Maybe I’m just a cranky Marxist — JT’s videos are great as a gateway to socialism for the most propagandized Westerners. But does anyone else pick up on an apparent socdem tendency in the explanations provided in videos like this one?
His argument for socialism boils down to moralistic criticism of unequal distribution, and pointing to socialism as a society in which all people receive a guaranteed minimum income, in other words, a more egalitarian society in terms of value received.
Is this not almost identical to the utopian arguments of the Lassalleans whom Marx criticized in his Critique of the Gotha Program?
His argument for socialism boils down to moralistic criticism of unequal distribution, and pointing to socialism as a society in which all people receive a guaranteed minimum income, in other words, a more egalitarian society in terms of value received.
Socialism does aim to provide a minimum standard of living for everyone, though. He also talks about worker-owned means of production, democracy in the workplace, and bottom-up decision making wrt centrally planned economic goals. These things are to the left of social democracy.
That being said, the more that I read theory, the less I get out of watching YouTube. It stands to reason that you can’t summarize 300+ pages into a 15 minute video.
JT’s videos are great as a gateway to socialism for the most propagandized Westerners.
Which is exactly his target audience.
I commend the attempt but the content is not above criticism.
The audience of the Gotha Program was essentially the same as JT’s audience, and Marx found it important to produce a polemical critique against reformist tendencies.
We don’t necessarily want support from social democratic groups who have demonstrated fickleness in historical periods like the 1918 German revolution.
We shouldn’t water down the essential tenets of revolutionary theory when appealing to the proletarian masses. We shouldn’t focus so much on distribution, on vague “equality”, or on bourgeois electoral democracy.
These gateway videos should be honest and focus more on the necessity of a total revolution in production, the necessity of a change in our way of life, not merely reform in existing political institutions.
Choice excerpts from the Gotha critique:
What is a “fair distribution”?
Do not the bourgeois assert that the present-day distribution is “fair”? And is it not, in fact, the only “fair” distribution on the basis of the present-day mode of production? Are economic relations regulated by legal conceptions, or do not, on the contrary, legal relations arise out of economic ones? Have not also the socialist sectarians the most varied notions about “fair” distribution?
What is equal right (to the social product)?
This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.
Over-emphasis on distribution
Quite apart from the analysis so far given, it was in general a mistake to make a fuss about so-called distribution and put the principal stress on it. Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labor power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one. Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again?
We don’t necessarily want support from social democratic groups who have demonstrated fickleness in historical periods like the 1918 German revolution.
We won’t, because those peoplw have all died. This comment shows one of my main criticisms with ML’s in that it’s like we’re trapped 100 years ago when the USSR just started. We have to make material analyses now, for people living now - people that have experienced socdem positives (in the west), are inundated with propaganda and are made to be afraid. So while his videos are not above critique, I think he makes good starting points for people to understand the basis of communism. Even though I never watch them and prefer to read.
Propaganda is no excuse to concede the essential Marxist tenets.
For one thing, 100 years is not a long time.
Secondly, without proving why a theory is now practically obsolete, appealing to the age of theory is a lazy dismissal. For example, many people’s knee-jerk reaction to Marx is that he’s irrelevant because he lived gasp 150 years ago. So much has changed! Before they had mean wage labor, and now we have nice wage labor!
Reformism was an issue throughout the 20th century. Both PRC and USSR took active measures to prevent reformists from undermining their respective parties. In Finland, the social democrats allied with the bourgeoisie to win the civil war (1918) and then allied with the Nazis to genocide Leningrad during the Continuation War.
I agree that the theory is not obsolete nor has the danger passed. I am not dismissing it because it was written 100 years ago. But I’m specifically commenting on your saying that we shouldn’t align with those groups and that is true, but we should also recognise the material conditions as they are today and not in 1918: vehemently anti-communist, with social media as an important stepping stone (both fascist and socialist), and an interconnectrd world that seems more complex than ever before (I’ not saying it is, the world has always been comex, but it seems that way because we get i formation from all over). So the theory should also adapt.
The audience of the Gotha Program was essentially the same as JT’s audience.
I really don’t think the working class of 1875 Germany viewed the political landscape through the same Overton Window and culturally endemic Red Scare as JT’s audience.
And to be honest, if you are already a socialist you are more likely to read and organize. So videos aren’t necessarily meant for you at that point .
Though I admit as a country bumpkin it would be nice to find something like a how-to list of somewhat fleshed out ideas for organizing in your community. Like a third-thought channel or something lol. It’s pretty hard to start from scratch. And yea there are no socialist/commie groups here so joining isn’t an option and starting one goes back to my previous point.
