Upstream - Marxism for the Masses w/ Savannah from All Power Books

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

Marxism is not some esoteric philosophy meant to be analyzed and discussed in the ivory towers of the academy—not that appreciating Marxism from an intellectual perspective is wrong, or anything—we do that quite a bit—but at its essence, Marxism is a weapon. It’s a tool for change—revolutionary change. It helps us understand the world around us not just for the sake of knowledge—but so that we can act accordingly.  This is the focus of our episode today—and the focus of our guest, who came to Marxism through real life struggle and teaches it to others with the very same spirit. Savannah is a co-founder of All Power Books—a radical bookstore and community space in Los Angeles. She developed and teaches Marxism 101 and 102 classes as part of All Power’s People’s Education Program.  In this conversation, we take a deep dive into these classes which aim to bring the social science of Marxism up to speed for our time and context. These classes are taught at an 8th grade level to be universally applicable and easy to understand—but they are crucial not just for newcomers to Marxism but for those of us hoping to improve in our communication and dissemination skills when it comes to radical theory and practice. In an incredibly effective and accessible way, Savannah teaches us about the differences between Private and Personal property, what the ‘Means of Production’ are, who owns them, how to easily grasp Dialectical and Historical Materialism, and more—all while dispelling some of the most prevalent myths about Marxism along the way. Further Resources All Power Books Savannah on Instagram Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States, by PSL  What Is To Be Done? by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Marx's Capital Illustrated, by David Smith (Illustrated by Phil Evans) Related Episodes: Breaking the Chains of Empire w/ Abby Martin (Live Show) [UNLOCKED] From the Frontlines: Revolutionary Disaster Response in Los Angeles w/ Gage and Sean of All Power Books Walter Rodney, Marxism, and Underdevelopment with D. Musa Springer & Charisse Burden-Stelly Palestine Pt. 14: Decolonial Marxism w/ Patrick Higgins Historical Materialism w/ Torkil Lauesen Dialectical Materialism w/ Josh Sykes The Myth of Freedom Under Capitalism (Documentary) (Chinese) Socialism vs (U.S.) Capitalism What Is To Be Done? with Breht O'Shea and Alyson Escalante The Logical Case for Socialism (and Against Capitalism) w/ Scott Sehon Intermission music: "Keep Planting Flowers” by Stick to Your Guns Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Hey everyone, Robbie here with a quick announcement before we jump into this episode. So it is still a few months out, but we just wanted to announce it pretty much as soon as we found out that it was all going to sort of come into place. We've got another live show coming up and it will be with the terrific the two and only Red Menace. So that is, of course, Brett O'Shea of Revolutionary Left Radio and Allison Escalante, both of whom you probably be familiar with if not from their own vast repertoire of amazing work but we have also had them on multiple times on this show and so we could not be

more excited for this. This will be a live podcast recording, much like our last and so far only live podcast recording with the one and only Abby Martin. And it will be on the weekend of August 23rd. So quite a ways away later in the summer, it will again be in Los Angeles and hosted again by our friends and comrades at All Power Books. So we will have

a lot more information as we get closer to the summer, including things like ticket information, venue info, the topic of the episode, etc. etc. But just wanted to share that with you and formally announce it here first. Okay, now onto the show. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] I was exposed to Marxism when I was working as a bottle server in a Hollywood nightclub, going home to a tiny studio apartment that I couldn't afford after serving celebrities who would waste like $15,000 on just a night out and then step over homeless people on the sidewalks to get to their Range Rovers or whatever that like does something to a person I

Don't come from an intellectual or scholarly place and Marxism doesn't have to be that I humbly teach this class at all power not because I'm an expert or some kind of professor But because I'm a person and like an activist struggling in many of the same ways that anyone else is. At Allpower, we created the 101 class because we saw the need to clarify Marxist teachings simply and to pull Western Marxism back into the real world and away from like, I'm so sorry, but elitist nerds who use politics

as a means of self-expression, rather than like an actual tool for fighting alongside the masses of honestly imperfect people towards liberation. You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A show about political economy and society that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about the world around you. I'm Robert Raymond. And I'm Della Duncan. Marxism is not some esoteric philosophy meant to be analyzed

and discussed in the ivory towers of the academy. Not that appreciating Marxism from an intellectual perspective is wrong or anything. We do that quite a bit here. But at its essence, Marxism is a weapon. It's a tool for change, revolutionary change. It helps us understand the world around us, not just for the sake of knowledge, but so that we can act accordingly. This is the focus of our episode today, and the focus of our guest who came to Marxism through real-life

struggle and teaches it to others with the very same spirit. Savannah is a co-founder of All Power Books, a radical bookstore and community space in Los Angeles. She developed and teaches Marxism 101 and 102 classes as part of All Power's People's Education program. In this conversation, we take a deep dive into these classes, which aim to bring the social science of Marxism up to speed for our time and context. These classes are taught at an 8th grade level to be universally applicable and easy to understand.

But they are crucial not just for newcomers to Marxism, but for those of us hoping to improve in our communication and dissemination skills when it comes to radical theory and practice. In an incredibly effective and accessible way, Savannah teaches us about the differences between private and personal property, what the means of production are, who owns them, how to easily grasp dialectical and historical materialism, and much more. All while dispelling some of the most prevalent myths about Marxism along the way.

And before we get started, Upstream is almost entirely listener funded. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. There are a number of ways in which you can support us financially. You can sign up to be a Patreon subscriber, which will give you access to bi-weekly episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalogue of Patreon episodes, along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers.

Sign up and find out more at patreon.com forward slash Upstream Podcast. And if Patreon's not really your thing, you can also make a tax-deductible recurring or one-time donation on our website upstreampodcast.org forward slash support. Through your support, you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going. Socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund, so thank you in advance for the crucial support. And now, here's Della in conversation with Savannah from All Power Books.

Savannah, welcome to Upstream. So happy to have this conversation with you. We'd love to start with you introducing yourself for our listeners. How would you introduce yourself today? Hi, Della. Thank you so much for having me on here. Upstream is honestly one of my favorite podcasts. So this is an honor and a privilege. You guys do amazing work, so just thank you so much.

My name is Savannah. Hi everyone. I'm a founding member and organizer at All Power Books, which is based here in Los Angeles. All Power Books is a volunteer-run communist bookshop, community space, and movement incubator. We're focused on building dual or counter power to existing institutions and systems. We offer programs such as a weekly free grocery distribution, a fully stocked free store, educational and political classes to help build community power, all power musicians organization for artists and cultural workers, and we have our all power free clinic which offers free mobile and on site

healthcare from volunteer nurses and doctors to anyone with no questions asked. I'm also a recent ish member of a Marxist Leninist political party called the PSL, or the Party for Socialism and Liberation. To me being part of both a radical organization like All Power, and a political party like the PSL has given me different experiences and roles to play in the struggle against capitalism. And for me, I saw the value in both, but the necessity as a Marxist to be in a party.

So more personally, I'm trailer trash. I come from a poor working class background and I'm not college educated. I spent the last decade working gigs in the music industry as a touring merchandise seller for punk and hardcore bands. So my knowledge of Marxism, it's self-taught by the experiences I've had in like counterculture and reading theory on tour or between shifts at the like random ass service jobs I've had. So that's a little bit about me. Thank you for sharing that background and also for sharing about All Power, which a

lot of gratitude for hosting the event that we got to have with Abby Martin last year. That was so much fun. Awesome. And then also gratitude that we got to speak with Gage and Sean of All Power Books for our series on From the Frontlines Revolutionary Disaster Response in Los Angeles after the fires. So really thank you for the work that you're doing and for being a collaborator with us. Of course.

So the reason why we wanted to have you on for this conversation is because as you mentioned, one of the things that you all do is that popular education of Marxism. And I know that you've been leading Marxism 101 and Marxism 102 classes. And that is just super helpful to have that kind of popular education and the style that you lead it. So grateful that we're going to be bringing that to a podcast conversation today. So let's start with why. Why would we be sharing about Marxism? Why is this something that you teach about? Why do you lead those classes? And why might you and I have this conversation today about kind of a Marxism 101. Yeah, totally. So Marxism, it actually influences millions, if not billions, of people all over the globe. One in four people on earth are actually communists. The ideas have been popularized in every single country on like the face of the earth. The Communist Manifesto is the second bestselling book of all time, surpassed only by the Bible and its ideas actually spread further than Christianity and in a shorter amount of time. I know that we're all feeling the effects of capitalism,

whether we admit it or not. So I'm guessing if you're listening to this podcast, you have been burnout. You are someone you know is struggling and maybe you're looking for answers. And if you're listening to this podcast, I'm also guessing you're a rational person that appreciates a scientific approach to finding these answers and explanations. And Marxism gives us that. Like, do you want to understand why you feel so exploited and frustrated? Do you want to be able to understand or see systems for what they are and have some clarity on how to dismantle them? A lot of people feel the same way that we all do. So you're not alone in feeling alienated and powerless. But Marxism is a working class guide for changing the world and it gives us the elements necessary to make a revolution.

So by fully understanding our systems and oppressors as changeable, we can intervene in our own lives and engage with the world around us. So Marxism to me feels really important and that's why we made it a 101 and 102 class at All Power Books because that's something that needs to be like the foundation for further learning. Absolutely. And I just love what you're saying about it really helps people understand, right? Their reality and the conditions that we live in. And it's liberating, right? It's not a personal fault or failing of ourselves, right, our own pain and suffering or the pain and suffering we see around us, whether it's human or more than human. And instead, it's liberating in the fact that it helps us understand why are things set up the way they

are and what is causing all of this disconnection, this harm, this suffering, right? Exactly. And I also love that you said that it is a working class guide, because I think there's some myths about Marxism that we're going to look at today. And one of those myths is that Marxism is highly intellectual and elitist. So that idea that it's a working class guide and even sharing your own experience with teaching yourself about Marxism and then kind of popular education around Marxism is so important.

So anything else you'd want to say about that myth, that idea that Marxism is intellectual and elitist, how might we debunk that? Yeah, I love that myth because it's like comically the exact opposite of the core of what Marxism is, or at least what it should be. Marxism, like I said, is a working class tool that is to be wielded by the poor and working class, and often don't have the privileges of like a higher education.

It's been taught to and understood by many masses of people all over the world in all different stages of education and intellect. So like we know illiterate peasants in czarist Russia and Imperial China learned Marxism and guerrillas in Vietnam, marginalized children and adults in like 1960s America, all the way to kids today in middle school sitting on Twitch and TikTok.

They're fully grasping these concepts. I'm also kind of a great example of this because I was exposed to Marxism when I was working as a bottle server in a Hollywood nightclub, going home to a tiny studio apartment that I couldn't afford after serving celebrities who would waste like $15,000 on just a night out and then step over homeless people on the sidewalks to get to their Range Rovers or whatever that like does something to a person. I don't come from an intellectual or

scholarly place and Marxism doesn't have to be that. I humbly teach this class at All Power, not because I'm an expert or some kind of professor, but because I'm a person and like an activist struggling in many of the same ways that anyone else is. We like at All Power, we try to make it fun and chill because we know we're competing for time and attention, especially because we're in the entertainment capital of the world. But yeah, there's like, there's a lot to the actual science more than we're going to be able to cover today. And you do have to supplement Marxism with a knowledge of history and geopolitics. Also, I'm not gonna lie, the way Karl Marx wrote and

how his words have been translated is hugely different from like, how you and I would speak today. So that's definitely a difficult hurdle. And I won't ignore that. But the concepts, they remain universally applicable. And this isn't to say that all the information on Marxism is accessible or even coherent. There has been like a concerted effort to confuse and distort Marxism because of how impactful it's been. At Allpower, we created the 101 class because we saw the need to clarify Marxist teachings simply and to pull Western Marxism back into the real world and away from like, I'm so sorry, but elitist nerds who use

politics as a means of self-expression rather than like an actual tool for fighting alongside the masses of honestly imperfect people towards liberation. We recognize that popular simplified education is how we're going to be able to introduce the science to people. And we know that America's reading levels roughly seventh, eighth grade. So we got to use that knowledge to change how we move to demystify Marxism for anyone and everyone. Yeah, thank you. And thank you for laying out those intentions for our conversation, right? To really demystify Marxism, to make it relatable and current, right? So there are videos and memes, but since we are a podcast, we'll be weaving in some audio clips and also stories and references that make it

relevant to today. But yeah, thank you for debunking that myth and just inviting all of us to see ourselves at whatever level of interest and education level to be able to work with these terms and these ideas and make sense of them in our own lives. I think that's the main thing. And honestly, since this conversation is based off of a class we offer at the bookstore, you and I both know it's probably easier to get through in person, cause it's interactive. Like you said, there's memes and I don't talk as much. We also have like group projects, discussions and presentations,

but the objectives of this remain the same. Like this episode, we want to be able to use a concrete science to understand society and its history. We want to build and develop class consciousness in ourselves and our peers. We want to learn tools develop class consciousness in ourselves and our peers. We want to learn tools to be able to process and analyze past and present events. We want to explore how to actually change society for the betterment of all. And honestly, if

all else fails, and I tell this to the people in my class, but I want you to at least have an understanding of Marxism so when the capitalist tell you that it's your enemy, you can know that enemy. So that's the objectives for today it's your enemy, you can know that enemy. So that's the objectives for today. So I'm really excited to be here again. Thank you. Thanks for laying that out. So one thing we have to start with is who was Karl Marx, right? Because it's called Marxism after Karl Marx. So how would you describe Karl Marx and who he was? Well, I highly recommend looking into this man's life because I don't go

too much into him in the actual class because it kind of goes without saying, like you said, but let me just tell you, like this man lived an incredibly interesting life. Karl Marx was born in 1818. He was an economist and philosopher during the Industrial Revolution in Europe, but mostly I like to point out that he was a huge trouble-maker. He was active in the struggle for socialism, and a lot of people forget that. He has a famous quote that reads that previous philosophers have only ever interpreted the world in various ways, but the point is to change it. And so I love that about him. Marx, he observed social, political, and economic systems, recorded his findings, and theorized their meanings. Much like other scientists did,

like Darwin, for example, with his theory of evolution. Marx's findings have been used to educate and inform political movements all over the world, particularly those who wish to understand capitalism enough to change it and to usher society into the next more progressive human economic stage. That's kind of all I go over for him, but he's awesome. Nicole Zichal-Bendis Yeah, and I love that idea of not just the study of something, but the study with purpose, right? To make better, to improve, to change. That's an important point. And so how would you introduce Marxism? You know, maybe somebody who is really unfamiliar. And I

really invite us to like work with these terms in our own way of explaining it too. So after Savannah offers it, like try to turn to someone and try to explain what it is, because that way of trying to articulate things, then we can learn what we don't understand yet. And also we can use these phrases and these ideas in our own words and our own lives. So how would you describe or introduce Marxism? So I usually go about telling people that like Marxism, it accounts for the entire body work of Karl Marx. So it's all of his writings and teachings. But the purpose of his theories is to help us see the world around us more clearly.

Marxism is a way of studying society. It's the science of society. It says that societies change and move because of struggles between conflicting economic classes. It's also not just another philosophy that only wants to analyze and understand, but it's a scientific theory that actually generates revolution and propels society forward. So it's, it's a, what do they call it? Theory

and praxis. But for ease and like a simple quip, Marxism can be defined as scientific socialism or material analysis. And because of the scientific approach to understanding the developments of society, Marxism is based, like all science, on experience, observation, and experimentation. So it will always remain fluid and evolving as the facts of history and the material world change around us. So yeah, the easiest way to say is like it's a material analysis. It's scientific socialism. Thank you. Great. And you know, another myth to bring in is related to the fact that Marx was male. He was white. He was European. And, you know, I think there can be a myth that what we're

talking about is really only either relegated or like fit for the time that he was in, but also the location, the geography. So can you dispel that myth for us? Is Marxism just white and male or is it something applicable and approachable for people around the world and also across generations? Yeah, that myth is funny. Fact is, Marxism does not belong to one group of people. Just like electricity, gravity, and motion doesn't belong to a group of people just because

the person of the group that found it was like the first or the loudest to document their findings. Marx developed his theories from within his own conditions, in the environment that surrounded him, which happened to be Europe, but his findings take into account capitalism's global impact. Marxism is an analytical framework for understanding the world, so it's been stretched, adapted, and applied to many regions all over. His discoveries in philosophy and economics and organizing have informed and inspired all kinds of liberation movements in various societal contexts, like in Africa, Asia, South America, or the Caribbean. It's just funny because we don't reject

electricity and refuse to use its tools, like light bulbs or smoke detectors, just because Benjamin Franklin was a white man. Like if you justify, if you like use that argument to justify never looking to Marxism, the neoliberals straight up got your ass. And that's like a, you know, the good old divide and conquer. But in all seriousness, Marxism has been used as a tool for oppressed, exploited and colonized people worldwide. Informing awesome and amazing comrades like Maurice Bishop in Granada, Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso, Ghassan Khanifani in Palestine, Fidel Castro in Cuba, like all the way to comrades right here in the United States.

Countless revolutionaries have defended and expanded upon the methodology of Marxism to inform their own context, which is why you'll hear developments like Marxism-Leninism or Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. So it's just funny when people say that, like, I can't study Marx, he's a white man, don't listen to him. I'm like, but you use electricity, you know what gravity is. It doesn't mean just because white men discovered it or whatever, recorded it. And Kwame Ture has a great video about this that I think we're going to show in a bit. But I wanted to say that like not only has Marxism been a basis for national and racial oppression, but gender oppression has found material benefits in studying and applying a Marxist lens as well.

People like Angela Davis, Claudia Jones, Leila Khaled and more have used Marxism to zero in on the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy. They can find their true enemies and fight against race, class and gender oppression. But what's also crazy is that there are like current global movements that are influenced by Marxism today all over. Like the PFLP from Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. They're a Marxist-Lindonist organization and they're fighting a capitalist Goliath right now. There are 99 million Communist Party members in China, 1 million Communist Party members in India. Like it feels like at this point the only demographic refusing to understand Marxism is the white Western men. And I'm looking

at all the people from like my hometown that called Joe Biden a communist. But I don't know, it's one of those things where I'm like, that shouldn't matter. This is a science and we're going to use the tools. But Kwame Ture has a great speech about this. So I'm just going to let him go and explain it from his words. Must be clear here, not confused. I'm a socialist. One other thing I must tell you now, they confuse people about socialism.

Brother the other day said, I ain't no socialist. I said, why not brother? He said, cause it's a white thing. I said, oh really? You see Europe tries to make believe that everything that comes out of the world comes out of Europe. I told the man, I said, socialism ain't no white thing.

He said, yes it is. He said Karl Marx discovered it. Karl Marx never discovered socialism. He cannot. You call the laws of gravity Newton's laws. I'm sure there's a mnemonic device to help you on your quizzes. But you certainly cannot believe that Isaac Newton can found that a body falls at the rate of 32 feet per second squared per second squared. He can't find this. He can't discover it. He cannot invent this.

He can only observe it and record it, discover the law. If I'm sitting in Timbuktu in Africa and I've never heard of Sir Isaac Newton and I'm conducting any experiments with gravity, I will come to the same conclusion that he does. A body in motion tends to stay in motion unless stopped by an outside force. He cannot invent this. He can only observe it and record it. Karl Marx did not invent socialism. If I'm sitting in Libya in the desert and I'm doing any research

with capital and labor without ever having heard of Karl Marx, I will come to the same conclusion that he did. That any time capital seeks to dominate labor, there'll be a ruthless, uncompromising struggle on the part of labor until it comes to crush capital and dominate it. This is a fact. My history demonstrates that. We came here as chattel slaves for centuries. We fought and fought and fought until we crushed it. Now we're just slave of the wage, and now we've got to rise up and crush that one.

That's a display that Karl Marx didn't invent socialism is therefore all to see. Karl Marx great contribution to the world was in the area of historical materialism and dialectical materialism something you need to know if you know about socialism but since you don't know about socialism you don't even know the words and not only does the enemy keep you ignorant you stay ignorant you won't ever go read a book about socialism. Why read a book about socialism?

They already told me in my class it ain't no good. You will not even read a book about socialism. Why you don't even read a book about your history? We come to inspire you to learn. We come to tell you that when you come to serve the people, you must know as much as you can. The more you know, the better able you are to serve the people, you must know as much as you can. The more you know, the better able you are to serve the people. Yeah, thank you for that clip. And I really appreciate that idea of where we investigate our conditions and the realities that we come to similar realizations and understandings around the world. And so that Karl Marx didn't invent these ideas,

but really landed on, again, ways of framing or ways of describing that have been really useful and helpful for liberation around the world. And I also want to just point out upstream, we've done a few episodes on this, this dissemination or use of Marxism around the world. One of them is an episode on Walter Rodney called Walter Rodney Marxism and Underdevelopment with D. Musa Springer and Charisse Burdent-Stelley. And then we've also done one with Patrick Higgins on decolonial Marxism around Marxism in Palestine. So yeah, just thank you for pointing out all the places and people around the world who've been inspired and utilized Marxism. Anything else you want to say about that quote that you shared?

I just love it. I think it's great because, you know, being a person that is an organizer, at least in a socialist space, you do come across these things that kind of push this element of like illiteracy or anti-intellectualism. Like, we don't need to learn. Like, we already understand we're oppressed or all these things. We don't need to learn. We already understand we're oppressed or all these things. We don't need to read Marx to understand that. I just want to push back on that. You should always want to read. You should want to understand why Karl Marx's ideas spread faster than Christianity. You should want to understand why these ideas ended up in every continent on Earth. So I just think it's super important that we stay reading and we stay doing. That's just the whole thing. That's how we're going to win. So yeah. Yeah, thank you for that. And I will say, you know, even personally, I have found

Das Kapital difficult to read. So I also appreciate that there are ways that you can read it with others or look at these texts with others or even other ways to learn about it, such as like Mark's Capital Illustrated edition. So fortunately, there's a lot of resources to support our understanding of these texts and also to get to know it together like your courses. Oh, yeah. So I was going to say that we carry that book.

That's one of our bestsellers at all power and I think it's because people do have this urge and want to understand and I will say just a little like a personal thing. I read the Communist Manifesto like five times before I actually understood it and When you do understand it, you're like, oh, this is this is so universal It's so obvious, but he gives you the tools to really be able to understand the world around you. So it's still important that you read and highly recommend reading with others and using study guides and supplementing your learning. I didn't understand it till the fifth time. And because of that time was when I was with my comrades and we were discussing it.

So I read it four times by myself. The only time I understood it was when I was with other people and I could bounce off of others. So highly recommend studying with your friends. Absolutely. And so in that clip that you shared, that Kwame Torre video, he brought up the concept of dialectical materialism and historical materialism. So we are going to get a little bit of the glossary, the technical here, because as he said and as I know that you'll say, these concepts are, they can seem difficult to understand, but they're also very important. So let's walk through them, you know, easefully, and let's start with this idea of materialism versus idealism, because I think that's a good place to start and also to kind of lay the groundwork for these other concepts we're

going to get to. So what does that mean to be a materialist or an idealist or kind of what's that dichotomy there? Yeah, definitely. I just want to say too, like, because there's so much to go over in the 101 class that we have, I have it laid out in a way that's kind of easier to understand, I hope. I like to call it like the Marxist toolbox. And I don't know if anyone's going to be listening to this podcast and taking notes. Sometimes I take notes when I listen

to podcasts. But if you are, this is the stuff you need to highlight. And that is like dialectical materialism, historical materialism. We're going to go over the labor theory of value, theory of alienation and revolutionary conflict theory. And that way you just have these terms right off the bat. And when we go over them, you can remember that these were highlighted. And like you said, like these all sound super intimidating, but I promise you that you all already inherently know this stuff just from being people with eyes And a brain and so yes, we'll start with materialism. This is gonna be probably the biggest chunk of Information dumping and yapping that I'm gonna do

I usually use visual presentations and videos and group projects help explain this so we'll try our best for a podcast But yeah going into materialism, let's just hit it. Materialism is a way of looking at the world that says physical stuff or the world around us. It exists on its own whether we're aware of it or not. So this includes matter we can sense, we can touch, hear, smell, taste, such as food, water, our houses, or even like conversations

we have with our neighbors. People need material things to survive and their access to these resources is what drives us. So this idea is different from idealism, which is important because it was the common held belief in capitalist, it is the common held belief in capitalist societies and was the popular viewpoint during Marx's time. So that's why Marx's findings were so revolutionary. Idealism says that the world exists mostly in our minds. Or from the mind of a higher power like a god, like it was created by a god, it claims that ideas, beliefs, and spirituality, like these intangible things, are what create the

world and shape changes in society. It also suggests that history is made by like special people who just had really big and grand ideas. Materialism obviously rejects this. It says that people's ideas, they have to be shaped by their real life conditions or like the material reality around them. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. Like their economic situation, their environment, what their family does, how they get their resources and like their social life. That's what makes your ideas. That's what shapes

them. So, materialism believes that the world is real and it exists whether we're aware of it or not, and that history is shaped by actual physical factors and not just ideas. So that's kind of the difference between the two. And then when you add dialectics to materialism, you get dialectical materialism. You know, the one thing that I just I just personally have a question about this is for me the ideas, the paradigms, the concepts have been really helpful like in my own life such as we're exploring today, right? The idea of like alienation or other concepts like that. And so I'm just wondering like when there are people who have a material experience, sometimes that overlay of the understanding of what that means through a concept or an idea like alienation can be what helps radicalize them.

So I don't know if you have any response to that, but like, how is there sometimes a both and to this conversation? I mean, yeah, that's kind of what dialectical materialism is, is that you get your ideas based on like the world around you, you sort of, you know, if you're born poor, you're gonna see the world for what it is and how hard it is to hustle and grind your way into success or whatever. And if you're born rich, or if you're surrounded by like wealth, that's going to influence how you think about the world and how easy things are. And it's just funny, you know, it's that there's that meme of the Bluth mom from Arrested Development, where she's like, how much can a banana cost? What, like $10?

I mean, it's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? $10? You've never actually set foot in a supermarket, have you? I don't have time for this. Like, that's her thoughts are influenced by her environment, if that makes sense. So, you know, it's all kind of connected. So let's build off of what you just described. You just described materialism and idealism. And then you said there's this addition of dialectical

to materialism. So let's expand. What is dialectical materialism? And maybe what's an example? I think that could be helpful. Yeah. So look, I'm going to explain this now, and later on we'll use a lot of those examples. So even if you don't get it right away, just keep listening. And I think the more we talk about it and show these examples, it'll make more sense. So, dialectical materialism is a concept that Marx theorized that flips the previous long held notions of idealism on its head. Like I said, idealism was like kind of the way people think. It's what capitalist countries use a lot. So, dialectical materialism changes that. Dialectics, if we're going to

break down the word, dialectics is the idea that change happens through the conflict of opposing forces. So for example, in society, there's often a tension between groups like workers and CEOs, and this conflict is what drives progress and leads to new systems or better ways of living. So think of dialectics kind of like a debate where two opposing ideas clash and a new better idea emerges from that. So put together, dialectical materialism explains that history and society change because of the material conditions of life, like economics and technology

and the conflicts or contradictions that arise from those. It's a way of understanding how the world works, grows and transforms over time. So dialectical materialism, it shows us that the forces of idealism and materialism are actually interactive because they're contradicting forces that work together to create something new.

The material shapes and maintains the ideas and beliefs, but the ideas and beliefs can also help shape and legitimize the material reality. Materialism is obviously like the more important factor in this as our world is made up of matter and matter takes primacy over ideas. We know that your thoughts don't exist just independently or outside of your material reality.

So here's how it works. One, everything is connected and always changing. Dialectical materialism says that nothing stays the same forever. The world is always moving, growing and changing. So for example, think about how technology has changed over time from flip phones to smartphones. Things evolved because of the forces around them and the need for better technology. Two, opposites create change.

Marx said that change happens when there's a conflict or tension between two opposing things. For example, in society, again, there's like conflict between workers who do the labor and business owners who control the money and resources. This tension can lead to big changes like new laws or even something like revolution. Dialectical materialism also tells us, for a third point,

that material conditions shape everything. Marx believed that the physical world, like the economy, resources, and technology, shapes how people think, act, and live. So for example, if people don't have enough food or shelter, they might fight for better conditions. This is different from ideas like religion or philosophy, which focus more on thoughts or beliefs, like you can just pray your way out of it. And the fourth point is that progress happens through struggle. Change doesn't just happen smoothly. It's not just like a timeline of just natural change. It often comes from struggles or conflicts or two contradicting forces. So again, for example, workers might fight for better pay,

or people might protest for more rights. and these struggles are what push society forward and create new ways of living. In simpler terms, dialectical materialism is a way of understanding how the world works, because it says that the physical world and conflicts between groups drive change, and that society is always evolving because of these forces. It's sort of like a recipe for how history happens. And another point to this is that often, capitalist societies don't focus on the material. Our textbooks, entertainment, and culture and news networks, they obviously reflect that. We're raised to believe in the ideation of things such as,

America is the land of the free or or some shit like, President Lincoln freed the slaves, and not the concrete material reality of our history and its economic system, and like the masses of people who rebelled and applied immense pressure to affect that societal change. We always get to learn loose, lazy, and negligent versions of history, which sucks. But when using dialectical materialism,

we can uncover the realities of our lives. And trust me, regular people use this tool every day without even knowing it, just by like when you problem solve through issues by understanding the context and the material factors that led to them. So another way to think about it is like, So another way to think about it is like idealism presents itself in like our self-help culture. We're often told just to like manifest the life we want to live just by believing hard enough. And materialism shows us that if you are born into poverty, it's not really something you can dream or hustle your way out of. Dialectical materialism would show the process of how a person's economic and social situation will factor into that personal success rather than just hoping. I hope that made sense.

That's a lot. Absolutely. No, I love that idea of framing it as a recipe for how history happens and your invitation for us to look at what have we been taught about history and what would it feel like and look like to go back and look at history from this dialectical materialism approach. And I really heard the word context, right, stand out. And I do often look at the assumptions underlying mainstream economic thinking.

And one of them really is that capitalism is ahistorical, right? It's kind of always been here and it always will be here. And as you know, Margaret Thatcher said, there is no alternative. Whereas when you start to look from a dialectical materialism lens and the contextual lens, you actually see like, what were the conditions that created capitalism? What upholds and sustains it, what are the tensions and possible transitions and acupuncture points that are today, and how could it be shifting and what could we leverage to make it shift faster and to that more regenerative and equitable economic system that we truly want.

So yeah, thanks for bringing in those ways of understanding this idea of dialectical materialism. And I'll also point out that we did interview Josh Sykes on dialectical materialism. So if you want like a whole deep dive, one whole conversation on that topic, we will have that. And so let's build off that and let's go into historical materialism. You brought up history several times and you also said that, you know, one element of Marxism is that it really helps us understand history so that it could be applied history. It could serve us for today and serve us for that change that we wish for tomorrow. So how would you introduce historical materialism?

Yeah, definitely. So applying dialectical materialism to history, you get historical materialism. And inherent to Marxism is this quote that sums it all up. He says, the history of all existing society is the history of class struggle. And that's important because most of history was exactly that. But like we know, it's presented to us by looking at like a record of wars or the exploits of individual guys. We see history described by the victors as moral or immoral events on a timeline. This is idealism. And as we know, Marxism rejects this. Marxism looks at the entirety of a society. It looks at its economic production and distribution, its political climate, and the push and pull between its social classes.

So more of the material aspects. It's a theory that like different events in society are absolutely determined by the material world around them. So again, it's like applying dialectical materials into history. So historical materialism is a general method that is used by Marxists to understand the contradictions of class issues within societies. And we see them as the motor for social

and historical transformation. Different events in society are linked together and can't be understood in just like a vacuum or by themselves. To learn about one event, you will also need to learn about the other concepts that led up to that event, like social, political, natural, and economic factors.

So to understand, I'll give you a little historical materialist analysis of history. It's gonna be so quick and just simplified, so don't come for me, but this is essentially like the Marx's view of history. So for the majority of human history, people lived in communal societies without classes. They shared resources, tools, and cooperated for survival. Marx calls this like the primitive economy.

Human society transformed when agriculture was developed and a surplus of resources were held for the first economy. Human society transformed when agriculture was developed and a surplus of resources were held for the first time. So by creating these extra resources, the surplus, societies could now produce so much food that not everyone had to work in productive labor, which unintentionally created social classes and even more unintentionally struggle between those classes. Property was seized by the upper class and made private and kept from the poor through physical intimidation, violence, and they developed legal institutions. So they basically enclosed Earth's beautiful abundance behind a paywall, which just sucks. I think you guys have a really good podcast on the Enclosure of the Commons or an episode about this, so I would highly recommend

looking into that. Marx calls that kind of era primitive accumulation, where people just some certain groups of people started being able to accumulate more. And we all have to understand that for hundreds of thousands of years, humans lived communally and we shared common land. So that's like if you and your family needed water, you could go to a river. You could just go and get water. You could go chop up the wood that was in the forest.

You could hunt the animals that were there. You could let your animals graze anywhere. You all communally shared and steward all of it, all the land. So, primitive accumulation and the privatization of that common land led to the epoch, or we'll say like an era, of slave societies in which a ruling class dominated the others. Slave rebellions and resistance in class struggle against slavers and owners led to the eventual like epoch of feudal societies. And side note, obviously slavery has existed well into our current era, but it wasn't like the main driver of the economy. That wasn't like the main, what you would call like a mode of production.

So once it moved to feudal societies, there was class struggle and rebellion of serfs against feudal lords, coupled with new inventions that led to the epoch of capitalism, which leads us to the two opposing classes that we have in conflict today. So we got the proletariat or working class who sell their labor in exchange for a wage and the bourgeoisie or capitalist class who are private owners who purchase your labor from you for a wage. And actually, Professor Richard Wolff has a really quick little explanation of this, and I think he does a really good job of summing it all up. So we're just going to play that for you guys real quick. So here's Professor Richard Wolff. Capitalism has a lot in common

with the systems before, particularly slavery and feudalism. And here's what they have in common. A very small group of people, masters, lords, employers, are dominant, have the control and amass the wealth relative to the vast mass of people, the slaves or the serfs or the employees. This latter group, the majority, the vast majority, do the bulk of the work. The wealth produced is gathered into the hands of and controlled by the small group. A small group vis-a-vis a large group. That capitalism has in common with slavery and feudalism.

And that means capitalism is subject to the same tensions and criticisms and revolutions that plagued slavery and feudalism. Yeah, pretty good quote. I like that. It combines it all in. So it goes primitive economy, slave economy, feudal society, and then capitalism. And this is obviously such a simplified timeline, but with more research, you will see that in each epoch of human society, it has been able to be set apart by its economic conditions. So within each epoch, we see the driving force of change was conflict between two classes. And all of this simultaneously influenced the thoughts, the beliefs, and the cultural mainstream of the period. It's cool to see it this way. And I love looking at history

in this way because it shows that our reality is also changeable. And that's like such a breathtaking realization. You can change it. So that's good to know. So using historical materialism, we can see the world around us more accurately. We also, this is what Marxists do too, we understand as Marxists that we can't compare a different society and culture to our own society and culture. We can only compare societies to who they were before in their own timeline, how they've developed, what has hindered or boosted their development, and their current place in the hierarchy of imperialism, of global imperialism. So for example, let's use Cuba.

The idealist version of history would have you thinking that everything was great until there's a communist dictator who took over and all of a sudden now they're poor and starving. And like, fucking no. So this one just gets me fired up because Cuba, it was an island of indigenous people whose culture and people were destroyed by the colonization of Spain. They turned it into a freaking slave society of working sugar and tobacco plantations. So class struggle ensued there for years until the Spanish-American War in which the US won that and just took over and occupied it even after Cuba gained independence. So America, they turned it into a playground for celebrities and a tax haven for corporations.

And they kept the Native people in horrific conditions. They lived in shanty towns. They had no resources. They were under a right-wing dictator, Batista, who the US openly supported financially. After the Cuban people organized, they rose up and they thwarted its oppressors. They developed their own literacy programs, health care system, economic, they have like economic success. The US decided because they couldn't let that slide, they placed it under the most long-standing and violent economic blockade in history like to this day. So they isolated Cuba from trade with the outside world and they strangled their economy. That is an application of historical materialism. That's how we Marxists see Cuba. They're not just

starving because they're poor. There's a reason. There's context. And it's the blockade. The United States did that on purpose. So another example or application of historical materialism, So, another example or application of historical materialism, we can think about the idealist version of history that has us believing like the American Revolution was this war of independence for religious freedom and democracy for all. But historical materialist reality is that it was actually a conflict driven by economic and class interests. Duh, right? The Revolution was largely led by wealthy colonial elites, landlords, merchants, slaveholders.

They wanted to break free from British control to protect their economic power. So they didn't want to pay taxes, and they wanted to expand their opportunities for profit by stealing indigenous land. While the Revolution used ideas like liberty and equality to gain popular support, it maintained systems of inequality, such as slavery and class divisions, benefiting only the ruling class white people rather than creating true equality for all. So idealist versus materialist. Now, why any of this matters is because dialectical and historical materialism allow us to shed ignorance of thoughts, feelings, and

beliefs. And I hate to say it, but Marxists should be the true owners of the quote, facts don't care about your feelings. Because that's just what this is. If we relied on morality rather than verifiable science to inform us like we do now, our reality becomes a mess. And we see this today. We see this with the issue of Zionism. A Zionist is an idealist. They will tell you that morally and spiritually, they have every right to incinerate children, to decimate entire cities with like barbarity, to become the rightful owners of the land. But a Palestinian will also tell you that morally, it's wrong and beyond devastating

to be bombed in your own homeland. So if you're looking at that and you don't have a materialist lens, you're relying on your emotion, you're going to be confused because they're both telling you they have a moral right. You know? So it's like, you wouldn't be able to see the material distinction of right versus wrong or good versus evil concepts. We need something further and more scientific than morality. We need a science that cuts through propaganda, ideology, and crocodile tears to see that Zionism is factually oppressive and historically criminal. So like, historical materialism tells us free fucking Palestine. But um, there's another historical analysis that

Michael Perranti does and it's pretty incredible. I think we can play the quote. It's an analysis of like how the world is. So let me just play that for you. All right, here's a historical materialist analysis on the world. That expropriation of the third world has been going on for 400 years brings us to another revelation, namely that the third world is not poor. You don't go to poor countries to make money. There are very few poor countries in this world. Most countries are rich. The Philippines are rich. Brazil is rich. Mexico is rich. Chile is rich. Only the people are poor. But there's billions to be made there to be carved out and be taken. There's been billions for 400 years. The capitalist

European and North American powers have carved out and taken the timber, the flax, the hemp, the cocoa, the rum, the tin, the copper the iron the rubber the bauxite The slaves and the cheap labor they have taken out of these countries these countries are not underdeveloped They're over exploited You're listening to an upstream conversation withation with Savannah from All Power Books. We'll be right back. I wish that I knew what it took to walk through that door you can never come back from And I wish I knew you were in pain Cause if it's all the same you weren't always invincible to me

You said you just needed some space And you said you just needed to clear your head I wish I hadn't been so afraid I just wish I could say you were never invisible to me You were never invisible to me Disappointing me I just wish I could see you whenever And disappoint me I don't know what you've endured But I know life can be such an unbearable reward Some of those who've been truly the power Keep letting it flow

You are invisible to me You are invisible to me I just wish I could see you You are visible to me Shut the doors and pick the way to flower Keep it in flower If I am invisible to me You were never invisible to me That was Keep Planting Flowers by Stick to Your Guns with lead vocals by Jesse Barnett,

a co-founder of All Power Books. Now, back to our conversation with Savannah. So I really hear the point about historical materialism cuts through using science or a scientific understanding of the framing or the storytelling, otherwise known as propaganda, that is really trying to cover up and tell people a different story or a different situation. And it's just so clear in all the examples that you gave. So thank you for bringing them up. And also thank you for that short version of history as through a historical materialist lens. And I will say that, you know, that point I mentioned

about the assumption underlying mainstream economic thinking, one of them being capitalism is a historical, really that concept of primitive accumulation is what cuts through that, that idea that actually the reality that we're currently in with the billionaire class and the horrendous inequality that's growing that we have, it's not natural. No, it actually came from primitive accumulation through land theft, enclosure of the commons,

slavery and genocide, right? And it's like, once we understand that, then you can unlearn this idea that a billionaire deserves their wealth or they're somehow better than the rest of us for all that they have. And when you understand primitive accumulation, you're like, wow, actually, if you look at their legacy, which includes so much violence and harm to people on the planet and all over the world,

it's actually not a good thing that they're a billionaire at all. It's actually morally apprehensible that they're a billionaire. So it really helps you understand the reality differently. And I will say I also love that people have said primitive accumulation wasn't just a moment in time. I love this reframe, which I've heard from a few people, including David Harbie, who says there's actually processes of ongoing primitive accumulation or accumulation via dispossession in an ongoing sense. This idea that it wasn't just the enclosure of

the commons in England at this one period, but that it continues to this day. So the privatization, you know, through neoliberalism, the land theft, the genocide, a lot of which you spoke about in Palestine, it continues to this day. So it's not just an isolated incident. But anything else you'll add from that parenti quote, which was excellent. Thank you for sharing it. Of course. Well, it's also interesting, a way to think about why things are the way that they are. For example, we have the city of Paris, right? Paris is a place that people really want to go to.

It's one of the major cities in the world. If you're selling a house in Paris and you're looking at what it's worth, it's only worth a lot of money because it's in Paris. And you didn't build Paris. That city has been built for centuries by people, laborers, working-class people, and so what gives you the right to have all of this value based off of all of the work, the collective, the cooperation that's

around you? So like the world doesn't belong to this generation right now. Everything that we have was an accumulation of history and everything that we've built was built by laborers. So to me, like that accumulation and that hoarding of wealth and the hoarding of properties and the hoarding of resources is so inherently wrong. Because you weren't there for the creation of any of those resources. We weren't there for any of the building of Los Angeles or the building of New York City. That was generations before us and it's just it's a crazy concept to think about. Yeah and it wasn't just that it was the the people who who built it and now they own it, they were exploited in that process. And so those who do have all the ownership and control over things like I know the water

in Los Angeles, great example, right? That's so disconnected from the people who actually labored and built these cities and these societies. So yeah, thanks for bringing in that example. It's a great one. One thing though, that you've said a few times that I really want to go into more is this idea that Marxism is a science. So you've said that a couple of times, like what does that mean? And why is that an important claim to say that Marxism is a science? So Marxism can be considered a science because it employs

systematic analytical frameworks to understanding and interpreting our environment, our economic and historical events. And the reason that is, is because they're, like I said, there's the systematic knowledge. So that would be the materials conception of history. So historical materialism, we've got the dialectical method, that debate, that push and pull of contradictions to understand a topic further. We've got empirical analysis. What are the facts? We seek to base our theories on observable empirical realities that can be proven. Something about Marxism too that I love is that it has such a predictive capacity. A lot of people would consider Marxists as like truth tellers or future seers or whatever, because

we can predict what's about to happen. We know, like, we can see the way society moves and how crises will inevitably produce class struggle. It's not deterministic. Obviously, we can't say it's going to happen for sure, but the predictive capacity of Marxism is awesome. Because it's this critique, you can add that and apply it to different places, different contexts, and it has this formulaic approach that will be able to be applied and stretched and pulled. And it distinguishes itself from other economic theories because it does provide that scientific basis. And I'm not a scientist, obviously, so I know you guys have an episode about this that goes way more into it.

And it's just one of those things that, like I said, if you rely on your feelings, or if you rely on your beliefs about something, you're not going to get the same answer. And it's not going to be the same answer across the board. Marxists, when they understand society, there are facts that you just can't deny. Yeah. And what I'm also hearing is that it debunks another myth about Marxism, this idea that Marxism is irrelevant or antiquated, right? That it was only relevant or related to the time of Karl Marx, where, as you're saying, actually no, if we see Marxism as a science, it can be applied throughout history, even to this day, and also around the world.

It's that contextualization and application that is what makes it a science. So anything else you'd say about that myth about Marxism being irrelevant or antiquated? Yeah, I'd say that that myth is irrelevant and antiquated. Because do you know what else is antiquated? A hammer. And we still keep that shit in our household toolbox because it's of use. Marxism is a tool. It serves a function. It doesn't matter how you feel about it. Look at the world around us. Everything under capitalism has been monetized. The quality of life is getting worse. Even the

earth is being sacrificed to the domination of ever-increasing profit. So Marxism isn't irrelevant. It remains of use even today and proves itself over and over and over again as applicable in modern society. As the conditions of capitalism worsen, you're gonna need Marxism and an understanding of capitalism so that you can, you're not just floating in the world and wondering why these events are happening just all at once in a vacuum. You need that science to be able to see

who your enemies are and not just be scared and fearful of everything. Like we got to see how we're being exploited. So we have this saying at All Power Books, it's on one of our shirts, it's you can't build a home with a hammer alone. So you can supplement this science, but it's foundationally important to developing a revolution against capitalism.

Like, that's just the plain and simple answer. Marxism can be applied and will be applied because it's a science. So I don't think that's ever going to be irrelevant, maybe after capitalism is done away with. But as long as capitalism exists, this is a biting critique of capitalism that has proven itself time and time again. So let's go into this a little bit because this is another phrase that you know may not be understandable just by hearing that word. So break down for us what are the means of production and who owns them under our current system

and maybe socialism instead? Yeah, so like you said, this takes us back to the classes in conflict within capitalism. So we've got the working class, proletariat, and the capitalist class, bourgeoisie. The capitalist class are the ones who owns what Marx calls the means of production. So it's basically what's in the name.

It's the property, resources, tools, facilities, and machines necessary for the productions of goods and services within a society. So it's the means of production. So an example of this include like an Amazon warehouse or the espresso machines at a Starbucks, the tractor or farming equipment used by like the Cargill Corporation. Because I live in LA, a local example of the means of production would be filming studios and camera equipment. So we can also

consider this private property. Yeah. And so what we're moving towards is, you know, what does the alternative look like, socialism and communism? And so that's why this means that production is so important. So maybe break down for us, what's the difference between private and personal property? And you know, maybe debunking this myth that communists want to take our toothbrushes. Yeah, that's so funny. I love that. So breaking it down, private property are items that are intended for social use. So it's immovable capital, like factories, mines, farmland,

anything you make a profit off of, like apartment complexes, ports, prisons. They require a large workforce of socialized labor to generate profits privately for private owners. Personal property on the other hand are items intended for personal use. So these are more movable items, possessions like consumer goods, furniture, clothing, art, cell phones, personal transportation, even like your car, your boat, or your bike. These are items created by labor for use. So for example, if you own your house, that's your personal property. But if you own an apartment complex that's making you money, that is private property. You're profiting off of that property.

And this myth about the, God, I'm just going to take your toothbrush, which I'm so, it's so funny that they focus on a toothbrush because there are other things they could have freaked people out more about. But this myth, it came about because of the confusion over personal and private property. I didn't even learn the difference until I was reading Marx. It's just, they just don't talk about it. I saw something on Facebook the other day that was like, socialists are they're evil because they want to take all of your private property. And this, you know, this is funny because in the

communist manifesto, Marx and the communists do clearly call for the abolition of private property. But people don't understand it's not asking for the abolition of any personal property and there's a difference between the two So what this means in practice is that private capital like Amazon and all of its means of production? The warehouses the property that those warehouses are on the delivery trucks that would all be Collectively owned by the people by the workers, not just one man or a board of CEOs. The labor of workers and the purchase from consumers are what makes profit for Amazon. So the people that work there should be able to democratically decide what to do with that profit. And locally, that profit can go into building schools, into fixing roads, or paying their workforce more even.

So this would give the workers who do the labor that would give them the ownership of the means of production, which is what getting rid of private property is. So everyone's always screaming and crying over socialists taking private property, but they don't realize that capitalism is taking your personal property. Like BlackRock is buying up all the single-family homes,

nobody can own anything, you're making payments on your car, Like Black Rock is buying up all the single-family homes. Nobody can own anything You're making payments on your car. All of your personal property is being taken by capitalists and socialists just want to Essentially take these methods of profit for capitalists and put that profit in the hands of the people So under socialism you're gonna be able to keep your toothbrush. You can keep your Nintendo Switch. You can keep your house. So don't stress. That's just the difference is so vital. You got to understand personal and private property. I really thought that that breakdown was super helpful. And also thank you for naming how

it's not communism that wants to take our personal property. And in fact, it's capitalism that does. And I actually just heard on Democracy Now today, someone giving the example of Donald Trump wanting to take over all of Gaza as an example of how capitalism isn't inherently competitive or doesn't breed competition. It breeds hegemony. And so it was like a very clear example of that. And so what I'm hearing is how Marxism identifies the cracks, right? The cracks in the upholding of capitalism as this wonderful system. And it really shows how it is actually so harmful to people and the planet. And then it can also point to, through those cracks, the intervention points and the ways to systems change. So in order for us to move towards

what we want to come next, right, this more egalitarian and regenerative system, we need to understand a few more theories. So break down for us the other theories of Marxism that are just really good to lay out before we get into the transition or the revolution pathways within Marxism. Yeah, definitely. So again, the most important thing about Marxism is having this materialist lens, this materialist analysis. So we begin to see, like you said, the faults of capitalism. We see history for what it is and not just what we wish it would be. And so through Marxist theories, we can accurately name target and intervene in the root causes of exploitation. Like, why does

it seem like no matter how hard we work, we can't say afloat? Like even with these record corporate profits, even knowing we live in the richest society in human history. And so Marx has answers for these. And he has a ton of theories and a lot of pages and words about all of them. I'm just going to cover the labor theory of value, surplus value, and the theory of alienation. So starting with the labor theory of value, this is an idea about how things get their value essentially. So Marx probably wrote like about a thousand pages discussing this theory. So it's kind of going to be hard to communicate it all on here.

But basically he said that the value of something like a chair, a phone or a pair of shoes comes from the amount of labor that goes into making it. The theory suggests that the more labor intensive a product is, the more valuable it becomes. So for example, if it takes five hours to make a chair and one hour to make a cup, the chair is more valuable because more work was put into it. Seems obvious. Marx believed that the workers who put in time and effort to make things should get the full value of their work.

That's what Marxists believe. So when a chair is sold as a product, instead of just acting as like an object in your home, it takes on a new identity, becomes what is called a commodity that is traded and valued in a market. So people who bake bread to feed their family are not producing commodities, but people who bake bread to sell on a market are producing commodities. The key to understanding the capitalist economy lies in this understanding of the nature of the commodity and how workers ourselves can actually become one. So by selling our labor and time to a capitalist for a wage, the workers ourselves, we become a commodity exchanged on the market for our lowest value.

we become a commodity exchanged on the market for our lowest value. And that leads us into surplus value. So this is the root of exploitation. Surplus value, it's like the key idea in Marx's economics. It's the extra value that workers create while doing their jobs, like beyond what they're paid. So let's say a Starbucks barista, we're going to do some math, but it's going to be easy. A Starbucks barista can make about 40 drinks in an hour. And let's say each of those drinks are $5 each. Through their labor, they're able to make Starbucks $200 in profit in not only that one hour, but they're only being paid a minimum wage and on average that's about 11 bucks an hour. So after being paid for that hour, the remaining 189 from the profit that they made for the company

goes to the owners of Starbucks despite them not being involved in the labor needed to make the drinks at all. The barista like already worked enough time to prove their $11 value, which is basically in five minutes. You can make coffee drink so fast. So after selling two drinks, that's $10 essentially if they were $5. So every penny they make after doing $11 work is essentially, you know, they're doing free labor. So the capitalist, we have, we can admit that they bought the materials, they, you know, pay the rent on stuff, but the barista created the value of the drinks by making them. So that extra $189 every hour after paying the wage is called surplus value. It's the difference of the worth of the workers' labor and the actual amount of compensation

they are paid. So this is at the heart of Marxist criticism of capitalism because the profit-driven economy relies on undercompensation of workers, which is exploitation. So then this leads us to Marx's other theories. So through all this exploitation, all of the harshness of our material reality as the working class, like how we have to commute to work, we don't get paid for that, commute back, we have to sit in these cars. It takes a toll on the psyche. We can experience immense dread, dissatisfaction, and loneliness. Marx calls this alienation. His theory of alienation describes the experience of human life as meaningless or the human self as worthless in modern capitalist society. He says there

are four types of alienation we can experience. And, you know, when we're doing this class in person, we all talk about our various examples. And, you know, it's kind of like a very healing moment because we get to talk about how isolated we feel, how dissatisfied we feel. And it's good to know you're not alone. And it's great to be able to like put a label on it. So we're alienated, first and foremost, from the products that we it. So we're alienated first and foremost from the products that we make. So we don't own or control these things that we produce. They don't come from us. We're just there to put them together and send them off. We're alienated from our work. Jobs feel forced and meaningless.

They're not creative or fulfilling. It's not benefiting us. We just clock in and clock out. We're isolated from others. So capitalism creates competition, it makes people compete for jobs, it doesn't allow us to cooperate, and that creates isolation and this sort of like individualistic approach to life. And then the fourth way that we're alienated is that we're alienated from ourselves. So we can't express our true potential or creativity. And in short, workers feel disconnected from their work, their creations themselves and each other. And that's Marxist alienation. And it's, it's kind of a bummer, but it does, you know, I think most everyone knows and has experienced this. It feels incredibly

fulfilling to do something that is of your own, like when people create their own art or work on their own thing. And an example I have of this is, you know, everyone at All Power Books is a volunteer. No one gets paid to do this job. But I would rather be here at All Power Books working 12-hour shifts,

feeling like I'm, you know, helping the community. I'm working towards something. I'm building this like relationship with people around me. We're cooperating rather than working for one hour at like a bar or, you know, doing something for someone else. Like every time I have to do any of my other work, it doesn't feel, it feels so much longer than the hours I spend here at All Power. And that's because of this alienation. That's just a personal experience. Yeah.

And I hear that, that it can feel like a bummer to describe the ways that we're isolated from one another and alienated from our labor. And yet it's also so liberating, right? And helpful for us to be able to imagine and also work towards the world that we'd like to build. And another story or example that really brought this point home for me, I have a good friend who's a designer, and he worked for a company that was just one other person who was the owner, and he designed for the owner several products, right, like bags and

other material pieces. And then when he left, when he quit, he was unable to take any of his work with him in terms of a portfolio, right, to show what he had done during that time and also to get another job. Due to whatever contract he had signed, all the proprietary and design work was owned by the owner and not his at all, even though he was the one who literally designed it and put it out in the world. So classic. When he told me that, I was like, that is alienation. Just such a classic example. So yeah, thank you for explaining that to us. like just such a classic example. So yeah, thank you for explaining that to us. And you know, one thing that Marxism does, another gift of Marxism, is that it does bring us from this feeling of being isolated into solidarity, right, with other members of class. So let's go into this

idea of like the class struggle, right, and these different factions or groups. And because I think it's really important to know them and then to start to see ourselves as part And these different factions or groups. Because I think it's really important to know them and then to start to see ourselves as part of these different groups for the revolution, for the transition. So can you break down this concept of class struggle? What does it mean? Who are the kind of quote unquote warring factions? And how does that sense kind of bring us from isolation into a sense of solidarity and camaraderie with others? Yeah, absolutely. So class struggle is the conflict between different groups in society over resources and interests. So we remember in capitalism, it has us divided into two main classes.

So we've got the working class proletariat, or people who sell their labor in order to survive and the ruling class bourgeoisie, those who own the means of production, the factories, and they pay the wage. Now we also have a fun little group we call the class traders. And these are people who belong to one class but fight for the interests of another. So this would include police who are made up of members of the working class, but they absolutely revoke their title by defending the bourgeoisie, their private property, and their political interests. Sometimes we are lucky enough to get a class traitor

from the bourgeoisie who sacrificed their class position to fight alongside the proletariat. So it goes both ways with that. We love those guys. And it's fun, like the in-person classes that we have, I have an incredibly long list of all these different jobs ranging from a server to restaurant, a stripper, a CEO, just all these different kinds of jobs. And we have to put them on this like hierarchy triangle pyramid that I make. And we've got it labeled like the top is the bourgeoisie, the bottom is the proletariat and the middle's class traders. And it's a fun exercise to kind of figure out because we have this idea that sometimes if people make a certain amount of money, like good money,

like basketball players, for example, sometimes we associate them with the bourgeoisie. But in reality, a lot of the times these like people who make more money, they're getting compensated, yeah, for their labor more than we do, but they're still getting paid a wage and they still don't own their means of production. And so we would still consider them the working class. And what I love about that exercise is after all of the different jobs that we go through and all the different titles, we find that most of everything belongs in the bottom section. And that's all of us. There's so many of us. And there's maybe one or two people in the bourgeoisie. And these are like politicians and CEOs and billionaires and things

like that. And we get class traders both ways, obviously. Like if you're a lawyer and you're using your class privilege, you own your own firm, and you're fighting for working class people, you're fighting with a union, you're a class traitor, you're helping us out. And so it's just really great to be able to see yourself in this bigger group because in capitalism, they seek to divide us so much. They invite us by class, by race, by gender, by all these things. Now we've got even more divisions in a culture

war. We've got all these sub genres now. We got all these like just subcommittees of subcommittees of subcommittees. So it's really great to see ourselves in this mass where we can find solidarity with others. We can use that to exert power against the, you know, the tiny minuscule people that sit on top of all of it. They're sitting on that pile of gold and they're keeping us, people are dying in their wake. So yeah, we always have fun with that little exercise in our class. And I think it can really be summarized by the Occupy movement slogan, we are the 99%. Absolutely. Occupy Movement slogan, we are the 99%. And I think when we realize that numeric value, then it really does feel empowering. And we're hopeful for that systems change.

So one thing that I am very curious about what your thoughts are on this, another myth of Marxism, there's this idea that Marxism is inherently violent. And there is a lot of rhetoric of militancy. Even there's this idea of like the warring factions and like class war and class struggle. But yeah, talk about that. How would you respond to this idea that Marxism is inherently violent and has this kind of militancy about it? What would you say to that response? Yeah, well, one, it's science. So like it's a scientific analysis of an economic system. Is that violent or is the economic system violent? Because Marxism points out the

fundamental exploitation and violence required of capitalism, such as poverty, repression, imperialism, and war and inequality. It does focus on this class struggle, the economic systems, and the need for equality. And this can lead to changes, so like revolution, and in many cases, those can be violent. But we have to remember it's only because the oppressors take it there. They resort to violence, and they have benign violence all day, every day. People are dying more than you could even fathom because of capitalist policies. And so they'd rather resort to violence rather than giving the oppressed classes like an ounce of compromise.

And I always think this too, I'm like, all America would have to do is give us healthcare and the militancy falls away. So many people would fall out of the struggle if they just did that, but they won't even do that to save themselves, they won't even do that. And that's how violent and how class conscious the bourgeoisie are. I love Fidel Castro, one of my favorite revolutionaries.

He has a quote about this that goes, revolutionaries didn't choose armed struggle as the best path, but it was the path that the oppressors imposed upon the people. And so the people only have two choices, to suffer or to fight. And so the Marxist analysis of history and reality, like that's what that is.

We have to ask ourselves why we're always having to justify or condemn the reactions of oppressed people when breaking their chains. We never ask why the bully is constantly hitting you when you're down, but the second you fight back, it's like, oh, look how violent they are. And we see this every day. And I think people are super tired of it

and recognize that Marxism in and of itself isn't inherently violent. It is the working class guider framework of understanding capitalism and how to act on that. And how to act on that is just a natural reaction. If somebody is trying to kill you, you're gonna defend yourself. You're gonna fight for your life. And that just shows how much love there is

in people. How much we love ourselves and how much we want to fight for those who come after us. If we didn't love ourselves, we would turn over. We would just be like, okay this is what it is. But because we have that love, we fight back against that oppression. So I don't know. To me, capitalism is violent. Racism is violent. Sexism is violent. Homophobia is violent.

All these things are inherently violent and they justify themselves within the idealist framework of capitalism. Marxism and the response to that oppression, that's just natural. It's all natural, baby. You know what I mean? Like, that's just how it's gonna be. So everyone can kind of do with that what they will. And I'll say from personal experience, being in spaces that are either communist or mutual aid or, you know, solidarity economy spaces, there is so much love within them. And I'll include all power books in that, that, you know, creating a free clinic to support neighbors to, you know, give resources away the sharing economy aspects of it, the mutual

aid, the response to the fires, right? Like there is so much love and solidarity and mutual aid and support and compassion in these spaces. So yeah, thank you for bringing in love and how that shows up in Marxism. I want to move now to communism, socialism, and capitalism because we've mentioned these terms, but only briefly. And I do think that this area does get confused within Marxism. Like, I do think that this area does get confused within Marxism, like the difference between communism and socialism. Sometimes they're used interchangeably. So can you break them down for us? What is the difference between capitalism, socialism, and communism? And how would you distinguish them in a Marxist understanding? Yeah. So Marxism is the study of these societies. So it's the study of the different economies or economic systems. So that separates it from these three systems. So the economic

systems would be capitalism, socialism, and communism. So there's the science that understands them and then there's the economic systems that it's trying to understand. Capitalism is the economic system that we all live in, we all know and love. It's where businesses and property are privately owned. The goal of it is to make profit. It's kind of what we're all just experiencing right now. There's not a lot of democracy. There's not a lot of working-class power. Socialism, it's an economic system that is a transition from capitalism into communism because you can't go straight to communism right away. It would be the next step in humanity's historical progress if capitalism were to fail,

which it has already before, but it keeps bailing itself out. Socialism is a system where government is made up of workers from all industries and they plan the economy and they control the resources and profits. But again, people hear government and they control and they go, oh gosh, but you're looking at this through a capitalist lens. If the government is made up of working class people, again, from all industries, that's the working class. We're going to be able to run it ourselves. So the goal of socialism is to reduce inequality and to provide basic needs for everyone. Wealth will be shared more equally and services like healthcare and education are often free or affordable. Again, it looks different in each

context, in each countries. We are in the belly of the beast. We are in the imperialist nation. We are the empire. So it's going to look different here, then it will look like, let's say, in Cuba or China or Venezuela or all these different places, they look different everywhere. Because again, we can't compare our context to theirs. There's a great book, it's one of my favorite books, it's actually what I recommend to read before the Communist Manifesto. So it's called The Socialist Reconstruction, a Better Future for the United States, and it theorizes what socialism would look like in our context today. So definitely look into that book and you can kind of imagine what socialism would look

like in an American context. And thirdly, we have communism. This is a system where everything is owned collectively. There would be no private property. Again, we'd keep personal property, but there wouldn't be social classes because there's public ownership of lands, resources, services, and industries. Profits are redistributed back into the communities and resources are distributed by each according to their ability to each according to their need. The goal of communism is to create a classless, equal society. So it's classless, moneyless and stateless society.

The state would wither away in essence because everyone would have what they would need. Yeah, and so just to clarify that, you know, socialism is really a bridge to the dream of communism. Would you agree with that? Yes, definitely. It's the bridge. It's the transition. It's where we got to go next. Yes. And so two myths around socialism and communism. One of them is that these systems are inefficient, right? Like the images of, you know, not having a free market and having

maybe like long lines and that kind of thing. But the other idea that socialism and communism are incompatible with democracy, right? They're inherently maybe like dictatorial or, you know, not, yeah, they just don't work with democracy. So how would you respond to those points? Because I think they're really important to explore and debunk. Yeah. So for the myth that socialism is inefficient, I have one word, and that's China. Next question. But literally, it's like, we've seen the implementation of socialism in so many different contexts at this point in time like in history We've seen it human progress and quality of life has always flourished under

Socialism until capitalist countries got involved with assassinations coups economic blockades bombing covert internal propaganda campaigns warfare Encirclement like all these shitty things that capitalism does protect itself. Cuba has a longer life expectancy than we do here in the United States. They have a lung cancer vaccine.

They have an altogether better healthcare system. China has developments in science, healthcare, technology, education. They're leaving us in the dust with how much they're doing for their society. They've pulled millions of people out of poverty. And this is all after bouncing back from like an essential feudal society. And they only had their revolution 70 years ago. The Soviet Union is a great example. They basically won the space race just short of putting a man on the moon before us.

But they did everything else better than us. And that was after being a brutally unequal and underdeveloped society for centuries before the revolution. We see this in everything everywhere, that socialism and collaboration, it works and it works for the people. It doesn't just work in ways of like the United States and capitalism. We're number one in like weapons industries. We're number one in like inequality. We're number one in all these things that shouldn't be what we view as a successful society. And so that's my word for socialism's inefficiency. It's like, look at China, look at what their transition into a communist society will be. It's very impressive. It's incredibly like, they're on the forefront of pushing humanity into a better era of collaboration and lifting people, again, out of poverty and kind of raising the quality of life for everyone. And, you know, people always want to argue about how Cuba is bad or whatever, because they compare Cuba to the United States. But again,

we can't do that. We have to compare Cuba to what it was before. And after the implementation of socialism, Cuba skyrocketed. The quality of life was so much better for its people. And the only reason it isn't as developed, like we heard Parenti say, is because it's over-exploited. It's blocked off from the rest of the world. They cannot trade. They can't get parts to machinery that they need. I've been to Cuba twice, and I've met with an electric workers union in Cuba.

And they were telling us about how, because of the blockade, they can't get certain parts that they need to help light their streets because it's in the list of things that they can't trade. So they have to develop new ways of fixing these old things. That's why they have all these old cars driving around is because they can't import or trade cars.

So they just have to be good at fixing what they have and developing their own technologies. As for socialism and democracy, like being incompatible or like dictatorship or whatever, that's just, man, socialism is democracy. It just is. It's fundamentally more democratic than capitalism by its very nature. My little brother, he's a communist, and so he told me this fun little quip that has helped me when I was first getting into this and helps others kind of understand the difference between capitalism and socialism. So we know the suffix ism means like a belief, a practice, or an ideology. So capitalism is the belief and practice in capital or private property

Socialism is the belief in social or society and its people so it's like beliefs in the social socialism Revolutionizes the form and function of government making it truly democratic Political power will be in the hands of the working class Decisions about the economy and society and education are made through fair elections and democratic processes at the smallest local level to the largest bodies of government, not by a small group of elites who are bought by corporations like we have here in capitalism. But socialism requires active participation of everyone. Workers get a stronger voice in their workplaces, often through unions or cooperatives. It's not dominated by profit, but it's dominated by human need.

So that is just inherently more democratic. And whenever you hear these things about a dictator or whatever, it's all projection. And the United States has exposed its hand in that with the genocide in Gaza. Absolutely everything that Israel and the United States has said about other countries is because we're projecting that, because we do that. We live in a dictatorship of capital. We give ourselves to this. We just believe in it. We just submit to capitalism. And we don't question that. We don't question that we didn't vote one of the richest people in the history of the world, the richest person in the history

of the world. Nobody voted for him. What is this? Is this not a dictatorship? I just don't I don't understand when people say that it's incompatible. And I don't even like when people say like democratic socialism. I'm like, that's redundant. That's redundant. Socialism is democracy. You've just been told otherwise by the idealists who will tell you anything to keep their profits coming. So suck on that one. Yeah, no, in reality, it's democracy and capitalism that are incompatible. And yeah, absolutely. And thank you for all of those examples and what you brought up. And we are upstream is deep into looking at China right now and doing some episodes on China. And so one

that I might share is we just did episode on Chinese socialism clearly outcompetes Western capitalism. And it looked at the examples of electric vehicles and AI. So just uplifting your point there. And so let's go to the theory of change, right? Because you talked about how it is capitalism, and then the bridge of socialism to communism. Now you did say our reality is changeable so there is hope and potential in this but you also said that it's not guaranteed, right? So there is work to be done. So tell us what is to be done. You know what is the theory of change in Marxism and sometimes

it's called revolutionary theory it kind of gives it away but but what does this mean? Can you can you break this down for us? Yeah, I mean, there's a great book about this. I think you guys do a podcast on it. We have a class on it, like Vladimir Lenin's What Is to Be Done? He stretched and applied Marxism to his own context in czarist Russia to break their chains.

So definitely read that book. It's actually, again, it's still applicable even today. That's why we study it at All Power. But yeah, so Marx has theorized, he came up with this conflict or revolutionary theory. He theorized that the existence of a powerful minority class, because they're smaller than us, it's a minority class of bourgeoisie being at odds with an oppressed majority class will inevitably lead to conflict. So out of these conflicts, the oppressed class will gain a better quality of life. And conflict between these classes is honestly why we already have an eight-hour workday.

That's why we have weekends, why we have laws on child labor. However, Marx also theorized that if we just accept these like small compromises While keeping the system of capitalism intact the cycle of exploitation and resistance repeats itself Over and over and over again until we really sit down and create a new system And we see that now every time you know we make some gains as working class They can be rolled back almost instantly. If we're looking at the grand scheme of all time, it's almost instant. So the sequence Marx theorized would be that first, we'll have economic crisis that leads to

the mass suffering of the working class. And because of that suffering, we will gain class consciousness. Then with that class consciousness, we start to organize. And that next step after that would be a seizure of state political power, or what's known as revolution. After revolution, workers will end up transferring economic power to ourselves, thus creating socialism. So it would be, you know, economic crisis, suffering, class consciousness, seizure of power, revolution, and then the transfer of economic power or socialism. So we have to think of it this way. We're living in a tiny window of history. We

cannot possibly think that this is all there is and all there ever has been. Systems change, empires fall, and history still marches on. It doesn't care. But we got to know, like, how does society change? How do we not fall into fascism? Because that seems like we're going that way every day. But how do we gain more of these freedoms, these rights, and these democracies? And that is through revolution. There's just no way around it. We can't just keep begging for scraps or reforming this system of capitalism that is just frankly inhumane. So you and I, we all know that we're facing class divisions, economic

inequalities, exploitation, perpetual wars, a climate crisis, and fucking genocide and land theft. Like just constant, it's brutal, it's in our face, it's not stopping. But the positive side of this is that we are the working class. We make society run. There are more of us than there are of them. And revolutions have happened before under conditions much worse than ours. The fulfillment of human potential and social needs can be achieved for everyone in this abundant,

abundant, beautiful, beautiful world. And I know that people are seeing the sparks of resistance that are lighting the fire and setting this whole thing off. Like we're seeing it all the time. And you have to let that inspire you. You have to let that build up your own courage because we have to be brave. Now is not the time to argue amongst ourselves over what's technically the working class and what's, you know,

you know, all this stuff. We have to get serious. We have to organize. We have to study and we have to do. We have to act. We have to be brave. And I'm going to finish up this whole thing with a quote from Marx and Let this inspire you He says I'm like getting chills even thinking about it. I'm getting fired up because this is just something that People all over the world have been fighting for for centuries. We're not inventing the wheel We are just taking that thing that

people have been fighting for. The Black Panther Party, the peasants in China, the peasants in Russia, all of the guerrillas in Vietnam and Cuba. This is something that they have pushed forward into our laps and we need to keep it going. So Marx says, let the ruling class tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains and they have a world to win. So I want to leave it at that. I want to thank you so much for having me on here. That's just the only way and we have to do it not just for ourselves, but for each other,

for the planet, for just life as we know it. For posterity's sake, we have to act and that's basically all I want to leave you with. You've been listening to an Upstream Conversation with Savannah, a co-founder of All Power Books, a radical bookstore and community space in Los Angeles. Savannah developed and teaches Marxism 101 and 102 classes as part of All Power's People's Education Program. Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode. Thank you to Stick to Your Guns for the intermission music, and to Carolyn

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