Aug 12, 2025 09:13 PM
(This post was last modified: Aug 13, 2025 03:42 AM by C C.)
RELATED: Stephen Kotkin
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DWARKESH CLIPS
https://youtu.be/4nvGFWyX2zk
VIDEO EXCERPTS: So here we have this problem with socialism. Socialism means many different things, right? A communist party is building socialism. Why? Because their view of the world is a transition from feudalism to capitalism to socialism to communism. So first they have to destroy capitalism to get to socialism, and then socialism can eventually get you to communism.
So the communist party must first build socialism. How do you build socialism? It doesn't exist. So, how do we know what it looks like? How do you get there? They don't know.
The only thing they know is that socialism is not capitalism. So, let's destroy capitalism. That will be the step to get us to socialism. So, capitalism has markets, we'll have planning. Capitalism has private property, we'll have state property or collective property. Capitalism has bourgeois parliaments, where they vote, and they claim it is democracy, but it's only for the property holding bourgeois.
So we will have a dictatorship with a proletariat. Everything capitalism has is wage slavery. That is to say, real slavery. Eradicate capitalism to get you to socialism.
But it turns out that that doesn't deliver freedom. It doesn't deliver prosperity and it doesn't deliver peace. It delivers massive statization, because once you eliminate private property and individual choice, the state is now responsible for everything. And it delivers ration tickets and the gulag.
So in response to that dark prospect, you get a bunch of socialists that break from this. They say: "You know what, Lenin is wrong."
Eradicating private property markets, civil liberties, and parliament is a mistake. We have to accept private property, markets, capitalism and parliaments, because that's the only way to get to freedom. Otherwise, you get to the Leninist dictatorship, total statization, gulag, and ration tickets.
These people are denounced as revisionists -- like Edward Bernstein in Germany, for example, and the Swedish social democrats. They say, "We accept capitalism, markets, and private property. We want to redistribute the income because it's tough for some people to make their way in the system. The system produces inequality, and let's make it more equal with social engineering, wealth redistribution. But we keep capitalism, we keep markets and private property, and we keep democracy, voting, rule of law, etc. And we'll [still] evolve towards full socialism and eventually communism, but we will not do it the Leninist way."
And so there's this huge break in the socialist movement between those who are real revolutionaries and want to overthrow, eradicate capitalism -- to get to the just and prosperous and peaceful future -- and those who want to use the existing system and evolve, embrace and accept it.
So the left has a civil war which is still going on between those who say capitalism is evil and must go, versus capitalism has a lot of problems, but we need it in order to have peace and prosperity, in order to have freedom. And we just need to manage it better, redistribute.
And so this civil war on the left arises -- the critics of Lenin's revolution -- who are what we would call the social democrats of Europe. Lenin was also a member of the Social Democratic Party of Russia, but the communist thing makes this a divide between those who are serious about destruction of capitalism and those who are, quote, "revisionist". This denunciator term.
But what happens later is some of the people who are in the revisionist camp begin to flirt with the "capitalism is evil" analysis [again]. And so they begin to truck with the communists that they've broken off from, and are in civil war with. So you get left-wing social democrats who are closer to Lenin than they are to right-wing social democrats like Bernstein, and the rest who are pro-capitalism but pro-redistribution.
And so this is confusing to people, because not everybody is a communist. Some people like in Sweden accept private property and markets. But some of the people in Sweden seem to go back on that promise of accepting it, and arguing that if we don't get rid of capitalism, we're still going to end up with an evil system. And so this civil war on the left never gets resolved. It's ongoing. And the right uses this confusion to paint everybody as anti-capitalism.
And the left gives them ammunition by talking about the evils of capitalism. even when they've come along to accept private property and markets. And so you have this really deep and fundamental problem for the left, the tragedy of the left, that it's never able to overcome even to this day. Where it comes out and says no more anti-capitalism, ever. That is over. That leads to death, bloodshed, gulag, ration tickets, war. That is actually worse than the solution, than the original problem it diagnosed.
The Left's 100 year long civil war with itself . . . https://youtu.be/4nvGFWyX2zk
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/4nvGFWyX2zk
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
DWARKESH CLIPS
https://youtu.be/4nvGFWyX2zk
VIDEO EXCERPTS: So here we have this problem with socialism. Socialism means many different things, right? A communist party is building socialism. Why? Because their view of the world is a transition from feudalism to capitalism to socialism to communism. So first they have to destroy capitalism to get to socialism, and then socialism can eventually get you to communism.
So the communist party must first build socialism. How do you build socialism? It doesn't exist. So, how do we know what it looks like? How do you get there? They don't know.
The only thing they know is that socialism is not capitalism. So, let's destroy capitalism. That will be the step to get us to socialism. So, capitalism has markets, we'll have planning. Capitalism has private property, we'll have state property or collective property. Capitalism has bourgeois parliaments, where they vote, and they claim it is democracy, but it's only for the property holding bourgeois.
So we will have a dictatorship with a proletariat. Everything capitalism has is wage slavery. That is to say, real slavery. Eradicate capitalism to get you to socialism.
But it turns out that that doesn't deliver freedom. It doesn't deliver prosperity and it doesn't deliver peace. It delivers massive statization, because once you eliminate private property and individual choice, the state is now responsible for everything. And it delivers ration tickets and the gulag.
So in response to that dark prospect, you get a bunch of socialists that break from this. They say: "You know what, Lenin is wrong."
Eradicating private property markets, civil liberties, and parliament is a mistake. We have to accept private property, markets, capitalism and parliaments, because that's the only way to get to freedom. Otherwise, you get to the Leninist dictatorship, total statization, gulag, and ration tickets.
These people are denounced as revisionists -- like Edward Bernstein in Germany, for example, and the Swedish social democrats. They say, "We accept capitalism, markets, and private property. We want to redistribute the income because it's tough for some people to make their way in the system. The system produces inequality, and let's make it more equal with social engineering, wealth redistribution. But we keep capitalism, we keep markets and private property, and we keep democracy, voting, rule of law, etc. And we'll [still] evolve towards full socialism and eventually communism, but we will not do it the Leninist way."
And so there's this huge break in the socialist movement between those who are real revolutionaries and want to overthrow, eradicate capitalism -- to get to the just and prosperous and peaceful future -- and those who want to use the existing system and evolve, embrace and accept it.
So the left has a civil war which is still going on between those who say capitalism is evil and must go, versus capitalism has a lot of problems, but we need it in order to have peace and prosperity, in order to have freedom. And we just need to manage it better, redistribute.
And so this civil war on the left arises -- the critics of Lenin's revolution -- who are what we would call the social democrats of Europe. Lenin was also a member of the Social Democratic Party of Russia, but the communist thing makes this a divide between those who are serious about destruction of capitalism and those who are, quote, "revisionist". This denunciator term.
But what happens later is some of the people who are in the revisionist camp begin to flirt with the "capitalism is evil" analysis [again]. And so they begin to truck with the communists that they've broken off from, and are in civil war with. So you get left-wing social democrats who are closer to Lenin than they are to right-wing social democrats like Bernstein, and the rest who are pro-capitalism but pro-redistribution.
And so this is confusing to people, because not everybody is a communist. Some people like in Sweden accept private property and markets. But some of the people in Sweden seem to go back on that promise of accepting it, and arguing that if we don't get rid of capitalism, we're still going to end up with an evil system. And so this civil war on the left never gets resolved. It's ongoing. And the right uses this confusion to paint everybody as anti-capitalism.
And the left gives them ammunition by talking about the evils of capitalism. even when they've come along to accept private property and markets. And so you have this really deep and fundamental problem for the left, the tragedy of the left, that it's never able to overcome even to this day. Where it comes out and says no more anti-capitalism, ever. That is over. That leads to death, bloodshed, gulag, ration tickets, war. That is actually worse than the solution, than the original problem it diagnosed.
The Left's 100 year long civil war with itself . . . https://youtu.be/4nvGFWyX2zk