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As the new year approaches, now's as good a time as any to reflect on what's important and how we get there. Maybe 2024 is the year you realize you're a socialist!
Why You Should Be A Socialist In 2024 – Second Thought
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Citations and Further Reading:
Covid wealth transfer
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/16/richest-1percent-amassed-almost-two-thirds-of-new-wealth-created-since-2020-oxfam.html
https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/survival-richest
https://inequality.org/great-divide/updates-billionaire-pandemic/
Wealth transfer since 1975
https://www.businessinsider.com/wealthiest-1-percent-stole-50-trillion-working-americans-what-means-2020-9
PTO statistics
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/pto-statistics/#:~:text=Twenty%2Deight%20million%20Americans%20don,vacation%20days%20and%20paid%20holidays.
Ten richest double their wealth while bottom 99% of humanity’s fall/would still be richer than 99% of the world after 99.99% loss
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/ten-richest-men-double-their-fortunes-pandemic-while-incomes-99-percent-humanity
Nearly 100 million fall under $1.90/day during COVID
https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/covid-19-leaves-legacy-rising-poverty-and-widening-inequality#:~:text=About%2097%20million%20more%20people,less%20than%20%245.50%20a%20day
Bosses bet on workers getting COVID
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55009228
Layoffs during COVID
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2021/temporary-layoffs-remain-high-following-unprecedented-surge-in-early-2020.htm#:~:text=Hover%20over%20chart%20to%20view,End%20of%20interactive%20chart.&text=In%20April%202020%2C%20the%20number,and%20efforts%20to%20contain%20it
Why Socialism? - Albert Einstein
https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
45% of new created wealth goes to top 1%/CEOs make 350x what their workers do/Wages are lower than 50 years ago/half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck/$50T transfer of wealth from bottom 90% to top 1% since 1975
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/02/the-us-has-a-ruling-class-and-americans-must-stand-up-to-it
Vacation days & paid time off
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/05/heres-how-many-paid-vacation-days-the-typical-american-worker-gets-.html
Maternity leave
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/27/maternity-leave-us-policy-worst-worlds-richest-countries
Legal & societal changes growing the gap between productivity and wages
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
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We won’t, because those peoplw have all died. This comment shows one of my main criticisms with ML’s in that it’s like we’re trapped 100 years ago when the USSR just started. We have to make material analyses now, for people living now - people that have experienced socdem positives (in the west), are inundated with propaganda and are made to be afraid. So while his videos are not above critique, I think he makes good starting points for people to understand the basis of communism. Even though I never watch them and prefer to read.
Propaganda is no excuse to concede the essential Marxist tenets.
For one thing, 100 years is not a long time.
Secondly, without proving why a theory is now practically obsolete, appealing to the age of theory is a lazy dismissal. For example, many people’s knee-jerk reaction to Marx is that he’s irrelevant because he lived gasp 150 years ago. So much has changed! Before they had mean wage labor, and now we have nice wage labor!
Reformism was an issue throughout the 20th century. Both PRC and USSR took active measures to prevent reformists from undermining their respective parties. In Finland, the social democrats allied with the bourgeoisie to win the civil war (1918) and then allied with the Nazis to genocide Leningrad during the Continuation War.
I agree that the theory is not obsolete nor has the danger passed. I am not dismissing it because it was written 100 years ago. But I’m specifically commenting on your saying that we shouldn’t align with those groups and that is true, but we should also recognise the material conditions as they are today and not in 1918: vehemently anti-communist, with social media as an important stepping stone (both fascist and socialist), and an interconnectrd world that seems more complex than ever before (I’ not saying it is, the world has always been comex, but it seems that way because we get i formation from all over). So the theory should also adapt.
I agree that the theory should adapt. Just not in that way. Political climate and popular opinion, in a word ideology, are distinct from material conditions and relations of production.
The historical changes that require updating theory are things like Western financial imperialism that works concurrently to de-industrialize the West while increasing exploitation in the Global South; what Andy Higginbottom calls “super-exploitation”. Michael Hudson and Radhika Desai have also discussed this in detail.
It has always been difficult and unpopular to advocate revolution, even in Marx’s time. It is not uniquely difficult today even with the Red Scare. There was a time in the early 20th century that there was some modicum of support for revolution in some countries, but in every example it still required a bitter civil war.
I agree with your first two paragraphs. I disagree with the third. I do think it is more difficult, especially in European countries and definitely in the US, and definitely to go towards a socialist revolution (which is the one, I think, we fight for). I also think you are underestimating the effects of the red scare.
I do agree that Second thought should not start spouting reformist nonsense like voting will suddenly work or something, but I haven’t heard that from him.
It’s not how I would have scripted the video, but until/unless I make my own content, I’m not going to bash him too hard. Still consider him a great contributor. I’ll leave it at that — thanks for the discussion