreseen. For instance,Anne Hathaway is a rich movie star, but she doesn't own Warner Bros. So where is she in Marx's binary? In an age when a copyright is worth more than any other creative asset,what are the means of production? If you gave Amazon employees the entirety of those assets,they still wouldn't have the core of Amazon's economic power,since that's built on brand identity and agreements between wealthy individuals. Marx's analysis was applied to a world that has changed allot in the years since he lived. His world was factories and the people who owned or worked them. Now, that's going to be robots. It's cultural knowledge that informs so much of how I live,that I might avoid a union in favor of a Hathaway fan club. Largely because neither the rich or the working class are on a team in the way Marx imagined.
You're correct that the world has changed in many ways since Marx's day. But the points you raise can be accounted for in a marxist framework. For starters, class society is not itself totally binary. There are other classes, e.g. small proprietors and the petty bourgeoisie. They're just not the drivers of the economy, at least not when the economy is stable. This was true in Marx's day and it's still true. However, fascism can be understood as a petty bourgeois counter revolution that occurs when capitalism undergoes a crisis. It is the ideology of small businesses owners who seek to scapegoat some group, "elites" or immigrants, for the problems created by capitalism. In the wake of a failed workers revolution in Germany, the petty bourgeoisie were able to seize power and commit horrendous acts.
Intellectual property is an interesting one. Marx's understanding is basically that the entire concept of intellectual property is the monopolization of ideas, so it's inherently a drain on the economy, just like other forms of "rentier" capital (the same is essentially true of landlords).
Marx doesn't claim that class must be a unifying force at all times. But he does say that all class societies have ended in either one class overthrowing another or the "common ruin of the contending classes." In other words, if workers don't organize along class lines, society itself is bound to collapse due to the inner contradictions of capitalism. As they say, it's socialism or barbarism.
@@NightmareMasterclass Those are excellent points. I was certainly raised by petty burgeoise. What would you say is the ethical way of dealing with economic success? If one wakes up and suddenly has more than others, what should they do?
That's a tough one. I don't feel qualified to tell you what to do from an ethical standpoint. I can barely manage my own life. What I can say is, Engels was the son of a factory owner. His patronage ensured that Marx's works would proliferate. It's not as though people with money are evil by default. Maybe try to find a cause close to your heart, something local, and see what you can do to help.
I love your analysis generally but please please never pronounce French like that
Capitalism in and of itself isn't the problem.
In true free-market capitalism, the businesses which best serves the needs of the market are prosperous and those that don't are doomed to fail.
This is not the version of capitalism that is currently dominant in america, it's crony capitalism.
After the 2008 financial crisis, businesses that should've failed under free market conditions did not.
Why? because the obama administration deemed them as "too big too fail".
This lead to a bailout of the very companies responsible for the crisis.
What could we have done instead? Let the companies fail but bailout the people affected, we could've let the banks die but made sure the people with savings accounts were made whole.
This would have allowed them to redistribute thier money to institutions who had ethical and structurally safe business practices.
So why wasn't this done? because these corrupt institutions who caused the economy to collapse are bankrolling the campaigns of the politicians who are in power.
It's a mutual cycle of corruption.
Politicians get elected with the backing of corrupt institutions, and then they protect the interests of those institutions in order to be bankrolled again in the next election cycle.
This goes on in both parties.
Money needs to be seperated from politics in order for capitalism to be "non-toxic"
Once that happens, businesses will not be the ones running the show, and politicians can actually regulate the market like they are supposed to with the interests of the people in mind.
bzzt wrong
@@NightmareMasterclass care to explain?
There is no pure form of capitalism which is separate from the ills we associate with contemporary society. It's a fantasy. Capitalism requires a state to enforce property law. Wealthy people have always essentially controlled the state under capitalism. The founding fathers of the US didn't even grant people without property the right to vote. It's a dictatorship of the capitalist class, and it has been from the very beginning.
@@NightmareMasterclass Thanks for the reply, but if socialism truly is the best alternative, then why are the countries who practice it not as successful as capitalist countries?
Even china started seeing more success after Mao when they started incorporating more capitalist policies by allowing semi private businesses to compete with each other.
Is it fair to say that capitalism would be okay as long as there are policies that socialzed healthcare and housing + food?
I guess what I can't wrap my head around is the idea that redistributing money from companies who actively create value in the economy, to people who (on average) only consume products is ultimately good for society.
You seem to be operating with a very limited understanding of what socialism is, which I don't fault you for. It's a very common misconception.
"I guess what I can't wrap my head around is the idea that redistributing money from companies who actively create value in the economy, to people who (on average) only consume products is ultimately good for society."
What you have described is liberalism with a welfare state. I would not advocate for "redistribution" as an end in and of itself. I may do so in a given scenario to improve the lives of the working class. But it is not the end goal.
You say companies "create value." This is called begging the question. It's a fallacy. Google it if you're not familiar. Essentially, you are making a circular argument. What Marx sought to do was get to the bottom of how economic value in the capitalist system is created. To simplify matters for our purposes, what he found was that our entire system depends on growth based on the productive activity of workers. This activity creates a surplus which is appropriated by the capitalists who have advanced their money towards the whole process. If you have a problem with the Marxist view, this would be the thing to focus on, not China or the USSR, or whatever country liberals are harping on at the moment.
First and foremost, I advocate for the abolition of the capitalist arrangement. In essence, I advocate for the elimination of this type of economic value creation as the goal of our generalized mode of production. What replaces it is an open question, and there are many good proposals which you can google. It would suffice to say that the model of present day China has not successfully eliminated this arrangement, nor did the USSR. While we may learn some things from these systems, they are not models I would advocate moving forward.