Understanding Marxism: From Each According to His Ability... | 5 Minute Videos

Private property, wage labor, competition, and profits — under Karl Marx’s world view, these would have to go. Instead of self-interest, everybody would work for the benefit of everybody else. For many, this is a very seductive idea. Is this the dream we should aspire to? Or would it be a nightmare?

C. Bradley Thomspon is the author of “The Redneck Intellectual” on Substack, and America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration that Defined It.

#marxism #prageru #history #karlmarx

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Script:

In a remarkably short period of time, the philosophy of Karl Marx changed the course of history.

At the height of its power, half the world fell under its dominion, kept there by a combination of fear, terror, and brute force.

Then suddenly in the late 1980’s, it imploded.

By all rights this should have been the end of Marxism. But it hasn’t turned out that way.

From environmentalism with its rejection of free markets to Critical Race Theory which sees white patriarchy as the source of all evil, you’ll find Marxism at its root. The leaders of Black Lives Matter, for example, openly acknowledge their devotion to Marxist ideology.

How do we explain this fascination for something that has so utterly failed everywhere it’s been put into practice?

We can find answers in one of Marx’s most enduring epigrams.

“From Each According to his Ability, to Each According to his Needs.”

Marx was a poor economist, but a talented journalist, the only actual job he ever had. He knew how to turn a phrase. But what does this slogan mean? According to what ability? According to what need? And who determines anyone’s ability or anyone’s need?

Marx never bothered to answer these obvious questions. He had much bigger things on his mind: nothing less than the creation of an entirely new kind of world for an entirely new kind of human being.

Marx believed that by altering man’s economic and political institutions, he could alter — or even better — rewire the human brain; he could conjure a new consciousness that would replace the old “false” one. This new man would be less selfish and acquisitive and more altruistic and communal. In short, he would be a superior type of man.

Of course, this new man could only reach this goal if he wasn’t preoccupied with having to earn money. According to Marx, money and the pursuit of it ruined everything. Marx hated money – maybe because he never found a way to make it. Getting rid of it was central to his world view. Once a person’s subsistence — one’s daily bread — was distributed on the basis of need rather than greed, man’s natural communal affections — long suppressed by his capitalist overlords — would be renewed.

This is Marx channeling the 18th century French social thinker Jean Jacques Rousseau, one of the few people Marx admired. According to Rousseau, this is what you must do if you want to create a new society.

“He who dares to undertake the making of a people’s institutions must feel himself capable of changing…human nature, of transforming each individual, who by himself is a complete and solitary whole, into a part of a larger whole, from which . . . the individual receives his life and his being…”

Understand this and you understand not only a key feature of Marxist thought, but the dark history of the twentieth century.

Marx took Rousseau literally: human nature had to be returned to its allegedly pure, selfless state before capitalism, with its Enlightenment and Judeo-Christian values, “corrupted” him.

But creating this “new man” would be a formidable task. Marx anticipated that many would object, especially the owners and managers that had a large stake in the capitalist system. Friendly persuasion wasn’t going to get the job done. Only the ruthless application of State power would be up to the task.

Marx was all for it.

Private property, wage labor, competition, and profits — these would have to go. The State, now run by the workers themselves — The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, as Marx called it — would control production and pricing. It would wisely manage the economy: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

And imagine how wonderful it would be — no more ego, no more self-interest; instead, everybody working for the benefit of everybody else. Peace. Love. Harmony.

[rafapodzunas]

Damn that Marxism sure sound dope, thanks prageru for showing me the true way of life

[fredschoepke]

I like the part where the angry peasants eat the rich people.

[samsca]

If you want to understand Marx just read him. These videos benefit off the fact that most people watching haven’t read Marx, so they can lie and make shit up about his beliefs and you’ll believe it. Again, just read Marx lol.

[BlitzBadge]

Weird PragerU referenced Soviet Union, Cuba, and Venezuela but failed to mention that the US has put crippling economic sanctions on them.

[santouchesantouche]

Marx' critique of capitalism is extraordinary

[ashtynstormes]

I love that this guy never defines Marxism.

[TomServo]

_The STATE shall take_
From each according to his ability,
_The STATE shall give_
To each according to his need.

[spartacusjonesmusic]

Hold the phone.
I've read Marx. You're blaming him for all kinds of malevolent shit he never said.
The root of Marxism is this: who gets to control the surplus produced by the workers? The workers? Or somebody else?
Marx thought that the ones who grew the corn should eat the corn.
I don't have a problem with that. And I don't understand why you do.

[didyward]

Dissing Marxism and Socialism is another way of the way for those who need we workers to keep stoking the fires so our bosses can continue to live in warmth and luxury.

[thurin]

it never fails to amaze me how many adults can fall prey to fairy tales.

[williamshaw]

Tell me you haven't read Marx without telling me you haven't read Marx sums up this video.

[kylealbrecht]

This year has been like a bad episode of the twilight zone

[Max-jvsx]

This Marx guy sounds pretty damn reasonable and for the working class, unlike the dead-end predatory capitalism that we have now.

[anjisbiggestfans]

You’re really banking on the viewers not having read Marx huh…? Or having the ability to google…

[nathanielibrahim]

I'm begging anyone who thinks this is at all accurate to actually read Marx. Almost nothing he said was anything like this professor describes. Either he hasn't read Marx, or he's just lying to you and assumes you haven't.

[Javier-rmql]

What destroyed my country is this phrase: "pobrecitos los pobres" (pity the poor)

In the name of helping the poor the state became the leviathan, the poor stop working and became a parasyte class, democracy became inviable because of the clientelization of a large portion of the population, and the economy went to hell with cyclical hyperinflations.

And after almost 100 years of complete and total failure society has not even start to recover from that.

Do not ask me what to do with marxists. I can only think very unpleasant solutions. Specially with progressives.

[roginutah]

Should've spent more time on how the slacker becomes the boss and the hard worker becomes the slave. And how there is no creativity or progress because there is no reward, only disdain. How becoming lazy and unproductive leads to the easiest life (at least temporarily). It becomes a race to the bottom for the entire society.

[TobyGarcia]

1:47 - Aquisitive (tending to collect stuff) not Inquisitive (eager to understand stuff)

[alexanderberner]

I wish every child was shown this video. So many bad ideas/ belief systems look so beautiful and sweet on top but underneath it’s just rotten trash..

[brotherlynch]

Ideology should be separate from idiotology.