Marxism 101

This is a Marxism 101 video. We look at 27 different terms and key ideas to give you a basic understanding of what Marxism is, how capitalism and socialism work, and the ways Marxists analyze questions in the social sciences.

The terms are:

Marxism [3:28]; Dialectical Materialism [5:27]; Historical Materialism [8:00]; Means of Production [10:40]; Mode of Production [11:45]; Capitalism [13:54]; Socialism [17:34]; Communism [18:58]; Class [20:54]; Class Conflict [22:44]; Class Analysis [25:32]; Proletariat [27:38]; Bourgeoisie [30:00]; Labor Power [31:56]; Commodity [34:10]; Value [35:20]; Labor Theory of Value [37:54]; Surplus Value [41:49]; Capital [45:12]; Money [47:52]; Wages [51:32]; Alienation of Labor [54:52]; Commodity Fetishism [57:12]; Crisis of Overproduction [1:00:15]; Reserve Army of Labor [1:03:41]; The State [1:06:46]; Dictatorship of the Proletariat [1:10:00]

If you would like to watch this video on BreadTube.TV, away from the evil prying eyes of the google panopticon, here is a link.

 Sorry there's no cartoons this time. :-( I put a lot of work into the research and writing, and have other projects I want to get to. But maybe I'll re-upload some versions with cartoons later.

If you are interested in getting into Marxist theory, I highly recommend you start with these books. Most of them are pretty short, fairly easy to understand, and are available online for free, both as texts and audiobooks.

Wage Labor and Capital, Karl Marx

text:

audio

The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx + Friedrich Engels
text:

audio

Principles of Communism, Friedrich Engels

text:

audio

Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels
text:

audio:

Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Friedrich Engels
text:

audio

State and Revolution, Vladimir Lenin

text
audio

The ABCs of Material Dialectics, Leon Trotsky
text

audio

[Brandt]

I know this is just an introductory rundown, but I do have one crucial point about dialectics:

Dialectics is basically the logic of change. Aristotelian logic (a=a, b=b etc.), which is what we are taught and almost everyone uses, becomes unreliable or fails when confronted with changing complex systems. In reality, once you introduce time „a“ actually does not equal „a“ because from one point in time to another, whatever „a“ was before will have changed.

Enter dialectics, which is a logic system designed to describe and anticipate change. To do this dialectics introduces a whole bunch of new concepts like differentiating quantitative and qualitative change, internal contradictions, negation of the negation and interchangeability of cause and effect*, among other things.

Dialectics is thus one of the more confusing (possibly the most confusing) elements of Marxism and one that is often treated as a big unknowable or uncomprehensible mystery both by opponents of marxism and some adherents.

In reality, while being kind of confusing dialectics also derives directly from a materialist approach to history: if you look at history as a system of material causes and effects not guided by supernatural forces or internal human ideas, then that system will inevitably behave „dialectically“. For example, say a revolution happens in a given country (Sudan, say).

Before the revolution started, the country was quiet and law-abiding which lead everyone to believe that things would remain that way. But we know in hindsight that they didn‘t, therefore we know that something must have been going on under the surface that eventually led to the „sudden change“. Dialectics allows us to describe the internal motion that led the country from being quiet and law-abiding to the overthrow of the government without having to resort to magical thinking, special pleading or (very common) using circular reasoning and explaining the revolution as the effect of the revolution, or of events that are themselves effects of the revolution.


*in the sense that every effect is also a cause for the next thing and every cause is also the effect of something else).

[Deluluyo]

"And... they were right, i'm not a liberal anymore" loooovvvee this intro lmao

[raylast]

3:25 better option would have been: „Get in loser, we‘re doing theory“

[katediem]

thoughts on planned economy vs market socialism?

[katediem]

margaret thatcher doesnt know that we live in a society

[katediem]

the best thing about working in food service was not being alienated from my labor :)))) probably in most restaurants they make their workers still pay, but i loved getting stuff from the kitchen for free in both the jobs i worked. it was v sexy

[katediem]

bro i shouldnt be watching this cause i just did math in the first time in like five years and my brain is fried and now you talking about molecules n shit

[katediem]

oh what happened why aren't you at w*lmart anymore?