Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Douglas Lain on Marxism, violent revolution vs non-violent, and Christianity

Episode Date: July 25, 2020

Today's episode is eminently different as we have a self-proclaimed Marxist to chat with. Douglas Lain runs the Zer0 Books YouTube channel (linked here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyoQK-mZXr2ws4C0nXGCH1w) and is an accomplished writer. This episode is distinguished by its sublimation from "interview" ⇒ "conversation" ⇒ "friendly debate", where I (Curt Jaimungal) took a backseat in the arena of Douglas Lain and my colleague Peter Glinos. If you'd like a Part 2, let me know.

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checkout. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash theories, all lowercase. That's shopify.com slash theories. How was that for you? Was that all right? Was that different? It was okay. Yeah, it was a little more antagonistic than I expected. I'm sorry.

That's not so much that you were mean or, you know, it was just what I didn't realize that you would have an arsenal of information and anecdotes to answer, not always directly, what the things that I put forward in a kind of refutation. I'm here with Douglas Lane of Zero Books. How's it going, man? It's going pretty well.

I mean, actually, in fact, I should say, I always say it's doing very well when you ask that kind of question because it's a kind of question that people don't literally mean most of the time. That's like saying hello, but I should point out that at zero books, we recently lost a major voice, the author and podcaster or YouTube personality, Michael Brooks died the day before yesterday.

So when I say I'm doing very, very well, in fact, I'm sort of lying. I am upset about the loss of Michael Brooks. So, but I'm otherwise in my own, you know, small, smaller sphere doing just fine. I hear about that. Can you tell us and our audience a little bit as to who Michael Brooks was, what he meant to you, what he meant to Zero Books? Yeah, Michael Brooks was the co-host of the Majority Report with Sam Seder, although probably he would hate that I started with that because he was also the host of his own show called TMBS, which stood for the Michael Brooks show. He was the author of a book for us called Against the Web. He'd written for newspapers and magazines like Jacobin. He'd just started a new series with

Anna Katsperian, I think is her name, over at the Young Turks, but this time for Jacobin Magazine's new YouTube channel. And he was a democratic socialist, he said, with more of a Marxist bent than most. He did a show called TMBS, which really focused on the international political scene as well as just U.S. politics. He was a really funny guy. He was a lot more charming than most people on the left. He was 37 years old, and he died from, I guess, some sort of blood clot, or just it was a sudden freak kind of medical accident that took him from us on Monday. And I mean, really, he was just would be the last person I expected to die.

And he was someone who so clearly had a long, fruitful career ahead of him. He was ambitious. He was politically ambitious for the left. And he was personally ambitious. And he was just hungry to go. He was ready to go. He had so many things that he was planning and so many things he'd already done. So it was a real tragedy that he, that he died on. I mean, I still trying to take it in. It's a shock. I'm sorry to hear that, man. Yeah. Well, I just wanted to let, you know, I guess I, I'm still trying to take it in. It's a shock. I'm sorry to hear that, man.

Yeah. But I just wanted to let, you know, I guess I feel obligated to mention him at the start because he was so important to so many people. And he was an important author for us. His book, Against the Web, was already heading to be a bestseller. Perversely now, it will to be a bestseller. Perversely now it will certainly be a bestseller, but he had a lot more books in him and ideas in him. And so it's, it's, that's very sad to see him go.

But we don't have to continue on talking about Michael Brooks. Yeah. Okay. Let's, let's talk about you. So what would you classify yourself as for the people who are watching if you want to put yourself into the label well I'm I'm some kind of Marxist um it depends on which Marxist you ask as to what I am it's I'm some slur or another from some other sectarian group So like I'm a Marxist humanist by those who are maybe a more politically minded Marxist, or I'm a left calm by people who have more of a focus on taking state power. But I, you know, whereas otherwise people might call me like people who are

so democratic socialists or a little bit to what I consider to be my right might think of me as like a tanky and, you know, out of this world, unrealistic Marxist. 2008, I became interested in trying to understand the economic situation because of the economic crisis. And I started podcasting shortly after that, and interviewing Marxist economists and Marxist thinkers, slowly but surely along the way, I mean, I interviewed a lot of different people on the left and a lot of different people, including like like mystics and artists and so on. But I more and more became interested in a Marxist analysis of the economic crisis of 2008. And that led me to read Marx and to kind of believe the explanations that I found in books like Capital or the Gothic program or you know even in the Communist Manifesto to some degree I want to or the German ideology I want to like prove my bona fides here and name

enough the Marxist texts. Is this when you started Zero Books or did that come before? Oh it came before I was a podcaster for about five years before I started at Zero Books, and I didn't start Zero Books. Zero Books started around the same time as I started podcasting. A guy named Tariq Gadard, and well, a really good guy named Tariq Gadard, started the imprint in the UK. It was under a company called John Hunt Publishing or JHP. And he started the imprint and it was mostly filled with people who were left wing and or philosophical or theoretical bloggers. And so they were academics, but they weren't only publishing in academic journals. They were trying out this new blogosphere.

And those people started writing books for Zero Books. Eventually, people like Graham Harmon and Mark Fisher became big names for Zero Books. And then around 2014, there was a falling out between the management of John Hunt Publishing and the old crew at Zero Books. They left, and one of their authors recommended to me, a guy named David Blacker, who'd written a book for them called The Falling Rate of Learning, I believe. He recommended that I apply for the job, and I was hired based on the writing I had already submitted to them. I had a book accepted by Zero Books and based on my track record as a podcaster. And frankly, I think that in that political moment, in terms of like John Hunt publishing, they were glad to take anybody who would do the job because there had been such a fallout.

So I was the guy who stepped up to the plate after Tariq left. You mentioned that in the crash of 2008, you started reading Marx, and you're trying to understand what happened. I'm curious, where were you coming from before that? How would you describe your ideological persuasion before 2008? I was, you know, in the 90s, I had become interested in the situationist international. I was a science fiction writer, and I still am. My last novel came out in 2018. the ideas of Situationist International, but also like people like Noam Chomsky, maybe some Terrence McKenna thrown in. I was sort of like an ad busters anarchist.

That's me, you know, insulting my younger self. What's an ad buster? Well, ad busters is a magazine in the United States that takes a kind of anti-consumerist line. It was started by a new left 60s radical in the 80s or 90s. And it's very glossy and slick. And they run these parody ads in the magazines trying to critique society and the culture of consumerism. I see. I see. So you were a rebellious anti-capitalist type before 2008, but you weren't called Marxist before then. And then you started to get into the philosophy of Carl, good old Carl. Yeah, that's right. I mean, and it was because I realized that the kind of more utopian politics I had up until that point where I was most concerned about changing people's consciousness and attacking hierarchies and,

and let's face it, also just was somewhat using the radical chic of the left as a way to distinguish myself as a writer. Or at least that's what I hoped. I realized none of that was going to do when there was actual material crisis. And I was looking at, at the time I was working at Comcast as a sales rep. And I was thinking I might not last on the job and there weren't a lot of other prospects. And that was actually the same time that my first novel was accepted by Macmillan back in 2007. That's when that novel was accepted. It took until 2013 for it to actually come out.

So that was another reason why I was looking to Marx was because I looked at the publishing world, which was in crisis and like New York editors are being fired in droves. And they were going into business for themselves as book editors and, you know, for, for self-published authors. And my own editor at tour was let go shortly after my book came out. So I was thinking like, Oh, tour was let go shortly after my book came out. So I was thinking like, oh, this whole career idea of being a kind of middle range novelist along with, you know, whatever other kind of work I had to pick up to support myself doesn't look like it's going to be working out, even though I did get a book contract. I'd written some short stories before that point. And my first book came out in 2006,

which was a short story collection and that kind of thing. Well, you know, there's an old connection there, right? Between science fiction writers and Marxists, right? Like Borkmanov with the Red Star. Yeah, yeah. Have you read that one? I haven't, but I've read it.

The Progenist Society. Yeah, I haven't read that particular book, although I know I should. But yes, I do think of science fiction as the literature of ideas. And I was a philosophy major in college back in the early 90s. So I came to science fiction for the same reasons I came to the left, I think, which was a feeling of displacement, of wanting to figure out what life was, not thinking that the kinds of answers that were readily available to me were very useful. I think a lot of young people go through that, no matter where they end up politically, but I ended up on the left. Okay. Now, people who listened might have tuned out as soon as you said you're a Marxist.

So let's get this straight. Oh, really? Well, I'm in a different room than I'm used to because everyone in the, you know, kind of circles I run in, it's like, oh yeah, he's not Marxist enough. But anyway, go ahead. Right. What I mean is that they're just waiting for the question that I'm about to say, which is given that the countries who have said that they're motivated by Marxism failed. Now you may disagree with that premise and we can, okay. Given that they failed and it seems invariably. So how can you call yourself? How do you, why do you still call yourself a Marxist without also calling yourself someone

who's worthy of odious, despicable, despicableness? Well, i have a uh you know i may be worthy of odious despicableness or whatever but it's not because i'm a marxist you know i have all sorts of flaws um uh but uh here here's my quick answer to that is that i don't see Marxism as separate from the project of modernity or the Enlightenment project. And I think that whole project of turning away from traditional society,

becoming more scientific, trying to be more self-directed as not just individually, but as a society, taking hold of our social relations, questing after freedom, all of it has an uneven record.

So that'd be my first thing. It's like, if you want to condemn Marxism, you should probably condemn the American Revolution as well. You should probably condemn modernity. You should probably try to turn back towards a more traditional society. And then you'll find there's plenty of things to condemn there. So, but the more specific answer would be that I don't look at the Russian Revolution or revolutions in China or many of the other attempts at socialism as having been complete or successful. And if you look at the Soviet Union, neither did the Soviet officials. Even Stalin admitted that they were still operating under basically a capitalist logic.

There was never a moment where they broke free from what they would say was called bourgeois society. I mean, after 1917, their goal was to actually develop the capitalist relations that hadn't really even been developed yet in the Soviet Union or in Russia, so that they could then quickly become socialist and transcend capitalist relations. But they never did. Go ahead. When does Stalin say that? Because there's that net period, right? New economic policy under Lenin. He was not down with that. At least he was kind of two-faced on the matter and afterwards though when he was in power uh would did he say that what i don't remember exactly like i don't remember

exactly when he really admitted he was still uh that the soviet union was still operating under the law of value but it was in the it was towards the end of his time and power. It was in the, I think early fifties is what I would, if I'm remembering correctly, but the, it, even Lenin didn't think that, like they believed in transitional program. They believed in developing capitalist relations, that capitalism was a stage on the way towards socialism. And so Lenin would never have said that he achieved even socialism or the dictatorship of the proletariat. And so I mean that's my understanding that that it was a there was still revolution to be done after they took power. And go ahead.

London's thesis, right, was that was the big debate between Bolsheviks and Menchiviks. They were both, as you said, and it really demonstrates your knowledge, right, that Marxists did believe that capitalism was a transitional stage. So you would find Marxists who were like, hey, what's the best way to get Marxists? More capitalists. So let's support the industry. You know, Hey, how do you get angry workers? Exploitative CEOs. Keep them coming.

Capitalism, keep them coming. Right. This is like, but it goes back to the early, the late 19th century and the social democratic party in Germany and the debates between Rosa Luxemburg and Edward Bernstein or Edward Bernstein or whatever, how you ever pronounce that. But he was, he felt especially after the long depression of the 19th century, didn't produce a workers revolution that, that really the best way to get to socialism

was through the evolution of capitalism. But he was a Marxist, right? And Rosa Luxemburg thought that capitalism would go into crisis and that the Workers' Party had to be prepared for that crisis in order to help the working class achieve socialism when the opportunity was there through a revolutionary struggle.

I side with Rosa in that debate, but it's far away from where we are right now, although maybe who knows where we'll be in two months. But we're certainly not prepared for anything like that. But yeah, working out what went wrong in the Soviet Union isn't something that's been fully done at least not in my head I don't think anyone quite on the Marxist left agrees or has a consensus on it and I don't think there's a consensus on it in the historical literature either but the one

thing I would say is just to recall that this is not a separate Marxism is not a separate project from the project of the Enlightenment and of modernity. It's just... We'll talk about that. Yeah. Just to interject, some people would say, well, you know, the process of going through history and then analyzing why has Marxism failed has not been complete. failed, has not been complete. Well, but to those on the left or the extreme left or whatever we want to call it, the Marxist side, it seems like the diagnosis of the West's failures due to capitalism is a complete project. And they're willing to make that much quicker than they're

willing to say why the projects that they particularly like, that is the Marxist projects, haven't failed. So why do you think there is that discrepancy? Or do you disagree with the premise? Well, first of all, I don't believe that if you look carefully, that there's even a lot of agreement on the critique of capitalism on the Marxist left. I happen to know the right critique, because I, you know, have my own exotic sectarian perspective. But I'm kidding. I'm kidding sectarian perspective, but I'm kidding. I'm kidding in a way, but I'm only half kidding. But no, there isn't even a lot of agreement. I have a theory that everyone thinks they're right.

Even people who are humble, they think they're right in their humbleness. So if they say, I don't know, then you believe that you don't know. So no matter what- That's true. That is true. But I think that's,

I'll grant people that amount of hubris. But what I would say is, okay, so the question was why are Marxists so quick to say they know what's wrong with capitalism, but not so, but are slow to say they understand why the revolution failed. And, and, and look, there's, there's a real kernel of truth to truth to the skepticism in that question, because the operations of capitalist society are very complex and require serious study.

And most of what calls itself the Marxist left has not only hasn't fully worked out its critique or really has a solid critique of capitalist relations to back it up, but even more, doesn't even really have much of a definition of capitalism at all, or doesn't think about capitalism as a set of social relations around production or an economic set of relations. And that's due...

It's only for Bob, sorry. Say again? No, please continue. Okay, all right. So what I'll say is that's due largely to the failures that we're talking about and failures after. The fact that the Marxist project

has been set back time and time again has meant that what calls itself the left United States has mostly put Marxist analysis to the side, even when it calls itself Marxist. But I happen to think that the strongest part of the Marxist literature is his critique of capitalist relations. That is his turn towards materialism as a form of basically a materialistic social relation. In other words,

the kinds of relations we have with each other when we're cooperating to create the things we need in the world. So the hierarchical relations are the structures of relations and the social aims that we take up as we produce ourselves and reproduce ourselves and reproduce the world. And that just means, you know, we go to work every day, we make things that we are going to consume, we make things for the market, all of that. I happen to think that his critique of those relations are the best around and that if you start from there, there is the potential for achieving the kinds of society that people like Thomas Locke or John Stuart Mills or others were after,

a society where people as individuals are free and they're free to the extent that they can also influence the social collective. So just to go off of that subject for the individualism, communism's relation to liberalism right you know there's there's a line in Dostoevsky's demons where a story about some Marxists who take over a small town in Russia and one of them is a Marxist by the name of Pyotr and he's trying to convert people to Marxism,

and he's building these little clubs. Another character asks him, you know, why is it, why do they turn? Why do they become Marxists? How do you, how does that happen? And he turns to that character and says, well, you know, the best strategy is you go to these liberals and you say, you're not liberal enough, and then they become Marxist. You're not radical enough, right? You're not fulfilling modernity as much as you claim to be fulfilling it.

And there's a sense that Marxism is that sort of trash. But I want to press on that claim, right? Marxists and liberals didn't necessarily get along. Capitalism was a transitional phase. What is it? Why do you believe that Marxism is the, let's say, realization of liberalism? Well, I mean, listen, I get a lot of heat from that from other Marxists. You know, other Marxists hate it when I say that kind of thing because they think I'm granting way too much to, I don't know, what's the white cisgendered patriarchal Western discourse or something.

It's what Marxists traditionally believe, though. So I'm shocked that they would find a problem with that. You, right? Well, as I say, we're not in a... Marxism is mostly dead. But... Amen. Yeah, I hear you. But why do I think that there's

been conflict between liberals and Marxists in the past? Well, what I'm saying is, why is it that Marxism is the successor? So we're talking about Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, right? Mensheviks, they... Well, I'm not really talking about Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

I'm talking about, like, Marx and Engels, and maybe Rosa Luxemburg and, you know, and some of the 19th century people. I mean, to be honest, my understanding of the debates, the specific debates between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks, beyond, you know, the need for revolutionary struggle or the degree of parliamentary autism that can be, or cooperation with bourgeois parties, you know, that's about as much as I could say that that was about.

The debates, right, like Marxists love history, right? They're the scientists of history. They're self-proclaimed at the time. So to go to history to understand Marxism, I think, would be truthful. There's a debate between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, which is, okay, we start with, and this is said in the Communist

Manifesto, right? We start with tribal societies, we go to feudal societies, we go to capitalism, and then the revolution, we go to Marxism. The debate between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, one of them, was, okay, where are we now? And for Russia specifically, they couldn't decide whether or not they were feudal or in the capitalist era. Lenin comes out with his great paper. Look at how much land the peasants have. You can see it's unequal.

We are in the era of capitalism. The time is now. And it puts him to the bullshit. So what I'm curious of is when you look at our society now, let alone what we achieved through Marxism, have we achieved true capitalism? Is my question for you. Because if it's dedicated on that, what would be true capitalism? Well, okay. I think we should distinguish between the bourgeois values of freedom and equality and fraternity and the breaking of fetters from traditional society, those kinds of liberal values, and capitalism as a set of social relations. Because capitalism is the very thing that makes liberal values unachievable

in so much as it sets up material relations that require inequality, competition, and even the slowdown of development of technological advances. So that's what the difference is between like bourgeois values and capitalism. Capitalism is a questing after basically the increase of labor time as embodied in commodities. And that's what's directing our social life really is the buying and selling of commodities and chasing after this abstract value that's a measure of the amount of time that people are working it also requires like a working class

that doesn't own its own means of production or doesn't have control over the things that it produces yeah i couldn't agree more on that regard right there's a line in the Marxist catechism from the London Society of Marxists. And in this catechism, it was what they would tell the new recruits, the new comrades, in order to train to be Marxists. They said, what is capitalism? And they say very clearly, we think it's written by angels, very clearly. He says, oh, well, listen, there was a time in history where we didn't have industrial machines. Then we got industrial machines. Two types of people.

You either own the machines or you work with the machines. It's one or the other. And there's this huge divide that happens. Right, which is why Marxists want to get rid of the division of labor to some degree or another. How? What do you think is the way to do it? How do we get rid of it?

Get my mouth off cocktail? What's the solution? Maybe sometimes. I don't think you can say that there's only one path towards a Marxist revolution. And Marx himself had different ideas based on the different conditions. What if we paint some specifics

for our time and our context? Give four or three or two if you don't want... Okay, well, I... Look, the first thing... The first thing you have to do is understand that the left's project is to expand the power of working people, primarily.

And how that can be done is, you know, a question. But your aim should be first and foremost right now to support the struggles of working class people, especially during an economic crisis when so many will be unemployed. And this goes back to sort of a very traditional kind of orthodox Marxist stance that Rosa Luxemburg, for instance, would embrace. Or someone like Heinrich Grossman, who was more of an, I think I agree with him

on his economic analysis more, but he was also in the same kind of Bolshevik tradition as Rosa Luxemburg. And that would be to say, look, you can't, the workers have to emancipate themselves, and they will do that by organizing together in moments of economic crisis when their interests and the interests of the capitalist order are clearly at odds so okay and and so at the moment we're going to be as profitability goes down as the ability to create a social surplus that can actually meet everyone's needs declines as many people are forced into starvation wages or actual starvation and when you say profit really goes down you mean for the working class because clearly no i mean

for the capitalist class right yeah there's a not for the book called iron heel uh it was written around the time of the civil war and you know they talk about that too when you have such a divide between rich and poor uh the sad truth for industrialists, let, you know, the industrialists can't, even if they have all their wealth, support a whole economy. Let's say you're wealthy. What are you going to do? Buy all the coffees, a thousand coffees?

Let's say you're a leader of service, right? You're only going to buy, you know, so many coffees. So if the wealth is aggregated or under your control, you'll still see a slowdown in the economy. There's something called the tendency for the rate of profit to decline that Marx talks about in

Capital, Volume 3, and somewhat in Volume 1. What happens is we get more efficient in producing commodities. The amount of value because it's based on labor time, declines. So slowly the rate of profit declines, which leads to all sorts of economic problems. So when companies aren't profitable, they go out of business. When they go out of business, there's unemployment.

We're getting to the specifics of what should be done by the working class. go out of business. When they go out of business, there's unemployment. Okay. When there's unemployment. We're getting to the specifics of what should be done by the working class. Yeah. The working class needs to prepare for the fact that we're, that the COVID crisis right now has done enough of a shock to the economic system that there isn't going to, I don't think there's going to be, I mean, at least prepare for the possibility and that there's not going to be an easy recovery and that their interests are going to be the first ones that are

ignored as capital tries to write itself and get profitable again. And that, you know, you know, the destruction of capital includes the destruction of workers. We're going to get back to the specifics because I have a question. You said something and I want to talk about that before it goes away. You said that the supporting the working class people is a project of the left. Now the right would also say, actually, we're the ones that are supporting the working class. We care about those who are farmers and agriculturalists. Is that what you would define as the difference between left and right is those who are farmers and agriculturalists. Is that what you would define as the difference

between left and right, as those who want to support the working class? Or is that what you would define as the Marxist project, as supporting the working class? In other words, what's the definition of the left and the right, and perhaps even Marxism, if you have enough time? Okay, so the right-wing attempts to support the working class are almost always nationalist, and they're almost always defined in terms of correcting to understanding the calamitous impacts of the economic crisis after 2008 on working people is to point to the problems that arise from immigration and say, we fix those problems. We close that border. then the system will right itself and you'll have job security and you'll have better wages and you'll have that lifestyle from the 50s that if you're white, you might even remember or think that you shared in. Whereas the left would say, look, look a little deeper and say, look, first of all,

the reason why there's so much rush for people to come into this country is because of the uneven development between the nations, that capitalism is not at all immune from crises, and it isn't working in a simple linear progression towards a better and better world. It goes into crises. It creates inequalities, not just between people, but between nations. And you're never going to- When you say crises, sorry, just to interject, when you say crises, do you mean depression or do you mean economic crisis? Yeah, sure. Recession and depression would be a big part of what I'm talking about. So the major, when you're referring to crisis, you're referring to recession and depression? Yeah, I am. I'm referring to the inability of capital to reproduce itself the going out of business creating massive unemployment

i'm not providing the material needs uh in a rational way to people so you can the weird thing about it is like you can sit on massive amounts of wealth that because you've been so efficient at production and still have an economic crisis that makes people starve because of the the irrationality of the capitalist system okay so the definition of the left is the definition of left would be wanting those who want to expand the power and understanding of working-class people not just in one country but around the world because that is because they're tasked with changing the foundation of their own work and their own activity, which after all is the foundation of the society. The big realization for the left is that the people who are really responsible for the failures of the left are the

workers, because without the workers, none of this would be able to happen this is the people that figure heads in power the capitalist class they're a problem but the main problem is taking up the responsibility of transformation and of working in your own interests and uh so the left's goal is to empower workers to organize themselves to take the power to fight for their own interest and that will mean transforming society but the one big flaw is that uh in the leftist discourse around that is that uh understanding what socialism would be after such a rupture what the what the actual relations of a new socialist economy would be like is something that most marxists are problem right that he talked about right what do you do the day after i think he says in his in his perfect fashion in that way i would sell my own mother into slavery right if someone could tell

me what happens after the vendetta like it's a wonderful question well and that's what would happen like what in your conception what is the Marxist bitch and if so what is if you can't tell me what that would look like what can tell you I can tell you a bit about it but but the pro I want to say something about slow voicesoy since you brought him up. I've interviewed him. And by the way, I don't think that in reality he should be, I mean, he'll calm South of Marxists from time to time. But really, he's a Hegelian, right? He's a left wing Hegelian of some kind. what Solveig's best at is taking that kind of Hegelian approach to understanding society and poking holes in conventional wisdom on the left. And, and also he's a, I think a deep philosopher of Hegel.

But so. And he also praises Christianity too, right? That's kind of disharmonic with other Marxists. Yeah. But I mean, you know, not in any profound way, because he points to things, ideas in Christianity that, you know, can be understood through a Hegelian perspective, and that then you can also see in forming Marx. So like the way, the dialectical thinking, you know, the way that you have to consider things not for

in a fragmented way but in their totality that sounds pretty christian yeah don't you think yeah so um you know that you see like you know everything as a oneness as opposed to separate right but not like but not like a oneness it's monolithic and uniform and but like a totality that's ribbon with with problems it's self-conflict self-divided kind of totality right so that's that's where you probably want to you know where that's why maybe hey this is second here so Peter Peters this voice of a historian and then you're the voice of science fiction writer who's well-read, excuse the pun, in Marxism. And I'll be the voice of the quotidian. What is the definition of Marxism,

in your definition, in your estimation? Well, Marxism is a political movement that, you know, started in the 19th century and which was a way to struggle for socialism and which has gone through many, many different iterations and changes. And that was probably finally put aside in the West, you know, somewhere around the late 70s or and certainly after 1989 that everyone became a post Marxist thinker. But there, so that's Marxism. Marxism is can be anything from actual revolutionary struggle to after the World War II sort of a an attempt to hold on to some key concepts and perfect them. Marxist decaf.

Yeah. Yeah, Marxism. Marxist life, right? Yeah. I don't know. Their theory is pretty thick. But yeah, Marxism without politics maybe is what slowly emerged. And then it was, and I think that's what,

so what we have now that calls itself Marxist for the most part is social democratic movements for redistribution of the wealth in society. So things like the Bernie Sanders campaign, the most radical parts of that might call themselves Marxist and be interested in Marx. And, you know, look, when I was supporting Bernie Sanders, which I did, I wasn't above that either. But Marx is different than Marxism. But Marxism keeps returning to Marx.

So whenever you start trying to define what Marx said and like, let's go back to Marx, you're acting like, definitely you're acting like a Marxist. Okay. To talk about the people who are listening and i mentioned that before well you mentioned that your audience is usually people who ears would perk up as soon as you would mention marxism because the people who are listening to this will likely be center center left center right yeah and they're thinking well so far i haven't heard what's radical come out of Doug's mouth. Doug is saying he wants the working class people to have some more power.

Even libertarians would agree with that, right? And you didn't say this. I don't think they would ultimately, but go ahead. But inequality is a problem that we can both agree on, at least extreme inequality. Then the question is, well, how to solve the inequality? What the heck is it? You're saying that Marxism could be so many different definitions. What do you mean when you say Marxism? Well, what I mean when I say Marxism also, I mean, here's the thing. I'm being, I think, maybe a little bit like Slovak Zizek.

What do I mean when I say Marxism? It depends on who I'm talking to and what the context is, right? So I don't think it's a good idea to try to nail down what Marxism is. I think the better idea is to try to nail down what Marx's understanding of socialism was, and to try to understand what capitalism is, and what kind of society we want so but you asked me you said um radical like i haven't said anything radical yet well the most radical thing about marx was he didn't take uh our fundamental economic social relations that we need to survive as being outside of our control right what? What separates Marx and makes him radical from most everyone else is that terrain, which we, the part of the society that we just take for granted that we produce things

for exchange in the market and that certain kinds of proper relationships support that he didn't take for granted. support that. He didn't take for granted. So he would be aiming at cooperative work done with the aim of providing for some sort of social whole, for some sort of community. That's what makes him a communist. It's like, will there be a common store of the goods that we produce in the world? And what we'll compete like, will there be a common store of the goods that we produce in the world? And what we'll compete over isn't access to the common store of goods, but for power over the creative work that produces those goods. So production would be the highest want, or productive work would be what people struggled. Razor blades are like diving boards.

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You love the Paris communists, right? There's no doubt about that. Marxists still kind of idealized that time. There's a historian by the name of Wilmot who writes a book called Living the Revolution. And it's about the early,

early Marxists in Russia who, like other Marxists around Europe, were living in communes. They were trying it out. They were like, okay, well, enough talking about the experiment. Let's make it happen. Let's go in the woods, share everything, and we'll see how it goes. And this is really where there's like this rooting of Marxism. It gives them the space to discuss these ideas and try it out.

I'm not going to say that it worked per se. We see this commune idea happen over and over again. The only guys who I can think of or folks who ever kind of successfully pull it off are like monks. Have you ever thought about that? Like why is that when the secular thinkers, if you would, or secular youth, try it, these hippie communes, these anarcho-communes, there's varying success. But meanwhile, the guys who are following the code of St. Benedict, who have renounced wealth, who do not see wealth as the primary engine of history, who have renounced personal property, who have taken vows of poverty.

Man, they're still making wine, bread, and cheese up in the mountains. Why did they succeed and these guys flunked? Well, I mean, what are they doing with their wine, bread, and cheese? Giving it for free sometimes. Like, they just... And what's the source of their wealth to be able to continue to produce that way?

I mean, are they subsistence farmers or are they in some way or another cooperating within the market economy that kind of has dominated the globe. There's a pretty wide variety of monastic traditions, right? So like you get everything from a single guy, like St. Abidjan the dwarf, this dwarf who goes out into the desert with a stick, plants it, lives in a cave, waters the stick every day until it becomes a tree. And next thing you know, there's like a garden.

To, you know, I think my buddy of mine is working with some nuns in India who run a co-op that makes fabrics and sells them to the poor for like a bare minimal cheap price just to continue so they could eat and give. Right. But, you know, it's very, it's almost like an inversion of the Marxist model that works. Why? I mean, if you go down, look, if you go down to a small enough group, it gets a lot easier. Right. But what, but on the other hand, one of the wonders about capitalism is that it has managed to collectivize the world for the most part.

That is, it's brought everyone into a big collective project of creating commodities. Most all of the world is capitalist now. And most of the things that exist in the world were created by workers, as we understand that category, under capitalism. Do you mean industrialized or do you mean capitalist? Because didn't we say within the Marxist catechism that to be capitalist was you have the machines the separation not everyone has those uh and but well you mean by brought everyone together i'm not saying that the level of industrialization is different in different parts of the world but for the most part every every part of the world is industrializing.

Every part of the world is influenced by capitalist relations. You know, is there a country in the world that doesn't have any relationship to the foreign market that isn't in any way bringing in goods from other parts of the world or putting goods out to the other parts of the world? I don't think so. No, I mean, there's an no i mean there's an island of doing that before capitalism right like sure but but not on the scale that's being done now in in the past what supported most people was subsistence farming of various kinds and what supports most people now is interaction in the uh in the market certainly in the industrial in

what's called the industrialized world that's almost completely universal but more and more that's the case for larger and larger parts of the world and when that has happened when that's I'm gonna be a big advocate for capitalism here the fact that capitalism could bring a true mention of it don't say that i'll get canceled all right go ahead um or gulag i'm sorry yeah that's what happens to the yeah i'll be i'm kidding i'm kidding i'm kidding go ahead i'm not i'm sincerely scared of many of my comrades so uh well that's also not unique for Marxists, right? So, but yeah, so capitalism brings all these people into collective endeavors, brings people together out of their private interest, into a collective interest, into a communal interest, but it does so in a particular way where it's mediated by the expansion

of an abstract value based on the exploitation of workers and so the goal for marxists is to not to give up the powers of industry not to give up the power of our collective creativity but to unfetter it to to change the terms of it to mediate those relationships in a better way um so so you think the uniting goal, like uniting value, the highest value of capitalism is exploitation? Like that's what wakes them up in the morning? No, no, no. I don't think the individual capitalist is sitting around going, oh, how many workers can I exploit today? How is that the value that unites them? Or is it like the liberalism? Well, because it's not an ideological value.

It's an economic value. It's a material value. It's the fetishized value. So, like, look, what determines a price? What determines a price ultimately is the amount of time that it took to create the commodity. And so, because of... Are you there come on wait this is bad Marxism right you said you have your value froze they're listening no no okay so why is this but why is this so the labor theory of value says that the

amount of time that it takes to create what makes things exchange as equal things in the market is this third this value that they share in common, this abstraction or substance that the two commodities that may be completely different share in common, which is the amount of time spent working to create the object. So when you go and you trade a pile of bagels for a book, a pile of bagels for a book, well, or better than put intellectual work into this,

which complicates it, but, you know, a pile of bagels for a hoe, you're saying, okay, the amount of time it took me to take these bagels and the amount of time it took you to create that hoe are roughly the same, so we're exchanging equal values. Without logic, though, you could spend years on a bagel and it would be worth the world. I don't know if that's exactly the principle.

Right. It's not a matter of individual time. It's a matter of socially necessary time. So the market isn't – if you create a bagel and it takes you 10 years, the costs, the overhead costs, and the amount of time, just the amount of money it takes for you to feed yourself as you do this work will require you to price that bagel way outside the range of what's normal in the market. You're competing with other producers,

which creates a socially necessary amount of labor time that's acceptable for the creation of a bagel. The fact that you're competing with other capitalists is what brings that price down. And then beyond that, you innovate to try to produce the same bagel faster. And for a little while you can make a lot of profit because it takes you less time and money to make a bagel than it does your competition. Right. And you can still charge the same because the socially,

the standard time, the amount of time that it takes for most people is helpful. Right, and you can still charge the same because socially the standard time, the amount of time that it takes for most people, is higher. So by speeding up production, you can out-compete your competition. But then eventually they catch up with you, and that lowers your prices. That's how labor time – We're walking through that last bit. Well, I mean, okay, your competitor is producing bagels faster than you are and then taking on, you know, getting more of the market share. Now, either that competitor is going to monopolize

or you're going to figure out how to catch up and produce your bagels at the same rate or faster so that you can compete with you and stay in business right so that that that pressure for individual capitalists to innovate stay up with what's current in you know industrial realm get the better machinery or if they can't do that discipline the workers to go faster is a big part of it right like innovate i said either innovate or discipline yeah i didn't say just one okay so i'm not these

none and none of these things by the way are moral judgments right okay okay and when i talk about exploitation i'm not saying a oppression necessarily so exploitation in this definition could be good. It can be in a way, yeah, because it, well, it's, I wouldn't say it's good or bad. It can, it has a negative consequence, unintended negative connotation, but it certainly does have a negative connotation and that's because, you know, Marx is a good leftist, but, but no, the, the problem with exploitation is twofold. One is that it requires

that there be a work uh workers who um are paid the value of what they need in a set of commodities to survive or live which i think is probably a better way to you know whatever to whatever level is acceptable standard in your society so you get paid enough to live, but you then produce more value than the set of commodities you need to live. So you are exploited because you're producing more than what you're compensated for. But if you weren't, if you were compensated for exactly what you produced, then the company would go under and there would be no production and so the system can't operate that way. Well, I mean, companies are,

so it's kind of like what David Sloan Wilson talks about when he talks about multivariate selection and evolution, right? You have different populations and within those populations, you can have slackers. You can never like, but slacker populations do not do well when faced with populations that actually help each other out. Those guys out competecompete them.

And this kind of competition helps keep down the pair. That whole thing is you've got to divide between the use value of things and actual wealth and the amount of time it takes to do things and the value that comes out of the capitalist process where you're setting things up to be sold in the market. So, like, you know what happens to slackers in a capitalist relation is they probably try to just, you know, hide themselves for as long as possible. And they're just one variable amongst many that slows down production.

Or they all talk about philosophy like us, you know? Yeah, right. Well, yeah, we're working hard here. So, but, yeah, as a former slacker, literally, you know yeah right well yeah yeah we're working hard here so but uh uh yeah as a former slacker literally you know born into that generation of slackers or gen x um i think slackers are just part of the equation and um you can you can see this and but and nonetheless capitalism overcomes the problem of the slacker because it has you know even when it even if it doesn't overcome it totally it doesn't make everyone perfectly efficient but it has you know even when it even if it doesn't overcome it totally it doesn't make everyone perfectly efficient but it has all these tools to bring to bear to innovate production

and discipline workers and really produce a lot of wealth the difficulty is that wealth is distributed irrationally and um and periodically it's distributed in ways that are truly irrational where you've got things going on like people people dumping milk down the drain to bring the price down. Oh, in Ontario, we have government milk quotas, which are our own problem. But really quick, on the, and I actually have to use the restroom, but something maybe to explore is when you have freedom, when you have liberty, Okay, yeah. evolutionarily when you just let freedom reign and to your point this kind of does create a split how do we reign in the split how do we reconcile the prodigal sons with the ones who did the right thing and something maybe to talk about i'll be right back okay sure okay okay so say it to me. Okay, so, well, my view in this is that the level of competition that we expect, probably wouldn't, that we're used to in society now,

and the kind of rewards and punishment and the incentives that we rely on now to direct people to make the right kinds of decisions that are socially useful. Like, you know, when you work hard, you're helping more than yourself. You're helping the people around you, you're producing more, you're contributing more. So we want to incentivize that. But the idea with so under socialism is that the, the rewards and punishments wouldn't take place on the level of survival or subsistence, but would take place probably more

on the level of social recognition, creative fulfillment. And that's when you turn away from competing for access to the store of goods and instead what people would be competing for is the ability to have some sort of elite position within the realm of production like a you know are you going to be playing in the back row on your violin or are you going to be the conductor those are the kinds of things that that would would incentivize people to work hard and to think hard and to continue to innovate.

This is maybe where I'm a little bit utopian. I think that we can bring the level of conflict in our society down so it's not always a struggle or most of the time isn't a struggle for survival. struggle or most of the time isn't a struggle for survival um and that we could even see you know uh the expansion of human health and and uh technological development to support that under socialism like one of the people i interviewed because i'm a socialist was aubrey de gray do you know who he is no he's a longevity researcher who was working on medicine to repair the bodies, the damage the body does to itself due to aging. And I think that, you know, overcoming, like extending the health span for as long as we can would be a good thing for society and for individuals in society. And that that would be worth supporting

well one of the questions i've always wondered i tend i ask marx i ask many people this but marxist in particular what is the goal of marxism or whatever it is you're pursuing is it a longer lifespan is it happier people that is the metric of life satisfaction subjectively reported is a child mortality rates to go down to plummet is it wealth to increase like what is it in particular that the marxist project expansion the first and biggest thing is i'm gonna is the expansion of human freedom um and and i think along with that a lot of the things you've mentioned would be improved. Concomitant. Yeah, concomitant to that. I think that you would probably see, definitely see, if things

are working out at all well, even further decline in infant mortality than we've already seen with the rest of modernity. You would definitely see an expansion of the lifespan for most people. Okay. So to simplify, and excuse me if I keep using the word simplify and be specific, I'm a mathematician. I'm a foolish mathematician. Think of me as extremely ignorant when it comes to these topics, and I'm just trying to understand them you and peter can talk at a certain level but to me it's i'm i'm always listening almost always listening to conversations of marxists as if they're speaking another language or not getting to the issues that i'm that i that i actually care about like yeah are you specifically advocating for when you say we just redistribute well how are you specifically going to redistribute it?

I'm going to be asking you a couple of questions like this. I'm not a redistributionist, ultimately. I mean, I supported Bernie Sanders, but one of the things about Marxism, you have to understand what I would want to emphasize the most, is that it is not the project where the state takes up all the things we produce and distributes it rationally that is not the aim of marxism that wasn't even okay the the goal is the goal is to change the

way we work together to produce the things we need to change the aim of our collective work so that the aim would be actually the expansion of human power and creativity rather than simply rather than the aim of profit making in the market so let me be so critical yeah okay why are we why do you care so much about freedom i know this sounds like it's so self-explanatory, but just let's be clear. Well, I care a lot about freedom because I feel as though life is short at the moment. The way to bring meaning to life for human beings is to try to explore the life that they have as much as possible and to take up as much power to shape their own destiny as possible while we're here. Okay.

I don't – yeah, so I'm a humanist. I'm a humanist. That's why I care so much about freedom. Okay, so meaning in life. Now, you also mentioned that you don't like people starving, obviously. Right, no. That is not a free condition, right? When you're starving to death, if you're eight months old... However, there is the revivalbuttal that the capitalist societies, not the communist societies, for sure, there are less people starving and that capitalism has lifted

more people out of poverty. I'm sure you've heard this. I'm sure you have some rebuttal. So I'd like to hear this. Okay, so my rebuttal would be back to kind of my original point about the Soviet Union, which is like, you know,

if you're going to compare the failures of the Soviet Union to anything, you might compare it to the way that capitalist and bourgeois relations started in England in the 17th century and after. You have to look at all the famines. You can't just look at the ones that were nearby. I think that what we're looking at when we look at things like the Russian Revolution, even, and the revolution in China is an attempt for these traditional societies to modernize much more than it is any fully worked out or successful attempt to transcend capitalism. I mean, that was their aim, but that is how they modernized and ultimately in the case of China and Soviet Union,

that is how they entered into the capitalist world that we know today. Do you describe the Soviet Union as capitalist? Yeah, state capitalist. Because the, look, way too late. So like where we are now, like in Canada. Well, more so. Or in America. Yeah, I mean.

Interesting. Much more so than we are now. But there was, especially then, you know, around the time that the Soviet Union came into being, and especially after World War II, there was a tendency for the state to intervene in capitalist relations and to direct capitalist relations more and more across the industrialized world. So you'd see it in Soviet Union for sure, but you also saw it in FDR's America. And the role of the state to direct capitalism hasn't gone away, it's just changed. So it used to be that there was more of an emphasis on redistribution when there was a threat of unruly workers, and also when there was a boom going on and there was a lot of economic growth. And then after the 70s, when after the profitability crisis of the 70s and all the other economic crisis of the 70s,

there's been these neoliberal turns to try to prop up capitalist relations through state spending. And so, but yeah, I would say overall the soviet union and china were state capitalist organizations with socialist ambitions like us like this so here's my question for you because like i mean i don't think that i don't think america is is aiming i don't politicians in america are socialists i don't think that even b Sanders has the same vision of transcending capitalism that someone like Lenin had or that even Mao...

Well, Lenin didn't like the state, right? Yeah, he wanted it to wither away, yeah. Yeah, so I don't know. I don't think we can call him state anything in that way. But when it comes to... I mean, he says in the State Revolution... He didn't have statist ambitions,

but he ended up creating state capitalism in the Soviet Union. What you intend to do and what happens. You can describe NEP that way, 100%. The New Economic Policy. And the people were down for it, right? People were naming their kids NEP. They were naming their kids after the policy. Yeah, well, because

the other approach was creating massive famines. And NEP was in a way, you know, absolutely necessary, kind of a necessary retreat. And, you know, it was a disaster. But like the Irish famine is how you should consider, you know, the way that with the robbing of the commons, that's taking the peasant workers' land away from them. That happened as capitalism developed.

And that happened as so-called communism developed as well. Did you notice the thread between all your examples? It's not that people call themselves socialists. It's not that people call themselves capitalists. It's the fact that the government, in the case of the Irishman too, like you look at the British government, the British imperial government

was like a federal government of federal governments. It was insanely regimented. You can go to the Supreme Court here in Canada, and there's a plaque inside that just says, yeah, this court is the highest court in this land, except for the one in English, right? We answer to that. It's the federal government saying, listen, buddy, just like you, we have a federal government. All of these things have massive centralized state power. Yeah, absolutely. Is it that that you have a problem with? Because there's another position that says that the rich guys ally with the government guys and there's a revolving door.

These people, of course, who negate that revolving door by desiring decentralization in different forms, they call themselves anarchists. Right. I was an anarchist. I was basically an anarchist before, right? You still are. Yeah, well, a lot of people might say that. No, I, yeah.

So where's the Marxism? It's like what I'm trying to figure out. Where's the government in this? What's their role? All right. So Marx thought the Marxism? It's like what I'm trying to figure out. Where's the government in this? What's their role? All right. So Marx thought that there should be something called the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin talked about the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Bolsheviks thought they were going to create the dictatorship of the proletariat,

but they never did, even by their own accounting, really. So what is the dictatorship of the proletariat, and why do Marxists support it and anarchists don't, is maybe the way I would put it. There's a moment, I think, in the Stalinist regime where they're like, yeah, we defeat socialism. We just have traitors, right? That's why we've got to purge them out. Yeah, but they would even then admit that the law of value is still applied and that they were still going to have to think about profits

basically. They never implemented something like what Marx talked about in the critique of the Gotha program, a labor voucher system that would replace money or anything like that. None of that ever happened. Instead of getting dollars, you'll get this bill

that says that you have this much value and if you collect enough of them, you can put them in this place that will invest them. No, no, no, no, no. You couldn't do that with the labor vouchers. I mean, the way it was described in the critique of the Gotha program, it wouldn't have been possible to hold on to and then invest in production. It would only be good to redeem one hour of work. Look, it was a bull. The whole point, if you read the critique of the Gotham program, is that the labor voucher system contradicts itself.

And it makes the value in labor kind of obvious to the workers and no longer necessary to worry about. Right. When the Soviets took over, right? And you had early, the early Soviet Union, they didn't print money, the early government, because they were like, great job. GG. We don't need the money. And then they realized that they need, they need money. And, you know, it was almost dead. It was like a stillborn, unfortunately, that idea.

It died from its infancy before it had a chance for life. Maybe that might reflect something in the ideology. But when it comes to what we were originally talking about, what's the role of the government? Why wouldn't you just call yourself an anarchist? Okay, so the role of the government after a revolutionary break, the dictatorship of the proletariat, it would be there

to administer or administrate relations between workers maybe workers councils maybe soviets but the workers process of transforming the way production goes um what it would not be it would be like a technical job they'd be more like clerks or communications officers or something like that. And they wouldn't be dictating policy. They would be implementing the workers' demands. But the moment the government takes on the role of arbiter, you need policy. That's arguably all they do. That's why Lenin in the state...

They wouldn't be dictating to the workers what the workers should do to transform their relations. They would maybe set up policy about how the different sectors would communicate with each other or through them, but they would be administrators,

truly be administrators, rather than lawmakers or seats of political authority. That's the idea. But if you're an administrator, you administrate someone, right? Like you tell them what to do. Policy, if it doesn't tell people what to do, you might as well not have the policy, right?

If no one's going to listen to the policy, and if you're not going to enforce it. It wouldn't be setting the aims of the workers. It would be advising and maybe setting some policies around how to implement the changes they want it'd be like if i if i came if i hired someone said i want to build uh a backyard patio and uh and i hired this guy on who knew how to do it and he gave me technical directions i wouldn't call him my boss it's almost like we're building building a church here. It's not going to force you, but it's going to advise you what the right thing to do is. And it's going to get involved with carpeting.

You even use the metaphor of a carpenter. Maybe what we're looking at here is something that we've done. Just go back to the monks. They pulled it off, by the way. They're long-lasting, successful communists. Why didn't they do it? Why couldn't we? But the key thing for Marx is breaking with the value of labor. Breaking with this idea

that what sets up our relations when we distribute the things we make is the amount of time we spend making them. When you say key, that's like unique to Marx? I think he has a really interesting and key and unique critique of the bourgeois economists that does indicate like it's a transformation of Adam Smith and Ricardo and others to to make it critical uh more deeply critical I mean uh you know not not to bash Adam Smith but the yes um the the aim of Marx was to transform those relations and break with

commodity with commodity production um Because at the moment, despite the fact that the state seems to be so powerful, it itself is always managing the aims of this form of production. It's like, the way I think of it is like, capitalism is like the rules of chess. And you can change the players all you want, but those rules remain the same until you change the game what are the rules the rules right now is we make things aimed at exchange on the market

as equivalents the value of those commodities are based on the amount of time it takes socially necessary time it takes to create them you have a class of people whose only real role is to provide the labor, to produce the things that then get exchanged. Whereas you could have a classless society where people came together to create things for a common store and competed over how and what they were going to do to create and transform the world, rather than competing through the marketplace and around exchange. What's going to drive that?

Wait, so we're all one team, right? Yeah, it would be a world. Wouldn't it sacrifice competition, though? No, it just would shift where that competition was you missed the answer what's the what's the pressure for i remember social status social status social status and and power so like so like you know are you going to be sitting in the i said before you're going to be sitting in the back row playing one or two notes on the violin, or are you going to be the conductor? And you can still... In Kotkin, the historian, right, Soviet historian, his book Magnetogorsk or Magnetic Mountain, he looks at that Soviet constructed city.

And he remarks how in the factory in the morning, right, they would put up the productivity numbers who which comrade was the fastest comrade which yeah that would all be gone under socialism because you don't know that's the prestige don't you want to know no yeah but the prestige would not be based on speeding up production in order to bring down the price of the commodity and compete more efficiently in the market which is what all of that productivity number stuff is about it's not about you know a point system rewarding people. What are they competing for? They're competing for profitability and either in the world market or in the local market because the faster you produce things the more productive you are on the floor the more

value you produce quickly and the more you and the and the more profits your your bosses are going to be able to fetch in the market okay but if we're competing to be the most productive how's that not profitability i did i i'm not saying anything about being the most productive well you wouldn't be measuring it in quantities of work time. What are we measuring? It would be measured in the quality of the output and the ability to meet needs and also to meet new needs and new social ambitions. Not in the amount of time or how quickly it was done or how slowly it was done. It would not be a time-based production. It would be based on the qualities.

So when you talked about productivity numbers, no, you didn't. You still had the productivity numbers. You still had, look, they were looking to Taylorism to try to run their economy. Well, Lenin loved Taylor. Right. Because he was still dictated to by the law of value and the production of this abstract value through labor time, through making sure that the amount of value and the production of this abstract value through labor time through making sure that you know the amount of value in a commodity uh you know was socially necessary meeting what was socially necessary or even beating what was socially necessary there was still the same engine of profitability was driving production in the soviet union because why i say it was state capitalists so and under socialism that aim, that fundamental aim, would be different.

That's what makes this a radical. Socialism would be uncoercive. It would be what? Uncoercive. It would not. Well, it might be coercive, but it just wouldn't be coercive that way. It would be coercive to a different value. Yeah, to a different value.

One that everyone kind of would be aware of having set. And it would be, you're arguing that. We would be setting our own value, our own primary value. We would be setting the aims of our own production. So that means that, you know, if we set up terms of production that have drastically terrible unintended consequences, we would know that this was our primary aim that we'd set. We wouldn't think of it as a natural fact of the world. We'd be able to alter it more easily.

We should definitely explore that. You were talking about assessment there, just a shift from the value, right? Like in terms of achieving value. The idea of assessing value is also fascinating, right? Like in, in terms of achieving them, uh, the idea of assessing value is also fascinating, right? Who assesses the value in the Soviet state? Is it just, we vote, this is what we think is valuable and we go for it. Do we, do you know what I mean? Like who, who, who assesses what's valuable? Well, given the agenda right now,

the power of the state is based on the you know the ability to tax corporations and people and to manage the you know the money value in the world and then also to build up armies and and have a mandate on violence and that gives it the ability to uh us be the final judge or assessor of the success or at least try to be the final judge or assessor of the success, or at least try to be the final judge and assessor of social success. And, you know, we have democracy in place here for the people to weigh in on how well the politicians are doing, right? So under socialism, the power of individual workers would be more direct

because they would be... Like direct democracy? Yeah, I think probably this is where Marxists start to say, well, no blueprints. Because before we can say what would be the best political form or what would be the best way to organize our communication and assessment of our success, we probably should know something about the political or the economic and social aims of our production. We need to know what that axiomatic first value is going to be before we can kind of know how we want to manage ourselves. But I would say that something along the lines of local communities

of control of production would be able to, you know, would also, you know, like councils or something like that, I'm just kind of reaching to what's ready at hand in my lexicon here, would be the people who would also be responsible for informing uh each other about the success rate that they're having in other words i mean look it would be pretty obvious if the common store of goods was empty or what or in certain areas people weren't getting what they just needed to survive i mean the base level success would have to be meeting just subsistence needs you know that wasn't working go ahead i was gonna say i don't mean to cut you off please I mean, the base level success would have to be meeting just subsistence needs.

And if that wasn't working, go ahead. I was going to say, I don't mean to cut you off, please. Yeah, no, go ahead. Okay. I'm sorry. You know, that idea of the common store and understanding value, I think is really interesting, right? Because one man might look at the common store and think man we did it this is this is valuable we need all this stuff it's great stuff and someone else might look at

it and look at the future and the potential in the material they're looking at and think it's garbage like the eyes of a prophet in the old testament looking at the wealth in their society all right garbage um you know like i think and they and so i would say that second guy is a minority right but he yeah but he's a better communist but he's a minority so would the democracy favor that guy like this is another thing too what if we just let the people organize their own common stores and then those common stores competed with each other and they own the equity of those common stores we call that capitalism. No no yeah but you're like you're you're we're not talking about a

common store where you're still talking about access to commodities is a primary thing the question would be how do we organize look let me tell you about my novel this this would clarify it because I tried to work this out in theory and I wrote a novel and it ended up being dystopian which i kind of like um so this is my attempt to to was it supposed to be utopian it was it was neither really but it was a matter of uh uh everyone read it as dystopian which i kind of perversely liked um because the way i implemented socialism was in a very coercive way. So of course it would seem dystopian. I had an AI novel. I wrote an AI novel where rather than,

so where Donald Trump was president and the people in government who created the AI were convinced that he was about to destroy the world through nuclear war. And the AI was giving them reports like, here's my projected timeline before everything goes up in flames um and uh so they were trying to use the artificial intelligence to come up with a plan to save humanity from its own self-destruction right and uh and the computer programmer who was the dad of the protagonist the guy who created the ai and was taking the information from the ai this was the dad of the protagonist and so the whole story is told from

the teenage point of view and what the dad of the protagonist did was thought was we just need to perfect humanity we just need to get everyone to be smarter we need everyone to be faster we need everyone to be more agile healthier and And then if we raise everyone up, if we can come up with a program with the power of this AI to raise everyone up in their consciousness and their abilities, we will be able to overcome this problem. And so what he did was he took himself on as a test subject. And his first task was to try to beat his son at Super Smash Brothers

because he always lost. Great game. Yeah. But I call it Smash. Yeah, I play and I always lose to my freaking teenage son. I'm sorry. We'll go right back to the novel. Who do you name?

Well, you know, it's been a while. Marth was one I would play for a while. And sometimes I would take perverse choices like i play pokemon like uh okay you know no no anyway it says a lot about go please continue what does it say about me that oh my like you know the deep psychological psychology of what who you mean in as uh smash bros bro or melee, Brawl for Cancer, Bar Society. Right, Melee, that's what I played, yeah. So I changed the name to Bash Bash Revolution

in the novel. So it's not Smash Brothers, it's Bash Bash Revolution. And that's the game that he wants to be able to beat his son at, and he can. The computer helps him, improves his game. He can beat not only his son, but he goes to a uh championship uh for the state and he almost beats he almost wins he doesn't win though and

he gets very depressed but then he finds out from the computer that look even if his plan had worked all that would have done was speed up the apocalypse it would have gotten here like three weeks earlier if everyone was smarter and so so the problem is not that in individual humanity it's not a matter of our genetic code it's not a matter of us not being smart enough there's something else going on that's causing the problem and of course that what is it it's the form of cap it's capitalism it's it's oh yeah i was expecting a different problem. Yeah, but it's capitalism, ultimately. And so how do we save humanity? Well, the AI has a solution. We have to break from the commodity form and has a way to do it.

Rather than produce things based on their ability to exchange in the market, all production will be directed by video games. I thought that the way out was commodification of video games. It's good. But it's like commodity with commodities. Replacing commodities with commodity production with maybe, you know, with the popular basing production based on what kind of games are popular.

So like games will be designed, augmented reality, the games you're playing are actually producing the things that you need for other games and so the kinds of games that are popular would be dictated by what people want to play but also by uh what things are most productive to produce the things that people want to play and the ai has it all worked out and you know it's gigantic huge brain but it also is like clearly manipulating humanity to do its will like once once ai takes over and puts you in a video game you're no longer in reality you're not really making decisions based on your own ideas you're making decisions based on what the computer is giving you to play i mean it's a very common psychological theme in

marxist literature right like we don't do the thinking something someone else does the thinking play. I mean, it's a very common psychological theme in Marx's literature, right? Like, we don't do the thinking, someone else does the thinking. We don't make the commodity exchange, the government makes the commodity exchange. We don't do that. Do you think that that reliance on the vanguard or the vanguard, not even as an institution, but as an abstract, don't worry, the expert told me, I don't know why I'm doing what I'm doing but I know it's right because I've gotten it from above permanent as celestial knowledge do you think that might be the undoing of Marxism? that's why it fails? there's this externalization of responsibility and thinking?

yeah I think it's part of the reason why Marxism had such difficulty there was two reasons why Marxism had such difficulty and there's two this is broken into a two-sided problem in Marxism. And on one hand it's determinism and the other is volunteerism. And strangely enough, volunteerism is the vanguardist position. Right, just to inform our audience, that's the one Mr. Lenin loved. Yeah, right. And Rosa Luxemburg was, I mean, neither of them were only volunteerists and only determinists. Right.

Lennon was volunteers. No coercion there. Right. Anyway, sorry. Right, right. So if you think that the vanguard is necessary, what you think is that a certain set of ideas have to be developed in order to direct people towards their own liberation. And if you think that that doesn't need to be done, then what you think is something like maybe what Bernstein thought, but in a slightly different way. You think that the market relations

themselves or the society of capitalism itself will bring people into conflict and into revolutionary struggle to create and will also give them the ability to create a new world. Like the three tenets of like Marxism, according to Rosa Luxemburg were first capitalism cannot last as a temporary society because it's driven with contradictions and it defeats itself. Second, capitalism brings people together in a social collective to make massive amounts of wealth and socialize people to be more interdependent and less independent. So to understand their need for one another, to be more cooperative, capitalism does that.

And the third thing is capitalism brings a consciousness of this situation to the working class, equips them for revolution. Capitalism does all these things. That's the determinist line. How horrible. No, I'm just kidding. Just to go to the volunteerism, I think it is very important to specify that when we talk about volunteerism for the Marxists, we're not talking that everyone does everything out of their own you know free will and accord and they voluntarily give you know because otherwise the

problem would be solved if everyone did that we wouldn't need to stay well that's actually the determinist line that's what you're suggesting is a determinist line because like what you're saying is voluntarily due to their real lived experience and their needs, people will act in their best interest and treat society. And that basically is the determinist line. Right. Because people don't do that. Because people don't do that. Ergo, we have – so I'm just saying when we talk about volunteerism, it's not that.

it's not that uh when we say volunteerism in marxism we mean we have people volunteer to get guns and coerce people to share so it's a whole other kind of volunteering uh you know when when here's the word volunteer you think uh you know they're giving a free labor uh but really volunteerism and marxism is is more like the freedom to tell other people what to do. Yeah. Well, it's a, yeah. The volunteerism is you, you, you, yeah, you get right. You're led by the best and the brightest to develop your ideas and put them into action voluntarily rather than being determined by your circumstances.

It's your own. People are so bright they have guns to persuade us um and look yeah you know right right now this look this the the capitalism is a violent business too i mean you can't just stay capital 100 yeah 100 i'm not trying to defend it's like you know they they and it wasn't even a matter of voluntarily taking up arms. It was more like you need to have the full understanding of, um, of Marxist ideas in order to know what to do and how to transform society. Um, otherwise you'd be stuck in, yeah.

Otherwise you'd be stuck in what's called trade union consciousness and only be keep struggling for better wages, only keep struggling within the logic of capitalism rather than come to understand you need to be political and transform society. A hundred percent. I'm not saying capitalism is not, at least state capitalism is not choruses, right? Like we have the picketings men in the United States, you have a strike, don't worry, hire the picketings men. These guys with guns, they'll come over and break your strikes. You know, it'd be a shame if your laborers had something like rights, you know, like this.

So you can hire out. It was horrible. And the government when they first intervened, they are on the side of the picketings men. They're like, good job boys. Thank you for your service. Be a shame if the union town stopped, or not you for your service be a shame if the union town stopped, or not the union town

be a shame if the company town stopped so they're, no, 100% capitalism has a history of coercion in part right so I agree with you there yeah, so the only thing I'd add is that

this problem of determinism and volunteerism is a problem when you're thinking about any radical social change that depends upon the masses or depends upon it coming from the less powerful parts of society. If you have an elitist understanding of how social change is created, that you don't have this split about determinism or volunteerism, you simply have these ideas and try to put them into action. It's very direct. Whereas right now, what we're talking about is the Marxist struggle to understand how to get people who don't have, don't perceive themselves to be responsible for the world or to

have the power to come to an understanding of their own position and their own responsibility for transforming society. You know, that's some powerful words that you said there. This idea that in that volunteerist model, there's a disincentivization for those on the fringes to participate. Because because you externalize responsibility, when you're asked, hey, is it your job to perpetuate the revolution? Is it your job to give? They say, no, some aparatji is doing that for me. Right?

We go to Zizak with the Buddhist in the wheel, right? Like someone else is taking care of it. I'm good here. And that occurs. Maybe one of the greatest, I don't want to even say successes, but one of the greatest instruments capitalism has used to succeed is its ability to take everyone, anyone on the fringes of society, to an extent, to get them to participate in the game, right? If you talk to Americans, they either see themselves,

I think as Steinbeck said, as millionaires or soon-to-be millionaires. And that's why socialism is so important. Not because it's flawed, but because even the lowest guy is playing the game. I'm not sure I quite understand the turn to talk about people on the fringes so much here, but because of the

concern when we're talking about volunteerism and determinism was not about having a few people not agree but not having uh the working class as a big totality come together with a political project beyond the logic of capitalism so it was uh okay so but I'm going to put that aside for a second. The second thing you said there was about how capitalism forces people to cooperate in its own logic, right? It sends up, it at least gets them to, right? People play the game. Yeah. And that's arguably to the tragedy. Okay, I remember what it was I wanted to address.

You said people in the United States think of themselves as millionaires in waiting or millionaires. Or haves and have-nots or students-to-haves or something like that. Like this was said by a Republican. Steinbeck said the other point. Yeah. is that in the, after World War II, for a while, that kind of assessment of, let's say, working class mentality was accurate enough, or had some truth to it, because there was such a big boom going on, and the expansion of wealth through very, very productive capitalism really did change people's living standards and conditions, for the most part. There were people who were excluded,

and those people, you know, usually along ethnic lines. And that has been a deep problem for America. But, but I would say that even since the seventies, this notion that everyone is going to be, could be a millionaire or that the working class are just millionaires and waiting I think that's given away and I worked in you know as just in regular jobs for most of my adult life like 20 years and the people who had come from families because I come from a professionalized family I think my father was a doctor so people who came from families that were just workers themselves, they had no

ambitions to be millionaires they had ambitions to have some security in their job it was a scaled down version, right? they themselves would be business owners and they could tell people what to do that's what in the Marxist conception it means to be an owner

I knew someone at Comcast who was very much from the working class. She would talk to me about her life and all the bitches she'd beaten up at bars the night before because they were eyeing her boyfriend and stuff like that. She was tough. But she had aspirations. She wanted to be a mortician because she saw that as a job with some security behind it. This was not somebody who was looking to...

I mean, she wanted to have a great life for herself, but she didn't look to her work or to her future income as the way she was going to satisfy herself in the world. It was just what she needed to get by. I don't think that material, here's actually maybe where we differ. Marxists, right? I don't think material is the satisfaction of life.

I don't think that's where the meaning comes from. And this is something that Marxist historians have trouble with, especially when they're retro projecting on history like how how would a marxist explain let's say tertullian or the christian martyrdom these guys who give up not let alone their material their lives uh how you know like where does that fit in in the marxist history it's almost like it's a deviation away from the what they consider the engine of history material.

Well, I don't think the Marxist idea is that everyone's working only for their own strictly material interests. It's more that the way that you build social relationships to meet everyone's, or as many people as possible's, material interests is what's going to determine the framework in which these other subjective attitudes arise. So, you know, if you want to understand the church, you have to understand the feudal society in which it arose. That doesn't mean that everyone was just dictated by a love of corn. Like a pre-feudal society. Right, right, right. Well, Christianity arose and took power,

became a real force in the Middle Ages and before. Isn't that when, I mean, yeah, dates further back but didn't, I guess, you know, depends upon what kind of Christian you're talking about. Because it was still... Well, you know, like, it doesn't matter. Dostoevsky wrote with the Grand Inquisitor, if Christ came back, he saw the church. Lord knows what he'd think. So, you know, I think it's the Grand Inquisitor who says something like, get out, you're torturing

people in the Spanish Inquisition. Get out of here, we're not ready for you yet. The church had some role to play, and Christianity played some role in the formation of, it was part of the political power that shaped relations in the feudal world. Yeah, and even Marxists, right? Like there was, if you look at the list in the Soviet Union for the guys who were on board with Marxism,

they're all Papadiches. Papa this, Papa that. Well, the Papa practice, Papa Andrei Dich. The Papa meant like son of the priest. So it's like Papas is the priest, right? So they were all from this like priestly, if you would cast or class, like so. It's really interesting the role Christianity plays in history. It's dodgy. Right. But what Marx would want to emphasize

and Marxists want to emphasize is how Christianity related to the relationships between pasts that had some role to play in the way material needs were met in a society and what kinds of things were built

and what set up those needs rather than only on the level of like theological debates or only on the level of the cast of characters who took uh authority in the church or you know that kind of thing yeah i mean um who is it uh the great greek uh communist uh but he was also a prolific writer he's like there are those stories in software Nikos Kazantzakis right who is the if you would the Marxist Christian and he really emphasizes this idea that you know if if you need some wealth redistribution you need the word they had, the caritas, for Christian and New Order. This idea of... The early socialists were Christians. I mean, to the

lowest... Well, in Europe, in the 19th century Europe, like, you know, the utopian socialists were mostly Christians and they were Lutherans or, you know, radical anti, they were on the side of the Lutheran tradition where you wanted to bring the word of God down to the people and away from the priestly class. And so- They figured out the communism, man. I'm just saying, they're the-

I'm putting it in quotes. What distinguished Marx from them was that he didn't, he was not utopian in so much as he didn't want to write down a blueprint for exactly what moral values should be at play and what relations should exist and how people should set up a stable, godly, harmonious world. But rather, he wanted to free the relations so they could be more and more creative and create new needs. He was much more on the side of bourgeois humanism than the usual socialists were because he was excited about the freedom that was potentially there and the development that could come out of a socialist society much more than he was

about the perfect moral values or the balance or harmony of a, of a. Oh yeah, for sure. Marxists are not concerned with morality. No, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But no, they are too, right? It's just a question of what it is you value, right? And the way you would set up an institution to ensure that those values are met,

I think is where Christians and Marxists differ. If you were talking about like the early church. But when it comes to this idea that you need in order to be a Christian to give all you have you know avoid if you would being a rich man I think it's like James 5 they talk about you know the blood are the wages that you would help from the laborers will come like your class it It's like your clothing. It's he's talking to the Richmond It's like oh we've been how you rich your clothes are moth-eaten The wages you withheld from the laborers are gonna come and get you

They cry out And he and this is the really splitting point though James writes for those guys For these laborers who've been exploited, the just man says, he does not oppose you. Something that no Marxist, I think, would ever say, Oh, here's the proletariat man. He does not oppose you, the bourgeoisie. I think there, there's this, this tendency towards, okay, how are we going to resolve this? Boys, get your Molotov cocktails, take out your books on Buchanan, right? Like it's not

our, you know, it's not this kind of... Well, what do you think the Christian thing to do would be if in a situation where in order for the bourgeois class, in other words, in order for capitalism bourgeois class, in other words, in order for capitalism to right itself, you knew that you had to go through another world war and that millions would have to die

either from disease or starvation or that because- You have to do that? Yeah, in order for capitalism, that relationship between the owning class and the working class to maintain itself and to go forward, in order for there to be a new boom, you knew that there would have to be a massive amount of human sacrifice, basically. Oh, human sacrifice, I think early Christians are all about. Like martyrdom. They're going to nine yards. But I thought that Christ was what he

made it so there would never need to be an actual human sacrifice again. That the blood of Christ was replacing the need for us to pay penance for our own sins in this world. So there's this medieval model. You're talking about that idea

that he's been the ransom for our sins, right? Right. Basically, this is a religion of forgiveness and of one another in a community rather than primarily a religion of appeasement of a wrathful God. Two things. One, I'll tackle the second thing you mentioned. It's because it's a

religion of forgiveness, there's no need for that world war you were talking about. The first one is when it comes to the idea of, you know, his sins were, how do I say this, his death was a ransom for our sins. It's interesting, that verse, if you follow it out, and it's Paul who starts. I'm going to cut you off on the ransom because that's a distraction the history of christianity i want to address what you just said first so about just kidding snap oh you got me puts away tolstoy that idea that a christian would say oh because we believe in forgiveness, there's no need for that human sacrifice that I was talking about. But what I was saying was the Marxist says, well, you as an individual Christian may forgive and be just in your heart,

but the problem is that these relations that really determine what happened are not just yours alone, but they're objectified out in the world. 100%, yeah. Right? Christians would say that too. Jews, the word shtemba. Hold on, hold on. Let me get to the end of that.

I'll write it down. So the point is that if we know that capitalism is going into crisis, that there's going to be a massive shortfall in profitability, there's going to be massive unemployment, there's going to be inequalities between nations and competition between nations to try to figure out which nations are going to suffer the most, and that that competition is likely to erupt into violence and war, or at least has that potential. And that not only that, but through that process, enough capital will be destroyed and devalued

so that new investors can come along and invest in what comes at the end of it and find a new boom. Would we be willing to say as good Christians, yes, as long as that, no, not just that we forgive them, but yes, that relation between the worker and the boss, that relationship between the bourgeois class and the proletariat can continue. And we forgive that, not just one side, but both sides of that relation for their sins of continuing on you know in this pattern because okay let's do this so there's this idea i love this um

it's a pleasure by the way just speaking with you i don't know how many hours sorry i should go pretty soon here it's been two i think but but you know on the subject of one i just want to say basically what we're talking about here is we're comparing Marxism to Christianity, and particularly something like Christian anarchism. I'm not going to say Christians are homogens. Obviously, maybe we all have our own interpretations of what the gospel means or what Christ meant. Take that for what it's worth.

Who's responsible for determining that? And heresy is, we can talk about that hours on end. Ironically, something Marxists struggle with too. What's heretical Marxist doctrine? What's okay Marxist doctrine? It's common in all ideologies. How do you define false teachings? But anyway, to give a steel man it

and answer your question, for Marx, I would say for Christians, there's this understanding that systems collapse in their inequities, even if everyone believes that it's a good system. I'll give an example. The crazy thing about the nature of sin, where you miss the mark from what should be and what is, it's an arch system. I'll give you an example. The crazy thing about the nature of sin where you miss the mark from what should be and what is, it's an archer's term, is that when you miss the way,

you might not even realize you're sinning. The society might not even realize they're sinning. In fact, in the Christian cosmology, they don't. They idolize things they shouldn't care about. But the beauty of sin is that, if there is any beauty in it, is that it goes away. It collapses by its own inequity. It falls not because you and I want it to, but because there's something inherently wrong with that

system. I'll give you an example. Let's say we lived in a society that believed that you should eat, I don't know, this poison that lowered our health, we call it capitalism, and ruined our lives. But we all believed it would work. Well, regardless of the fact we all believe that's the right system, and regardless of the fact that we believe it's the most efficient it isn't and that it's inequities it's very inequities would choke itself out what if and the difference of what you're talking about but now the difference is that what I'm saying is that at the end of that

process of the of the collapsing it would also be able to reconstitute itself and come up in the same relation and do it all over again. But whereas, you know, so wouldn't the Christian thing to do would be this, to change the set of relations so that they were less likely to collapse and there would be less calamity. A hundred percent. I think you and I would just probably disagree about the way you change it. Well, that's where all that technical conversation about value and the market and the exchanges and all that was important, because if you don't believe the foundational kind of material, economic, political analysis of Marx, then you can be perfectly moral of trying to, in a conservative way, prop up this system

as the best of all possible worlds. No, I don't think Christ is okay with moneylenders, right? Okay, so you want to get rid of... I mean, look... I'm just saying. You want to live in a society... Christianity equals capitalism.

Right, right, right. I'm not saying Christianity... I don't say Christianity equals capitalism either. My point is to say, I'm just saying to anyone don't say Christianity equals capitalism either my point is to say I'm just saying to anyone if you don't believe that the Marxist critique of political economy is true

then you ought not to be a Marxist and you ought not to struggle to overcome capitalism but that there are other reasons why you could struggle to overcome capitalism if I may say let's hear one okay so the thing is is what will be its undoing right so in what you tell me why i should try to overthrow capitalism you just said there are other reasons to do it i just want to hear what you have and how you should

tell me i didn't know i'm gonna sit over here. You're the Marxist, or you're the socialist. You convince me. Why should I overthrow the capitalist? I'm not saying you should. So here's, if I may, offer another kind of solution. I'm just trying to describe something more akin to maybe the monasticism of early Christianity that comes around like 300 years. There's a sense that the world is fallen. And that the way

that you, they have no utopian ideals about people, right? Like, Christianity 101 is everyone you meet is a horrible, like sinner, they, you know, they would kill a good man and crucify him and torture him. There's no optimism in life. And then worse, you chant every Sunday, Mia Max Palapa, Mia Max Palapa, or of the greatest sinners of whom I am, or of the sinners of whom I am chief. There's this understanding you are one of them. The sort of Christian anarchistic response,

which is what I'm going to focus, you change yourself first, and you lead by example. And you're not the only one in this game uh there's if you would i'm not saying okay well wait hear me out no no no no no i gotta i gotta interject because that might be that might be um a perfectly good tactic i mean that what you're talking about. It's what kind of tactic do we deploy to create social change? Lead by example.

Change yourself first. Lead by example. That's not non-Marxist. That's not non-Marxist. No. And what's sort of non-Marxist is the recognition that you're not the only player in the game. That there's... I don't see how that's non-Marxist. Because the Marxists are always...

I'm not done. I'm not done. I know, but Marxists are always I'm not done I'm kind of running it because what seemed to be happening up to now is I'll pose you a question in response to the question at the end of my explanation you don't address it and you tell me this long story about your ideas

I'll be curt I promise let's hear them and then I'll be curt in I'll be curt. I promise. Okay, let's hear it then. And then I'll be curt in my response. I'm talking three-sentence responses. Okay, go. Just for you, Doug. Systems of power are predicated not just by the people who are within them. The inequities of this system bring them down and instead a larger,

let's say reconfiguration occurs around truth, which Christians call the load. Okay. Third sentence. I'm trying real hard. Repeat that sentence for me. Why? There's,

there's a sense that these systems will collapse in their own inequities and reconfigure around a larger locus around the way, right? Which transcends individual actors. Okay, right, right. It's not money or power that determines what is good or determines the, if you would, social relations of what is something even higher than that. And that's where I think we differ from Marxism. Sure. Absolutely. Keep going. Yeah. I had my third sentence. I thought I was done. I'm sorry. I'm kidding. You get one more, Peter. Oh my. Someone write this down. No, I'm kidding. Oh my.

Good, good. Someone write this down. No, I'm kidding, kidding. You can take two. Take two or three sentences, but what's the next piece to this puzzle here? Because I'm getting you now. Yeah, so the idea is that you purify yourself first and lead by example and carve out a place,

a paradise, a garden, which what paradise means, you know, apart from the world that's collapsing, so that when the world collapses, and this is the ancient trick of monasticism, when the world collapses, they will gravitate around the garden you've created in the desert, like St. John

who waters the stick until it becomes a tree and a garden. That's the goal. And you don't, you do that not by Molotov cocktails, bloody revolution, World War II you do that

and it will happen here there are similarities with Marx who also believe it was an organic process in history, I like that a lot so now I'm hearing you but you don't mean the volunteerism if you know what I mean with the. But you don't mean the volunteerism, if you know what I mean, with the guns. Well, you do.

You have volunteerism when you're on – you have your own volunteerism. It's not – volunteerism is not a matter of a gun. Volunteerism is a matter of – The Vanguard? No, no. The Vanguard is not all about the gun. It's about the ideas. The Vanguard Party – look, in Marxism – look, look.

I'm going to put – let's put that aside i'll come back to it i want to i'm listening right so so first of all um the idea that you what you pointed out was that let's just map this on the capitalism you're saying capitalism as a world system will fall into uh will collapse due to its own inequities due to its own contradictions is how a marxist would put it i didn't say capitalism but any sinful i know i'm i'm transforming this into capitalism you're saying any system the transformation of christianity into politics that man that's marxist as it gets right right well the okay let's say feudal society will collapse due to its own internal contradictions, and it collapsed into capitalism, right, roughly, or bourgeois society or modern society.

Modern society will collapse due to its own contradictions, and it will become something else. dialectical, like Hegelian thinking. And our task... Toads and loats. Yeah. Our task within this dialectical of history is to understand and lead by example and to be there with the new world ready once the old world collapses. You do what happens at the end of V for Vendetta before

V for Vendetta's revolution, right? Right. Okay. You give your money away and help the poor before the revolution comes and takes your money and gives it to the poor. Okay. Okay, okay. Yeah. But that's the ultimate

voluntaristic version of revolution. People will be led by the ideas and their understanding to do what's right. That's not all, that's not immediately in their self-interest with the understanding of a better tomorrow. That's what you're putting forward. Yeah. I mean, not what myself is putting forward. I'm just a guy. But in that, no, in that Christianity, historically, that's a strain of the tradition so right the strain of the tradition

that sees human existence as a progressive process of history rather than not necessarily progress of history because that idea comes about in the French Revolution with Troubaud then what you're going to

then we have to reject this idea that after a collapse, a new and better version, a more equitable version of life on Earth will exist. Okay, you're not really promising that. You're promising pie in the sky when you die. You're not promising... No, not necessarily. There's this understanding that if you would be, the kingdom of God is within you and that you yourself won't be corrupted. And that's pretty good. And that's something you can live here.

Right? So just because everyone's exploiting around you doesn't mean you should exploit. You can live. It might have been Athanasius was asked, you know, Abba, what will it be like in the kingdom of heaven? And he said, why do I concern myself with that kingdom when I'm living in the kingdom of heaven now, right? Like, what do I concern myself with? What happens when I die when I'm living in the kingdom of heaven? I see this as like a beautiful soul syndrome, the way you're describing it now.

It's where, okay, sure, I allow all the people around me to suffer. I do nothing to change the social relations around me. What do you mean you do nothing? You murder yourself. I don't contribute to them. And I even allow myself to perish in the face of them. But I don't struggle to bring people together to change those relations. I accept the world as given.

No, not accept. Christians accepting the world as given? Have you read the Gospels? Well, wait. The world as it is. Do they want to change the world? Do they want to change the world do they want to change this 100 yeah okay for the better ideally would that not be a form of progress they don't know if you'll ever complete the mission which is really now they're the socialists right okay well this is something that's debated though

but in in um you know there's if you're interested you're actually asking well yeah well i i well what i'm what i'm what i'm interested in and pointing out here is that uh i can tell you that right right i mean i'm not we may not be in such drastic different disagreement in terms of like if we believe that we can come together and change social relations for the better, but not be perfect. And not through a violent revolution or any violence. That's where we do it. Do you, do you, so you would never, so I'm not an absolute pacifist. I was for a long time, but I'm not an absolute pacifist.

Yeah. Is that in the anarchist days? Yeah. Back in the anarchist days. Because you're an anarcho-pacifist. You're like, I'm skipping the jump from, you just go to church and then you're a Christian anarchist. yeah back in the anarcho pacifist you're like i'm skipping the jump from you just go to church and then you're a christian yeah i was i was uh but now i think look there's such a thing as violence and self-defense i did so i don't that that's justifiable um and that i i would say that when uh millions of people are being led to

you know let's say the gas chambers or pushed out into the desert to starve or unemployed in such numbers that they can't live yeah okay so there's this crazy story between these guys I don't know if you know them and they're hardly in a way

at least according to most persons Christian Jehovah's Witnesses. But they're an interesting case, though. I think we all agree about that, right? They're wonderful. At least as a historical phenomena. You know, there's this really funny scene between the Nazis

and the Jehovah's Witnesses. The Nazis, you know, the Jehovah's Witnesses were like Vladimir, they're not like our liberals. They don't vote. They don't believe in it. So, you know, they're not very popular. Anyway, so Jehovah's Witnesses were like by the Weimar, they're not like by the liberals. They don't vote. They don't believe in it. So, you know, they're not very popular. Anyway, so Jehovah's Witnesses write the Nazis. I love your little text message. I know I'm retro projecting, but the little text message

that's like, hey, Mr. Hitler, we don't like Judaism either. And, you know, Hitler's like, lol, cool, swear your allegiance to me in the state. Eh, they're like, sorry, we think the state is of this world. We answer to a king higher than all kings, our Lord Jesus Christ. And they respond back.

And Hitler's like, lol, JK. And then he sends a message to his elite. I had since been like, lol, kill these people. And so the chase begins. You know, they needle them down. The Jehovah's Witnesses refuse military service. They're pacifists. God bless them.

And they refuse to do the Nazi salute. God bless them because in Hitler's Germany. And all these taboos finally break it for the Jehovah's Witnesses. Next thing you know, you've got, just like the Jews, right? You have guys, Gestapo, coming after these guys, putting them in the camps.

You know what's crazy? These Jehovah's Witnesses, they go to Buchenwald. They're pacifists. One, the Nazis can't get them all because believe it or not, tyranny is not that efficient. And these pamphlets spreading, you know, freedom fighters

in a way, they to uh buchenwald the ones they do capture they capture about four of them there's only 20 000 they capture or something like that it's like about a fourth of them actually make it in buchenwald and when they get to buchenwald they don't leave the einsatzgruppen use them as barbers i think like because they they don't believe in killing, so they'll give them shades. If you open the door and you said, you know, they really believe in Romans 13, respect worldly authority, because it's not up to you to destroy it. Paul's interpretation of vengeance is mine, save the Lord, I will repay.

It's not up to you. God will destroy ungodly kingdoms. These ungodly kingdoms will be destroyed by their own inequity. So the best thing you can do is just not have yourself be destroyed and be good to everyone, friends, sinners, everyone. Okay. So they write that the concentration camp guards find the Jehovah's Witnesses. This is my favorite part.

They see them with purple triangles. And they're like, man. So like, talk about Antifa. These guys are the fascists. And they're like, man, what are you doing? You're German. We're Nazis. This is your moment.

Like, what are you? All you have to do is go with the flow. Why are you here? And the Jehovah's say, oh, well, we think the government and the state is capable of great evils and violence. And we're just trying to be good and not kill anyone or harm anyone. Of course, that's a problem for governments. But these tyrannical governments will be struck down. And that's, by the way, arguing that the state's capable of great violence, easy argument to win in a competition.

And the guards, a lot of them convert. The Jehovah's Witnesses made a printing press for the watchtower, their pamphlet system, underground in Buchenwald, and not only convert a number of the guards and the Jews, but lo and behold, the Nazis are struck down. There's always a bigger fish. Corruption eats itself. Violence eats itself. They are free, and those who are

died, the blood of those who died become the seeds for a new and expanding church in the post-Nazi regime. They've won by their own standards. So, and I'm not a Jehovah's Witness, but, man, isn't that a case study?

Sure. I mean, look, I'm not going knock uh jehovah's witnesses especially not in the historical context but i um if what it sounds like i'm just kidding i'm just kidding uh uh i um i had friends i used to have jehovah's witnesses come to my house um like every week or so because i was one of those people who would say, oh, hi, come on in. Let's sit down, have a cup of coffee. Let's talk about it. You're having your coffee.

They're like, oh, we think the world is going to end tomorrow. Spits out, we ought to tell the neighbors. No, no, no, no. They never said that. But they would talk theology with me. And, yeah, for years. So, like, I have no trouble with religious people. And I think some of them are quite moral and interesting.

The question for me is as someone who wants to intervene in the world, rather than simply abstain from cooperating in what I see to be evil, is, you know, what are my obligations in this moment? And, you know, I see a world in which we're headed into a massive recession, possible depression, where you are going to see many, many people unemployed here and around the world. The contradiction between the need to reinvest in capital production and the need to payvest in capital production and the

need to pay workers enough to survive is going to intensify and intensify. The state's attempts to try to correct that will weaken the state, which between states will be more pressure. So I see a very dismal picture objectively ahead of me. And I think, oh, So I see a very dismal picture objectively ahead of me. And I think, oh, but there's the possibility that the people who are most responsible for creating these conditions, that is the working class, could intervene and say, we have a different, better sort of mode of production, a better way to relate to each other that would force, would put all this off. We would actually, this would no longer be necessary.

And they do it by example, right? Because before you remove the phone Yes, actually, they would have to, they would have to do it by example or else it wouldn't work. In other words, there would have to be a new way

of working together. We couldn't simply, they could not simply, you know, take political power to change it. That's not going to do the trick on its own. And worse, it might corrupt them.

Well, yeah. But I mean, right. Hashtag Marxism in the Soviet Union. Right. I mean, we don't have to. But it will probably be a political conflict. It will probably run you afoul of authorities. There may be moments where you need to be to act in self-defense

but the aim is not violence the aim is not literal violence the aim is the violence of like uh the strategic talked about violence as the most like how gandhi was more violent than hitler where basically when you undermine the that's g jack for you undermine the ideas in society, when you strip away the supporting ideology, that's a more radical and violent move than to murder someone which leaves all the background ideology in place. I think it was Christ who said, fear not those who can destroy the body but the spirit I don't know if you would call

spiritual conversion violence right but you might if you're you might if you're someone who is a devout Catholic and you really believe in Catholicism and someone's trying to convert you to become a

jehovah's witness that may seem barely violent to you you know yeah well i don't know i'm not to me i don't know like when it comes to violence i wouldn't necessarily in uh well if you would peaceful conversion of that and another thing quick sign in the orthodox tradition to your point that's why you know even this idea of like forced conversion you seek people out is so anti-monastic the idea behind their conversion is very much in like buddhism in a way you run out into the wilderness you know you tell everyone goodbye and then you build a garden people say say, what's that crazy guy doing? And they visit you.

And then next thing you know, they're wearing monk's robes and the world starts, the fallen world starts turning around your axis. You actually never try to save them. You try to fix yourself. And the world, as it's crashed, can use you as a rock.

I want to give you a practical example of the kinds of things I think Marxists should be investing in right now. Okay. You tell me, will you tell me what you think of this from a, from your perspective? I don't know if you're telling me about Christianity because you're deeply Christian or because you're just a scholar of it. So from your perspective, whether, uh, right now in America, Amazon workers have been put in a position where they're not safe from COVID-19. Their conditions aren't good.

Their conditions before the crisis, the pandemic, weren't good. They were at very short breaks. They were working very, very hard. The pay wasn't high enough. Turnover was really fast. It was not sweatshop conditions, but it was not humane conditions to work in.

They're now struggling for better working conditions. Someone's cat is struggling for better working conditions, too. It's a cat on a diet. Who wants to get fed again when all right it shouldn't be um so uh the so the the teachers they're facing a reopening of schools and many oh man in ontario to the conservative government here yeah i'm a teacher they're gonna force force teachers back into the classroom uh without the safest conditions

for a variety of social reasons that aren't all you know completely uh you know you know it's not like these are bad reasons in some ways for instance the schools have when both parents, the schools are daycare. So you have, and if you don't, if you don't reopen the schools, people can't go back to work. They may end up being evicted or, or so severely impoverished by just, so, but if you do open the schools and the virus spreads, and so it's a real contradiction, but they're being,

they're forcing students, teachers back into the classrooms. And even if this is the sadness, right? Some of those teachers want to go back. Isn't that tragic? Some of them want to and some of them don't. Even if they did, it would lead to a catastrophe. Right, right. Some of them want to, some of them don't.

But nonetheless, the conditions are such that it's really uncertain as to how safe it's going to be. And many teachers are wanting to come together to organize for their own interest and try to change their situation. Right. They're going to have millions of unemployed. Right now, I think the unemployment rate is 10 to 11 percent. Oh, it's like it went astronomically up in the United States, right? Right. But we're not really going to be sure what the real final floor is until we see how the reopening goes. And you add in something I believe, which is that there's a long term tendency for the economy to go into crisis. This isn't just caused by the pandemic, but that there was an underlying instability in the economy and that the problems

that were already there are just being exacerbated. So we're going to see a very long-term kind of deep, we could be seeing something that makes the Great Depression look small. Okay? And this is Slavoj, we have to circulate skeptical even if we all die. This is skepticalism. Right, so right. I'm sorry, Slavoj, you're a great guy.

I love Slboy. You know, I, I, as I said before, I've interviewed him and I consider him to be a great, great thinker. But nonetheless, so we're seeing these conditions coming. Wouldn't you say that the rapture that, that, well, it's not rapture, because in the rapture, you know, there's massive death, but the souls are taken up. Right? There's no guarantee of any souls being taken up here. All we know for sure is that many, many people are going to suffer, even while we have all the ideas and technology and real wealth to feed the world many times over. Right, yeah. This is, don't stand.

Hold on, hold on, hold on. Peter, Peter, Peter. Just let Douglas finish. I'm sorry. Wouldn't you say that at this moment, the need for the working class to intervene, to be supported in struggles for their own demands is paramount. And that's what I want Marxists to do. I want Marxists to come together and say, we support the Amazon workers. We support the teachers.

We support the unemployed. We support suffering immigrants who are being oppressed and maybe are unemployed too right now and also live on subsistence wages right we want them to come together and organize to demand their own interests yeah the poor right who's going to save the poor well no the workers you think it's going to be the government do you think it's going to be like the elites no they're going to save the elites the elites job is to the guys who are in charge of redistribution no they're not going to save them. No, not at all. They have to save themselves.

They have to save themselves. Interesting. He's very anarchistic. No, it's very Marxist. Marxists thought that the working class had to emancipate themselves. And how will they save themselves? They'll have to take charge... By violence?

Well, they'll have to take charge of the mode of production and change the way we create the world so that these contradictions stop happening. And that will mean that they'll run up against the property relations and some of the laws of the existing order. They will be set before kings who will call themselves under the name of Christ. They will be tortured. They will experience the end of the world, the Judgment Day, if you would, hell will be knocking on their doors, and in those days men shall seek death, or what's it called, men shall run away from life and seek death, they shall not find it, they shall desire to die, but death shall flee from them. Right? It's going to be awful. Continue. Well, I wouldn't put it in that religious language.

But, you know, I would say they will be thrown from their homes. They will be conflict in the streets with the police. They'll be beaten. They will possibly be beaten. They'll have knees on their necks. When they're not beaten, they'll struggle to just get the food that they need. And when they do get the food, the people making it will sometimes die for being put in the position of having to make their food. Totally.

You know, so, yeah, there's a – so they will be pressed upon them to say, no more. We have a better view of society we we have a better way of creating the world not just a better view a better way how do they initiate it well i think it's probably violently i don't know i don't know if it's going to be a general strike i don't know but i it may not happen at all they may just allow for another world war to occur they may just allow themselves to be sacrificed for this economy. There's no guarantees here at all. Right. Well, you know, that's very anti-Marxist that you and I are right, because this is what differentiated Marx in his, this

is what I got from Hegel, right, the deterministic aspects of Marxism, from the anarchists who argued that, you know, unlike this idea of progress where the world follows these patterns and these patterns are almost guaranteed regardless of individuals, that no one's going to stop for Hegel. Listen, it depends on how you... The anarchists thought the world was unchained. It depends upon how you interpret the holy doctrine of Marx, as to whether you think he was a determinist

and thought there would necessarily be a revolution or whether or not, you know. But then again, it comes down to that determinism, volunteerism kind of debate. Do we think that we have to come together with the ideas necessary to transform the world and therefore come up with a new mode of production and think and create? Or do we think that the world itself will lead us to the promised land through some determined action which could be included. Marx just thought it was organic right like if you look at if you read the the manifesto this is why did he why did he advocate for anything why did he bother to write if he thought

he was still a part of that history, right? It's this idea that, you know, and really it was also Lenin's contribution. You should still volunteer. Again, the shape of volunteerism and Marxism is a bit different. But you should still be part of the insurgency. Regardless, to not, to avoid it, to be conservative is to delay the inevitable. And it's a beautiful argument, by the way. I'm not trying to knock it. I'm just saying the anarchists, theirs is more unchanged.

You know, this is something like, arguably like Nietzsche, a Greek conservative thinker, how do you know that the progress isn't darker than the world we have now? But then Pinker came along and slapped Nietzsche across the face and said, read my book. No, I'm just kidding. This idea that, you know, the angels of our nature were doing great, Nietzsche, shut up.

Yeah, look, there's no... Who knows? I don't think there's any guarantees that the changes that we try to make won't fail. Except for what we can reason in advance. Right. But if they fail, they'll be inevitable. This is why in the, just to go back to the Blue Lug,

not the Blue Lug, the concentration camps for the Nazis, there were these psychological studies to see who would be the less likely to break down. For Jews, they were one of the most likely to break down, like psychologically in the concentration camps, because in their cosm cosmology when you're the chosen people, it means in a very, I would say popularly Judaism in a common stream that the covenant between you and

God is one of your people will continue. And we mean like Abraham the covenant. Your offspring, your seed will become like the saints count innumerable like the same the grains of sand on the beaches and the stars so they were losing their minds with the holocaust but when it comes to the two groups that were least likely to break down

our boys those Jehovah's Witness guys and then also the Marxists. Because the Marxists were like, man, you know, all this, this is just trying to get in the way of the inevitable, man. They could kill me. I don't care. Individuals don't matter. It's about the – it's progress, man. Okay. Well, I would break down in a concentration camp.

I am not the kind of Marxist who thinks that what happens in the here and now and next week doesn't matter. I do think that, you know, we're apt to materialize the changes, and it's not guaranteed for us in advance. That's very un-Marxist. I love it. Okay, we'll end it there. We'll end it there, and if anyone's watching,

this interview turned into more of a moderation on my part where I found it extremely entertaining and enlightening to watch Doug and Peter have it out. If you all want a part two, please comment about it. Yeah. Have a good one, Doug.

Thanks. Yeah. Thank you very much. Bye. Bye. Okay.