Is Capitalism Human Nature?

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Citations (In Order of Appearances):

John Maynard Keynes in Schuster, G. Christianity and Human Relations in Industry, Epworth Press, London. 1951

Food and Agricultural Org. of the UN, Amnesty International, USA

Fukuyama, F. The End of History and the Last Man, Penguin UK, 1992

MacLean, J. In the Rapids of Revolution, Allison and Busby, London, 1978

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Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
0:32 Call to Action
0:57 Capitalism’s Justifying Myths
6:21 Demystifying Class Society’s History
13:54 Human Nature or Capitalist Nature?
16:11 Conclusion
17:33 Credits

[Marxism_Today]

Go on, go on, go on - you know you want to

[ChipsNsalsita]

I was once stuck in a defeatist mindset. It was learinig of the history of class struggle that woke me up. This isn't how it has to be! But we have to dare to struggle!

[josemaria]

I once got in a major argument with a teacher in uni over this topic. I tried using the history of class society to prove that it wasn't human nature but he just dismissed me right off the bat, claiming that historical materialism was a pseudo science. Luckily I had read Kroptokin's Mutual Aid and I was able to demonstrate using biology that his argument was ridiculous.

[ritamsarkar]

To look at people in capitalist society and conclude that human nature is egoism, is like looking at people in a factory where pollution is destroying their lungs and saying that it is human nature to cough

-Andrew Collier

[mickeyg]

"Human nature" is not a fixed, deterministic thing within anthropology and biology circle. Humans are more accurately described as "adaptive, " depends on the availability of resources, and only make hard choices when it's scarce. But there bound to be a small minority of humans that are unusually greedy, but their greed are normally kept in check by the collective interests of the society during the hunter-gatherer phase (which is actually believed to be mostly egalitarian). But at some point after the invention of agriculture, there's an opportunity for the greediest member of the society to take power, and things changed from there. But in the end, I don't really care what "human nature" is actually like, if there's something negative about it, we should change. The reason why we develop tools is because we sees nature as an enemy, and we're shaping it to suit us more - we already desecrated nature enough that trying to appeal to it is pointless and hypocritical.

[Mushroommarx]

I’ve been talking about you to my comrade friends on social media and sharing your videos as much as possible.
Your videos are bloody brilliant and you are one of the most grounded, intellectual, and eloquent Marxists I’ve ever heard.
Thank you so much for your contribution and the incredibly hard work you do to better society.

[samuelrosander]

Love me some Parenti quotes. (For Michael Parenti content, I've saved everything of his that I've found to a playlist, and found another playlist dedicated to his stuff, but in shorter chunks and no Q/A. Check it out if interested.)
"Most of the world is capitalist, and most of the world is poor." The standard capitalist response to that is "nuh uh, because that's not REAL capitalism." They deny reality by finding small excuses to support the "no real capitalism exist, but capitalism has done X great things" narrative. One of them is that a lot of the countries they point to don't have operating "free market" economies within the country, but what they intentionally ignore and downplay and, when they can no longer maintain that approach, justify with "that's not capitalism, " is that those economies are controlled externally by capitalists as effectively nation-sized businesses, complete with CEOs (presidents/dictators), managers (bureaucracy, police, military, even gangs), and grunt workers (the rest of the citizenry that produces what then gets expropriated by the external capitalist via the internal government). It takes real mental gymnastics to maintain that the majority of the world isn't capitalist, but that's the whole point: capitalism, in order to maintain itself as "good" or even "viable, " requires mental gymnastics to convince people of that fact even as the proof is there before their eyes of its induced misery and local/national/global failures.

Great video, as usual. Keep 'em coming!

[Naheed_Ahmed]

Mashallah daddy Marxist Paul has uploaded

[Voidsworn]

It's almost like populations have given into being lead/forced into this system by the more sociopathic/psychopathic members of our population.

[BladeValant]

The only thing that is human nature is how paradoxal and contradictory we are.

Secondly, it is odd when people talk about human nature we only highlight the negative aspects and never the positives.

[nietzscheanpeoplespower]

“The most industrious age — our own — doesn’t know how to make anything of all its industriousness and money except still more money and still more industriousness.” (Friedrich Nietzsche in The Gay Sciense)
“A speedy education so that one may quickly become a money-earning being, yet at the same time an education sufficiently thorough to enable one to earn a very great deal of money. A man is allowed only as much culture as it is in the interest of general money-making and world commerce he should possess.” (Friedrich Nietzsche in Untimly meditations)

[mcnt]

Finally, an unbiased source of information about capitalism and socialism.
Love the work comrade, take care of yourself.

[untraceablefgc-mkii]

If we really wanna talk about human nature humans are *SOCIAL* animals that have evolved living in large groups working together for their needs in a tightly knit community that shared what they gathered or hunted and took care and helped eachother.
Millions of years of this havent been changed by a few towsand years of hierarchical life.

[ArdonyxGamingz]

As Spooky Scary Socialist once said: bUt wHat aBoUt huMaN naTuRe

[aidanpower]

Very informative thank you ✊🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪

[RickSolus]

There was a time in our evolutionary history when we lost the powerful muscles other apes still have. We were weak little monkey, with no fangs or claws, and we didn't have our big brains yet.
So, how the hell did we survive?
By banding together and cooperating.
Human nature is cooperative. Capitalism is a competitive system. That's why they have to suppress our istinctive solidarity. Why they don't show the oppressed masses overseas, why they try to criminalize poverty, why they invent arbitrary divisions like "race".

Socialism is human nature. Had we been under socialism, we'd be colonizing space by now.

[judgemcnugget]

What a banger! The second one already, after Second thought's recent video about work incentives in socialism and capitalism.

[asdqwe]

Yeah! New vid by my favourite marxist youtuber!

[slavetruthfreedom]

Love the videos. Since becoming a socialist I've trying to talk most people out of capitalism is like trying to talk someone out of their religion. So much of their arguments are based on beliefs that they call 'fact', common sense or human nature indeed. Been trying to convert my conservative capitalist wanna-be uncle who many would consider intelligent and analytical, but when it comes to capitalism it's all faith-based arguments underneath the facade of economic pseudoscience. You know what I'm talking about, 'The invisible hand', 'people are naturally lazy, greedy, selfish and only motivated by profit', 'government is wasteful, inefficient and cannot innovate', 'people cannot or do not want to rise to the responsibilities of co-ownership cooperatives', 'success in life means being rich', and 'we all have equal opportunity to succeed and lack of success is the result of individual inadequacies. I think when it comes to battling beliefs we socialists would be best served by making emotional appeals, storytelling, and focusing on practical improvements to people's immediate situations.

[lordk.gaimiz]

Damn it youtube, you didn't show the notification for the video of this wonderful person, tsk tsk tsk...