Why Socialism? (A Quick Introduction)
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- Want to make more, work less, spend cheaper, eat better and free the third world? This is "Why Socialism", a brief explainer on why you should be a socialist.
There's two classes in society, not three, not five not divided by how much you make or own, but by your relationship to society. The working class has no ownership over the means of production but they do have time, energy and labour, so they sell this labour for money in order to live. The capitalist class own the means of production, the factories, textiles, farms, housing, construction and so on, so they don't need to work because they can simply give the means of production to labourers, pay them for their time and keep the excess.
There is no middle class, your monetary status, the size of your house doesn't matter, if you survive on money worked for with labour and not ownership of property, you are working class. We have more in common with the homeless or the Palestinians or the queer than we do with the rich in our own country.
Martha works at a factory producing shoes, each pair of shoes costs $100 to sell and she makes minimum wage at $20 an hour. The capitalist gives her the machines, the material, the fabric, all of which he didn't make, and Martha makes 5 pairs of shoes an hour, working a 10 hour shift. Martha has used the means of production to create 50 pairs of shoes. Her 10 hour shift pays her $200, and yet 50 pairs of $100 shoes is $5,000? Where's the rest of the money going?
Well of course there's costs for materials, some goes to paying to paying shipping fees and warehouse workers and HR, but the remaining $4,800 mostly goes right back to the capitalist.
The capitalist class did not create the shoes, the factory building, the sewing machines, the fabrics or weave fibre, the capitalist class doesn't even manage Martha or write the checks, they hire someone else to do that. Yet, despite giving nothing to society, they are given the money that Martha created and instead of calling this theft, they call it "profit". When they aren't stealing from Martha for a profit, they create more profit by driving up prices of products for us or spending less on safety equipment.
Martha makes 10 shoes an hour but when she needs to buy a pair of shoes it takes 5 hours of her paycheck to afford it.
Martha has her $200 where she probably doesn't even spend it all on herself, a days groceries might take up $20, a days rent and transport to work might eat up more of it and god forbid she have a medical expense like the $80 I have to spend monthly on medication. At the end of all this, Martha might have $20 a day leftover to spend on herself and that gets taxed by the government.
People say they hate socialism because their taxes will go up, but no, that's capitalism, taxes go up for us workers because the rich don't pay their fair share.
This is the capitalist system.
How can a person reach adulthood with this level of naivety and lack of critical thinking? So many holes in the logic here that I don't even know where to start!
How are you empirical and a pragmatist and yet hate empirical math and any sense of optimism. You deserve better, you deserve a world that loves you
You are describing centralized planning, which was tried in most communist states in the early 20th century.
This central planning infrastructure has been proven to be non functional.
You see, as a system of any kind (economic or otherwise) becomes more centralized, its ability to deal with rapid shifts in need suffers drastically.
The reason that capitalism stays on top is because no matter what happens, capitalism can keep things running, at its horrific cost.
Capitalism is decentralized, while your proposed version of communism is incredibly centralized, giving it a singular point of failure for bad actor or enemies of the state to attack.
The soviet union famously attempted to protect this centralized failure point with bureaucracy and authoritarianism. which honestly, were probably the best ways to preserve the economic system. ( It was also an horrifically inhuman system that eventually engendered its own downfall.)
We've seen enough to know that centralized planning doesn't work, mostly because the only way to preserve a centrally planned economy is through authoritarianism and the kind of slow bureaucracy that makes reacting to individual needs on the ground level impossible.
If you want to propose an economic system to replace capitalism, you have to make sure it is as quick to react to economic needs as capitalism, and decentralized enough to defend itself from bad actors both foreign and domestic, without having to institute an authoritarian legal system to protect its integrity.
If it cant do those 2 things properly, then it cannot exist, and if it can do both in a way that solves the problems you have with capitalism, then it will be inevitable.
Regardless, the system you proposed is doomed to failure if you try it, for the previously described reasons.
1. Who works out what actually needs to be produced in these worker-owned factories?
2. How is it determined which workers are or are not pulling their weight, and what are the consequences, and who enforces them?
3. Why do you base Soviet caloric intake only on the most optimistic data (FAO), when even the USSR's own Goskomstat data clearly shows the real situation was much worse? Convenient to lie by omission?
Just a starting point. There are tonnes of other issues here.
1 & 2: same way capitalism does, lol, when did I say to abolish the manager?
3: because this is a 5 minute introductory video by someone with 700 subs expecting it to get 30 views and not an academic piece where nuance like that needs to be explained, if you want analysis like that you can read books instead of watching UA-cam
@ThankYouEel if that's the case then why did you post the video? When you upload videos to UA-cam you subject yourself to scrutiny.
You should know that, and expect people to challenge your philosophies. If you can't then you should expect to hear ppl just say, Communism sux!!! Which it does but I'd rather have a discussion about capitalism vs communism instead of just calling each other names and stuff.
Oh, and if your argument is "Read a book" or "Google it" then it tells me you don't fully understand it yourself and probably should be making these videos.
@@casswhiskey 1. The manager is NOT the way that a capitalist business determines what it should produce, my friend. I am beginning to think you have no idea how basic economics works (not surprising given your stance on policy). Try again.
2. Oh, the manager decides who is or is not pulling their weight? Sounds like a great system. We all want to be managers then of course. Who decides that? Also what is to stop him just being bribed every day of his life, since he picks winners and losers?
3. Fine, we can leave this point out of this short form discussion, but let it suffice to say I am unconvinced.
4. You never answered my other question in 2. about what the consequences are and who enforces them?
Rent is taxes, exorbident food prices are taxes, its just that they come from the government of a corporation
1:23 ok, and? the owner (not a capitalist since capitalism is a communist misinterpretation of free trade) took all the risk with the factory. Martha took almost none in getting the job.
i love how you made "capitalist" be something else since you do understand perfectly what a capitalist is
@@gabrielsolon8491 I didn't make capitalism into anything different from what it really is and always had been. Not my fault Marx didn't know what he was talking about but had to convince a bunch of people to pay his bills.
Your example is flawed. Just look at a company's income statement or financials before anything and don't cherry pick. Let's use Nike just like your video as an example.
Nike's profit margin are roughly 10%, you can stretch it out for 10+ years. This means that every $100 dollar in shoes or whatever they sell, Nike's owner only gets $10. Furthermore, these corporations grow and provide more jobs. They use that $10 to produce more factories or innovate stuff or perhaps give some back to shareholder's who are the reason that Martha even has a job. Cost of running a business is very high and more so to grow it.
In socialism, there will be no growth as workers gets those $10. No more money to grow and provide more jobs for the future. This is because most workers, like in this world, most people are not meant to be business owners.
Capitalism transfers money to people that can provide value more to the world. It flows money more efficiently to people that can change the world.
Simple.
Capitalism grows the pie, although some has bigger than others. Quality of life increase, just that there is more inequality, but overall everyone improves.
Socialism split the pie so everyone is equal and no growth. Quality of life overall stagnates.
"In socialism, there will be no growth as workers gets those $10." Based on track record of some market socialism like Yugoslavia under Tito, in practice the members of working cooperative would rather keep that $10 within company. Though they would try to hog it for themselves and would be picky about new members, at best picking kids of retiring prior members. (Yes, they would try to be shrewd capitalist pretending to play by rules of socialism)
@@useodyseeorbitchute9450 never knew about this haha. clearly human are incentivized and by nature to be greedy. capitalism use greed to benefit others. just that the ones at the top are benefitting more, but generally everyone moves up, but top ones move faster
In general this is a good overveiw of socialism exept for your anylisis of the soviet union which I think is fairly misguided.
Id say generally marxist leninism isn't good marxism because it gives too much powet to an easily corrupted vanguard
If you own 0,001% of the shoe company, but basically all your income is from your work at the shoe factory are you working class or capitalist? At what percentage do you become a capitalist?
When you have a workers state owning all means of production why would they pay the workers any more than necessary when they now have a complete monopoly whereas in a capitalist free market workers can negotiate with many different companies?
If all value "created by the workers" goes back to the workers does that mean politicians and factory managers don't get paid since they don't produce anything?
How would investment work? Would the state buy new tools for the workers or would the workers vote on it?
How is the value stolen when they chose who to work for? If the capitalist hadn't invested in the factory the worker would not produce any value after all.
If you have a centralized state controlling all of the economy (as I believe you are promoting) how do you solve the information problem? The problem where without prices you don't know what would be best for the economy to use. For example if you have to build a railway, but a mountain is in the way, do you use engineers to go through the mountain or do you build more rail to go around it. With prices it's easy because you do what's cheaper, and therefore what was in more excess in the economy, which is the best choice for the collective, meanwhile a centralized state doesn't know which is more efficient.
Great questions comrade there are plenty of books answering these questions as this is just an introduction to the concept of surplus value. :)
@@casswhiskey
Can you give the name of the books plz?
Sure! I'll make some reccomendations when I'm home
@@casswhiskey "there are plenty of books answering these questions" So which lesson did you learn ex. from "Economy of deficits" describing late day of Marxism-Leninism mismanagement of central planning in Hungary?
@@jommydavi2197 So I highly reccomend David Graeber especially Bullshit Jobs for the ways in which a lot of the work we do is meaningless and how we can increase leisure time. The book says we can work 1/3rd as hard on global food production and still feed the whole world if we had the planning for it.
for the questions the original commentor asked about owning fractions of companies and such, those are mostly meaningless hypotheticals to complicate this introductory video, if you understand this videos basics which come from Capital, the Communist Manifesto and conversations with my comrades then you'll be able to answer easily these distractions like "will politicians and factory managers not get paid", right now under capitalism we can prove those jobs create value because if those jobs weren't profitable we wouldn't have them. For example, it's worth the investment in garbage disposal because it saves us money in street cleaning, and the existence of these jobs under capitalism in some way proves they would exist under socialism since they *do* produce value.
By the time the original commentor is sardonically asking "When you have a workers state owning all means of production why would they pay the workers any more than necessary when they now have a complete monopoly" you realise how ridiculous this is, I literally say in this video that wages go up under collective ownership with the math to prove it, why would the workers who own the factory underpay themselves who work in it? Where would the excess go? Into a big pit? What's this guy talking about!
Imperialism: Highest Stage of Capitalism by Lenin talks on investment a lot but since the goal of investment is speculation it would be different under socialism. The original commentor acts as if they haven't heard the word "funding" and only investing is possible, I would reccomend finding lectures on youtube by Michael Parenti and also reading up on unequal exchange.
For the commentor's point on the railway, this isn't a book, but there is math. The solutino to that is to just do the math, shockingly econmics involving money can be mathematically calculated, lol. Unsure why this guy thinks price is gonna change so heavily under socialism we have to redo math. I reccomend Terry Eagleton's "Marx Was Right" which is a half-sarcastic refute of 7 popular anti-socialist arguments and Marx: A Beginner's Guide by Andrew Collier is a very great and elucidating book about the very basic concepts explained in this video but elaborated on, with many of the original commentor's points addressed. This is unrelated to the comment but "Communism and the family" by Alexandra Kollontai is my personal favourite communist essay so I'll mention that anyway if you want a quick read, you can find it online just by googling and it'll take you 15 minutes. Happy reading comrade!
They play the song "which side are you on" at the end as if every single one of those union men wouldn't have mogged the shit out of him before laughing him out of town.
whos he
Martha wouldn't even have a job if not for the capitalist.
shed be a slave to the employer if it was up to him
@@gabrielsolon8491 not exactly, if this is a developed country, then having everyone enslaved would mean nobody would buy the shoes.
wrong
@@cowboy4378 Not everyone, just their employees
No one says it isn't a step up from feudalism, but you need to move on to better systems.
By your logic, a slave should thank their owner for feeding them more food than yesterday. Get out of this mindset that you should be grateful to have the opportunity to serve those richer than you, simply because they're richer.
Nice try, pinko. Owning my labor means owning all of it, being able to produce wealth with it, and being able to freely exchange it for goods and services
Agreed comrade!
@@casswhiskey You believe in private property? That’s what I’m referring to
I believe in personal property of course!
@@casswhiskey if you believe in personal property then you believe that its wrong for large groups of peoples or governments to steal the factories, you obviously think this is fine therefore you do not believe in personal property
@@casswhiskey You believe I should be able to personally own a factory?
Also big LOL at the idea that capatlism ends when all the money collects at the top and we are and have been progressing towards that.
Study after study shows fortunes change constantly. 40% of americans will be in the 1% at least 1 year of their life so this idea that class structures are entitely ridgid is beyond absurd.
Currently yes the top has too much of the pie, but its something to be adjusted by antitrust, regulation, unions, and so on, not killing/stealing the most productive people in our society so we all starve to death because why work when everything is free.
What are you talking about 40% will be 1% what are you talking about also I literally said we wouldn't kill anybody in this video and when has anybody ever stopped working under socialism when all data shows unemployment goes down so people can make money? I love you because I love everybody and I tell you, you deserve better! You don't deserve to starve for being poor! Nobody does.
Twelve percent of the population will reach the top 1 percent of income earners at least once. And 39 percent of Americans will spend time in the top 5 percent of earners, 56 percent will be in the top 10 percent and a whopping 73 percent will spend at least a year in the top 20 percent of earners.
@@casswhiskey Internal Revenue Service data shows that from 1992 to 2010 the top 400 taxpayers in the country-some of whom are billionaires-changed significantly from year to year. From 1992 to 2010, 4,024 different taxpayers appeared on the top 400 list. That’s more than ten taxpayers for every spot in the top 400. Over 70 percent-2,909-made the list only one year.
@@casswhiskey "you dont deserve to starve for being poor" 🤣 good thing capatlism has virtually ended world hunger in the last century, I've heard some people state virtually 0 starve as a result of poverty in 2024, sure some do because they are in war zones and so on but its not due to "being poor".
I guess you live in the world where the USSR was actually eating more calories than the US while tens if millions died from starvation there, though. A.k.a not reality.
Or is your argument those in the hyper capatlist west are starving? I mean it makes sense we are 200 years into this experiment so pretty soon 1 guy is gonna collect every dollar in existence, any day now hell have it all.
@@chazzbranigaan9354 You didn't even get the stats right.
Also, by feeding them slop. People may not starve, but they are malnourished.
are you posting these on peer tube yet? I couldn't watch it on mastodon, it sent me here ("video unavailable")
also lol perfect stuff but talk slower and leave out the uptempo music
don't know anything about peertube and mastodon, what mastodon was it posted on? I'd love to check it out!
my favourite part was that you didnt include any of the factory overheads in marthas wage. if a greedy capitalist with all their networks and efficiency could likely only create a 20% profit margin at most, then including her wage martha would only have $1,200. and thats before she has to feed and educate the nation.
Also whats a socialists view on immigration? After all more supply of workers lowers the value of the workers.
I did say those costs exist, and this is an introduction not a full economics course so I'm not going into every nuance, but nonetheless those costs are split over the value generated by every worker. Martha's surplus value isn't paying to keep the lights on, what's taken per worker to pay for operations isn't considerable enough to negate the overall point, and likewise Martha isn't feeding and educating the nation, everybody is, a small contribution from the many. As for immigration, we believe no human is illegal, borders are a form of violence. All in all my belief comes down to the fact that you personally deserve better, and whether you agree or not I hope one day we live in a world where you get what you deserve and hopefully you'll be happy with that.
@@casswhiskey The TLDR is if 75% of operation costs arent important enough to make a difference, then how are the 20% *at most* proifts? And, we have seen before that hundreds of people can not effectively run an enterprise.
I believe we all deserve better, but i also believe that this naivety will doom us all.
And this isnt an economic nuance, you are telling impressionable people, as this is an introduction, that we lose basically 95% of our value and its being siphoned off to the fat cats, but thats simply not true.
Moreover, you say "whats taken per worker isnt considerable enough to negate the overall point", considering i am being generous in saying that its around 75%, 100% - Martha(5%) - Profit(20%) = 75%, if 75% isnt a big enough to change the overall effect, then how is 20%?
And that 20% profit doesnt go straight into the shareholders pockets, a lot does but the vast majority is reinvested into the business now owned by the workers. How can a group of 500+ people with equal voting power make sound investment decisions, especially when most would have no formal financial education?
I dont want to live in a world where food and energy oligopolies smash their profit records in cost of living crises, but i also dont want to live in 1930s Ukraine. I dont like the CEO of my company, i think hes slimey. But i understand that it is better to have 1 asshole who still follows the laws and understands that to stay competitive in this environment, you do have to look after your workers. over 500+ ignorant workers who dont understand how to run a business, because owning/running a business is one of the most difficult things you can do.
-Regards,
Someone whose country gained independence and tried to model themselves after the USSR, became even poorer, embraced capitalism and is now very rich
More supply of workers, lowers the value of workers under capitalism. This is as capitalists want to minimise their own costs, and will take advantage of any desperation in the supply.
The incentive is money, not societal value.
@@aycoded7840 yeah i know, i meant that socialists seem to want open borders or at least something very similar, yet it would destroy the value of the working class and benefit the wealth holders.
My question is why? it seems illogical to create a utopia and then completely flood it.
Empathy. Humans are not a flood, we are all people and we all deserve love.
I find it necessary to go a step further and abolish all private ownership of the means of production and replace it with collective ownership, ensuring that resources are managed democratically for the benefit of all members of society. Only through such collective ownership can we truly achieve economic equality, social justice, and genuine freedom for all.
Means of production are too complex to do that. Not everybody have the knowledge to manage a farm for example
if people dont have the knowledge to run a farm then who's running the farms right now? aliens?
@@casswhiskey The people who have the knowledge to do that, unlike us. The same happens with industry or art. Authority is for the most skilled or educated people.. Sometimes they do a good job, sometimes they are corrupt motherf*****s, but there is not alternative. For example, in Africa the former British's colonies redistributed the land from white farmers to the people and was a disaster, because nobody knew how to work with agrarian machinery.. Sorry for my bad English
" managed democratically" AND "collective ownership" AND " genuine freedom for all"
For "all"? Isn't democracy a system where majority rules?
Beyond basic needs central planning is really ineffective and even then there are problems.
I guess collective ownership (of a farm for example) is not the same but who decides what to produce and how much? The workers? And who buys the food? Is the state going to buy or the people directly or another collective? Who sets the prices? What if one collective farm is more efficent and undercuts another? Are they allowed to do that? Can they decide the prices? What if they overprice the food? If the state buys all the food can the collective just overproduce and make tons of money? Do the farmers have a quota to fullfill?
Also while i don't think that taxes are theft taxes are still extracted surplus value of the labour. So i guess if they are wasted they are like a capitalist taking money from your salary. So it kinda depends on what you see as wasting taxes.
Great 101 video, no complaints
Thank you, I'm very glad you enjoyed :)
By what praxis?
Great video, thanks
I came from the hazbin hotel videos and I'm very happy to find out you make political videos as well
Great work, comrade! ❤️
gay
proudly
learned smthn new today :3
there is nothing to learn here the video is all lies, the factory owner doesn't do nothing, the labor of assembling and logistically delivering the already made goods is much harder than working in the factory and requires a huge risk because you can go out of business, which is why fewer people want to start a cmpany than work at one.
we also don't work 10 hour days so he's not telling the truth even at that basic level
You learned nothing. I am sorry
I'm a girl not a he and I worked a 10 hour shift warehouse job, none of what youre saying is relevant to my video and if the woman worked less than 10 hours under capitalism she'd make even less money, under socialism she'd have the exact same benefits and enjoy more leisure time.
@@casswhiskey of course it is relevant, you don't give the factory owner enough credit for all the hard work and risk they engage in. it isn't easy starting a business, you couldn't do it
@@007kingifrit No amount of "hard work" or "risk" (even discounting that the talking point is bs anyway) gives someone the right to perpetually exploit others