[Music] Today's episode is uh Stalin is comically large spoon. Hey dog spoon fool. No, no, unironically.
We're probably naming it something else. It's just the name of the [ __ ] dock. Um, but yeah, uh, the general idea of today is a lot of the time when you're first introducing socialism or you want to discuss socialism with somebody, you'll get a few NPC lines.
It's funny how, I don't know, socially ingrained it is in people to ask the same questions over and over again. It's the same set of like 12 questions, even though they've been answered time and time again and are very easy to find answers for if you Google or ask around. The first contention, the very first thing that you hear, usually it's a one, two, three combo that's delivered.
It is iPhone vua 100 million dead. Let's let's deal with iPhone first. The the general idea is, oh, they'll say, oh, but your iPhone was made under capitalism.
And the intention there being is that capitalism fosters innovation. It's where, you know, all this comes from. My favorite part personally about the uh iPhone packaging.
And all the Apple packaging is how it says in the nice sans Sarah font, designed by Apple in California. It's like, okay, where was it made? Yeah.
The the the general point just to really like uh speedrun this, the idea of, oh, your iPhone was made under capitalism, these systems don't produce anything. It's workers under every system that produce the commodities or or goods. The system just determines what uh or who gets paid, how the division of the surplus value uh takes place.
Under capitalism, the vast majority of the surplus value goes to the capitalist to reinvest into the circuit of capital and also to subsidize their um consumption. Meanwhile, under socialism, the bulk of the surplus value goes back into the population directly through renumeration as well as into a general social fund which can help the development of the nation or area what have you. That's the fundamental difference.
The vast majority of the technology that goes into computers and and your phones and pretty much specifically as well over 70% went into the OG iPhone. Yeah. Is governmentf funded military research.
It was public spending based on your taxes that developed this. capitalist had enough starting capital to come and just take these various things and put them into one basically unit and then uh knew how to market it really well. Now the second one which is vuvu za I think we can quickly tldr this in Venezuela or pretty much every other socialist country whatever issue you may have had with it look at the underlying conditions and the vast majority of underlying conditions is number one it's usually a third world imperial periphery country that already started off poor number two it usually it's victimized completely by imperialism it is economically sanctioned it is embargoed it is diplomatically vilified it is even militarily attacked etc etc so when you try to do everything to prevent the development of a nation, you can't also turn around and then point at and be like, "Hey, it's not doing as great as it should be.
" And the vast majority of these nations ended up doing way better than you'd expect, especially with all the limitations set on them. One way to to push back against this, because it's very it's super easy to say like, "All right, look, if communism fails every time it's tried, just let it fail. Why Why the need to meddle?
Why are we in all these countries trying to pull the rug out from under them if it's going to fail anyway? " Exactly right. Why did they need to murder hundreds of thousands of suspected communists in Indonesia if by the way which didn't even have a revolution?
It just kind of the movement was building. Um why did they have to mass murder such huge amounts of people with direct American involvement? Uh if socialism were to just you know kind of crumble on its own.
They killed all those people to save people man you know they killed they killed all those people to save them from socialists killing them. It's a like do the social project. [Laughter] Now the third and final part of this of this trinity the 60 gillion dead or 100 gillion or 100 50 million whatever the f the number increases every time we see it.
The easiest way to deal with this is like all right so those deaths are always attributed to communism. Why is it that the deaths that occur in capitalist countries are never attributed to that economic system? because there's there are a whole lot of people dying under under capitalism.
Let's take uh take CO for example. The United States has the highest death toll of anywhere in the world. It's insane.
We're going to hit a million dead this year most likely from CO just because of our our terrible response because we needed to you know quote unquote save the economy. So those people died on the altar of capitalism. Please uh you're you're conveniently for of course the the the liberal commie conveniently forgets that uh co is is a is a Chinese conspiracy.
spread communism. It's it's the kung fu. That's [ __ ] They did though.
Christ said that. I know. It's insane.
The victims of communism memorial foundation added all of the deaths of CO to deaths attributed to communism because it started in China. It's a very stupid argument because every death that's anybody who stops their toe under communism is listed as a death. Meanwhile, tens of millions around the world uh end up dying from malnutrition or starvation as a direct result of capitalist distribution policies.
And these are never counted into, you know, that's just like, oh, how the world is. Number two, the 100 million figure comes from a notoriously unreliable book called The Black Book of Communism, which was, by the way, it's dis disavowed by like half its authors now. Um, the main author, who's the only guy that stands by it to this day pretty much, uh, had this like fascination of getting to the 100 million mark.
So he would even randomly add like 2 million deaths here and there like you would see a number and be like you know what this can have a couple of extra zeros on it. That's that's the level of honesty we have counting non-births like the um birth rate goes down or fertility rate excuse me and as a result all those people who would have been born but the woman decided to you know use contraception and not use not have those children all of a sudden those are considered deaths counting Jews who were murdered by by Nazis and fascists as deaths of socialism. And finally, which I find the most hilarious and the most mask off moment, they count Nazis, dead Nazis, as victims of communism as a part of the death toll.
I don't know about you, but to me, the more dead Nazis, the better. So, this one I really want to hear JT's delivery on this. Oh, boy.
Yeah. If if if it's okay with you, could you please let people know personal property, private property, just public property? Is is that Oh, if you have the energy.
Absolutely. It's it's 100% the same thing. I'm going to come take your your Dora Band-Aids and your Funko Pops and your Paw Patrol toothbrush and call it a day.
This morning, this morning I had to explain again to a commenter. It's every single week the difference between personal and private property. I'm like, "All right, if it produces capital for you, if it's like on private land, say it's it's a factory or a hotel or some agricultural land and you use it to generate capital, that's private property.
if you have it in your home. If it's your sick skateboard with the Jigglypuff deck, or if it's your vintage Gamecube controller with with the sea stick worn off, or you know, if it's your Donkey Kong amiibo, that is your personal property. I really like Donkey Kong amiios, so that one I might take.
But other than that, you're good. And of course, to always shoehorn a Markx quote, private property has already been done away with for 9/10 of the population. vast majority of people have no private property to their name.
At most at most you might have like what an apartment or a home. Don't be the temporarily embarrassed millionaire. You're never going to join the [ __ ] Elon Musk and bees of the world.
Nor should you want to. You are a a sadly a filthy worker like the rest of us. And that's why your interests lie with the abolition of private property rather than the maintenance of it.
And of course your own personal property you can maintain. There is a uh a a point that we can just also quickly zoom through which is um but there is no competition under socialism. How could we how could we develop the miracle of of the aforementioned Funko Pops and [ __ ] rangs and butt plugs without competition?
How would you know which one has the best fit? How would you know? And I can tell you from my personal [ __ ] corporate experience, the reason advertisers exist, the reason repackaging and constantly faster releasing is a thing is because the capitalist producer understood that he doesn't have to sell you radically improved products, but instead can slow down the process and incrementally give you piece by piece.
So you end up buying seven phones or two cars instead of one. They know what they're going to be spoon feeding you in 2028 and have the tech to sell it to you now, but they don't because literally competition and capitalism does not allow for net productivity jumps in the short term. Everything has to be stretched out because that's how you make more money.
Yeah, basically. Uh, this one's actually a favorite of mine and if it's okay with you guys, I'd like to take it. It's goism no food.
All right. Um, if the if iPhone vua and and 100 gillian dead is is the trinity, then goism no food is the archangel that delivers the the holy gospel of of I don't know [ __ ] trickle down economics or whatever. First of all, the vast majority of of malnutrition and starvation happens under capitalism, not under socialism.
Number two, and studies have been done on this. The particular one I always like to reference is Sarasota and weight skin the 86 study comparing the physical quality of life between socialist capitalist countries. One of the factors they checked was caloric intake and uh they found that all socialist countries met at least 100% of caloric intake per person of the population while uh this was definitely not the case for capitalist countries.
The other aspect of this is when they mention like oh communism no food they really are mentioning like very specific periods in like for example Soviet history. One of which is for example the 1921 famine uh in the USSR. This basically took place when the fledging Soviet Union was a country that was just founded.
It was besieged from all sides. It was invaded by 14 countries and in the middle of a horrific civil war and was sanctioned and wasn't recognized basically by any country. And then with all of this all these factors come together and then they will be like oh communism no food.
But you're not actually looking at the material basis of this is not a daily experience or or a representative. You know, this is the absolute worst a country could go through. Compare that with most third world capitalist countries which have pretty much a sizable portion especially of the child populations which is malnourished even up to like the UK and [ __ ] which has I think like 10 or 15% of rate of malnutrition which is a first world developed imperial core country.
Capitalism doesn't fare better in this. Basically the worst that socialism would have is almost a regular existence of capitalis capitalist countries particularly in the in the imperial periphery in the third world. All right.
Now here's my favorite. I'm going to shut up for this one. I want to hear everything you guys have to say about this.
Human nature. Human nature. Vuvella iPhone 100 billion dick no food.
Human nature. Yo, why are they farming without a profit motive? What the hell are they doing?
[ __ ] off. Oh [ __ ] They're hunting and gathering. What?
Please serenade me. I don't know what I if if capitalism was human nature, why did it take so long to develop? Why hasn't it been a thing for more than, you know, 3 4 500 years?
The vast majority of human history has been communal. People have worked together to achieve common goals. And it's only this recent perversion of what people think of as human nature, this greed to accumulate at the expense of all others that has become the status quo by virtue of just overwhelming force just dominating the rest of the world.
Most social philosophers from the beginning of time have debated on almost none of them agree on what the definition of human nature is or more importantly what is our human nature and a lot of them again even to make it more complicated don't even think there is such a thing as human nature you can't like this has been debated and there is no concession on this for literally thousands of years and you [ __ ] Jimmy from Wisconsin come in here and you want to [ __ ] dominate the conversation aboutism can't work because human like what the [ __ ] do you know [ __ ] like you don't know [ __ ] about human nature um one you've heard it's so boring at this point but mcominism no democracy and then you know the guy turns around he's like oh what's that get back to work right away boss who just also happens to be the owner's son um and you know he he scuttles with the with his tail between his leg to I don't know go blow the the dude who's who's promised daddy to stay off the pills So he can pull in 400 grand while basically sitting in a managerial position that he does [ __ ] nothing on. Do you guys want to take this one or obviously it's like just objectively false. But even pick like the most antagonistic people you can to disprove it.
And so that would be the CIA. They had a report on Stalin specifically talking about yeah the whole strongman dictator myth was largely a fabrication. Even under Stalin there was significant democracy in the Soviet Union.
If the CIA is saying that, what do you have? Like what defense can you possibly have? It's just absurd.
The presentation that you see in the media or in history books, usually uh bourgeoa history, is very flawed because the concept of democracy that they have not only is different, but it's it's an even fuller democracy. And you can always compare it, of course, to to your own country, the United States, who claims to be the most democratic country on earth, the most free, the freest, and all that. Uh, but I'm just asking any American, when was the last time that you've actually participated in the democratic process?
For the vast majority of Americans, they have one one option only to participate quote unquote democratically, it's during the presidential elections, and that is where they are forced to choose between two people that they didn't want in the first place, members of the Senate and Congress. Many of them are have served ridiculously long times with no like it's who has voted these people in and who's maintaining them in these positions. And of course, not to forget the most important aspect.
You have no practically no political democracy, but you have no absolutely none no economic democracy within the United States or any capitalist country. You have no say of what to produce, where to produce, how much to produce. You have no control of your workplace.
You have no ability to fire your manager or get them in trouble if you wanted to. There are countless examples of, for example, within the Soviet Union, by the way, again, nobody's trying to say the Soviet Union is a perfect system, but we're just trying to compare and contrast here. Countless examples within the Soviet Union in which you had basically a manager who does something [ __ ] up.
either he embezzles funds or he even sexually harasses or attempts to sexually harass a worker um and they basically just go to the party committee which was in every workplace and they tell them hey yeah this happened and then guess what the manager gets fired right they always almost always sided with the workers and that's something that doesn't happen in the United States they really don't even want us to vote like even once every four years the amount of voter suppression we've seen the gerrymandering the voter ID laws just making it incredibly difficult to even cast a ballot should show what the elite think of even electoral democracy but you're absolutely right the economic democracy is a far bigger problem I mean every social model which has ever existed from I don't know the first one that we know of that used the term democracy in ancient Greece had the same democracy applied to only 5% of their population you know the rest were poor or slaves or women uh and the neoliberal democracy not ancient Greek democracy but modern neoliberal version. Just like the Greeks back in the day, they apply the democratic values to things which do not question the status quo. None of us are saying that the democracy practiced in form socialist countries.
Even current socialist countries are perfect, but they made genuine attempts at developing a new form of democracy that's more expansive. Uh and they made massive strides in that field. And also we need to remember that this is also currently an ongoing process.
You have to remember that all former socialist countries, even monosocialist countries, have had the supreme issue of imperialism, of constant uh military harassment and diplomatic vilification and economic sabotage and military threats and everything to to the end of it. um trying to practice an all-encompassing and unlimited democracy under these incredibly strenuous conditions is I think naive to expect of them and also um sadly would weaken the the the internal security of the of the state and as a result uh we end up of course with these contradictions of developing socialism uh in which like we want to have all expansive democracy but at certain levels they have to be limited for example you shouldn't be able to give democratic rights to I don't know like fascists For example, landlords shouldn't be able to come together, band together, and make their own little group and vote and stuff. Maybe in a more mature developed socialism that is less threatened, this can be done away with, but as things stand, we always have to be pragmatic about our approaches.
Not be dogmatic, of course, and uh, you know, just try to replicate what happened before, but also be pragmatic. Now, let's get to a more fun one. Basically, this I remember this was one of the first things that I would hear.
Uh, so a ch comes up to you and you're talking about socialism. He's like, "But you know, under communism, you're just going to in the middle of the night, you're going to you're going to get a knock on your door and then the KGB will come and they're just going to lick they're just going to lick your balls. They're going to take you into a dark alley.
They're going to lick your balls. They're going to suck on them to they're going to be very kinky and it will be very uncomfortable for you. Unless you're into that, in which well, I mean, all power to you.
But what what do you guys have to say about the KGB coming and licking your balls in a dark alley? Of course, it has to be in the middle. And they always say, "Knock on the door in the middle of the night.
It can't be at like, you know, 2:00 in the afternoon. It can't ever be, you know, oh, lunchtime, right? Always has to be in the middle of the night.
I mean, that is that is true. That will happen. Um, so yeah, I just for my head I just heard the [ __ ] cyber punk music.
The second it's like, oh yeah, well, yeah, that's going to happen. I was going to say um this is a weird reference to the great purges in in Soviet Union. This is something that is not exclusive to socialism.
For one, I've seen many more cases, for example, of in the United States where basically a cop enters a wrong apartment and then shoots a random person sleeping in their bed. Maybe this is [ __ ] up to say, but the people who that happened to in the USSR maybe at least would have been somewhat guilty of some crime at the very least. In the US, you could just be even in an argument that they weren't.
And oh my god, the KGB and the local police killed so many innocents, arrested so many innocents. If all of those quote unquote horrible arrests which happened for example in the Soviet Union should be applied to communism as a whole, we should also look at the victims of capitalism in the country which has the largest prison population to have ever existed. And with all due respect in the 60s in my opinion already a bit too late but in the 60s in the USSR the last the last gulag was closed.
In the US, you literally still have prisons utilizing slave labor. And you dare sit here and talk about the authoritarian fist coming down on people's freedoms. I mean, it is, but maybe you should look up cuz the fist is right above you.
There's another one which is so [ __ ] boring. And I'll tell I'll let Yugop take this one. Socialism was unpopular everywhere it was tried.
Just ask the people who live there. Yop, please ask the Yuguslavs. Ask the Yuguslavs.
Yes. is someone who literally knows thousands of people who have lived through Yugoslav style socialism. Those who have spent the majority of their life in it almost exclusively talk positively about it.
Many who even have managed to become even capitalists and become even rich in post Yugoslav era of early capitalism and at this point very sped up late capitalism if you can even call it that. Some of them also nostalgically look back at the quote unquote good old days. And I've heard people literally tell me, "I wish we lived in uh whatever it was before because it the world wouldn't have turned me into the person that it had to turn me into in order to survive.
" There's a joke we have here that the harshest capitalist is an ex-communist because a communist knows how capitalism works and therefore understands that he needs to eat before being eaten in order to survive. Almost every listener I believe uh of ours has seen all of those maps both in the Soviet Union in Yugoslavia etc etc where we very uh eloquently and directly see from western sources that usually it goes between 60 to 80% depending on the region and usually how wealthy the region is that we're against the destruction uh and the abolishment of the previous economic model. The only thing I can say to to our American listeners is also the people who say this sort of thing like, "Oh, all the people like they hated it.
They hated living under communism. " All right. Who told you that?
Those people 90% of the time they live in Miami. You know the type of person that it is. It's like the only people who say they hated living Yeah.
Exactly. The only people who hated living under socialism were the ones that were trying to take advantage of people and that wasn't allowed. Most people who lived under who experienced socialism would like to go back to it.
They look back fondly on it and they do not care for this awful alternative that we've been offered. I think we can take these last three very quickly. Um I think we can just do quick fire for these.
Um call me come in for my guns. If if it's okay, I would like to share three quotes. The first one of course is the beautiful quote of Markx in which the whole working class must be armed at once with rifles, cannons and ammunition.
Any attempts to disarm the workers must be frustrated by force if necessary. That is our our dear bearded Santa Claus. Uh another uh absolute Chad Mount had uh this to say.
It is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the laboring masses can defeat the armed bajgeoisi and landlords. Uh, of course, let's not forget that he also was the one to say that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. How can somebody be so based?
I have no idea. But, uh, he manages. He always manages.
And finally, my own personal beloved Lenin, who said, "It is most urgent and essential that there be a universal arming of the people. " And of course, Lenin, as you know, was also wrote about people's militias amongst many other things. Practically every socialist country that existed had some sort of popular militia.
It had education for the population for the use of arms, for the cleaning of arms. They had access to arms to differing extents, but you could definitely get them. Communists are never there to take your guns.
Communists are there to basically put guns in the hands of the workers and hopefully disarm [ __ ] you know, fascists and and and and Nazis and those types cuz those people don't deserve to be armed. Um, but the best way to disarm those people is [Laughter] um, moving on. My my this is my favorite one because I get this all the time.
Commies only exist as white upper middle class university students. Well, one out of three. Yeah.
I mean, one out of three is white. That's about it. Yeah.
Exactly. Nothing else. Like Hakee mentioned earlier, the vast majority of communists around the world are not in the United States or any associated imperial corps country.
They're in the developing world. They're in Asia. They're in Latin America.
they're in these places that are very much not the image these people try to sell of like blue-haired uh liberal college students. It's it's that's just not reality. Well, it just goes to show that the the average American's conception, the world is the United States to them.
There is just no conception of what's outside these borders. As Yugopnik said, everything else is DLC. Yeah.
Very accurate. All right, I'm going to throw you a low ball one that's quick and this is the final one. Under socialism, all housing is ugly.
You're going to be living in in gray bleak. Okay. Don't look at our suburbs.
Gray bleak. Okay. Number one.
Um, a home is better than being homeless. Yeah. Number one.
Number two. Historically, the housing that was built was rapidly built to basically make up for the lost housing stock of World War II, which destroyed massive amounts, entire cities and villages and everything. Literally millions of people displaced and homeless.
So, these people need very quick housing. They didn't care if it was [ __ ] pretty or not. Third of all, vast majority of it at its time when it was new and maintained did look pretty good.
You can pause this [ __ ] episode now. Just go and type Yugoslav apartments or whatever or like apartments Moscow, whatever, 1979. Just put in a random year where it was actually socialism.
Most of them were painted nicely. They looked brand new. They were maintained.
They looked nice. Under socialism, there's an economic plan. Under their economic plans, all this housing that was built rapidly to make up for lost housing stock wasn't meant to stay indefinitely.
This was housing that was meant to spay for 25, 30 years. and then uh allow for development of uh like to to bring up the economy again uh so that they could build more sustainable housing down the line. An annoying little thing got on the way of that called the dissolution of the Soviet Union that kind of prevented that.
So that's why they're still in like 50-year-old housing that has not been maintained whatsoever because hey, guess what? The reason those places look like [ __ ] is because of capitalism, not [ __ ] socialism. TLDDR.
Now we have more money and technology to build free housing for everyone if tomorrow the socialists would uh take over. And secondly, me as someone who has grown up in one of those horrible gray buildings and who now lives in a brand new building, I can tell you my heating bill was much better back then because they used actual [ __ ] cement. Uh the building I live in right now has been built for profit and uh all of the apartments are being given for rent.
So the guy building it wasn't building it for himself for so did he save money on everything and do I have paper walls and do I have to listen to the 90-year-old grandma next to me [ __ ] liquid diarrhea every single evening right next to my ear where my bed is positioned? Yes. Yes, I do.
These are all, you know, very pretty good arguments, guys. Not bad work. But, um, really, you're forgetting the most important thing.
If you want to talk about gray, soulless, pathetic buildings, look, look what they're doing to my McDonald's, to my Wendy's, to my Taco Bell. Have you seen what they're doing to my Taco Bell? Which way, Western Man?
Do you want do you want to go to these freaking the the little lifeless modern box looking things or can we get some of those nice like green and blue swirls back please? Come on. Where's Where's the life?
Where's the joy? This is an experience I'm I I am very glad that I I I don't connect with the one defining staple of American culture which is the fast food train restaurant has also now been lost to the eternal pursuits of the market. This is what they took from you, white man.
This is what the happy meal is what they took away from you. Ask communists. Us communists guarantee you free readily available chains of fast food which will be very very colorful.
Just come to our side, please. And with all this said, that's about it. Uh don't forget to report your uh local CBT station.
All right. Um the the the party demands [ __ ] and ball torture. The quotas need to be met.
Okay. With all that said, uh, have a lovely time. This is This is I'm JT and I'm Yugnik.
Don't let the KGB lick your balls. [Music] That's all for this time. If you enjoy what I do, then please consider supporting me on Patreon.
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