It is thought provoking and actually inspired me to look into some of the legitimate points and accurate perceptions, revisit Marx and chuckle at some of the later wild jumps and extrapolations.

Gamers would rule the world if they ever could be bothered to get up off the couch.

Also I was totally mesmerised by the story combined with the images, while it does get repetitive, would be an excellent 45 minute video if the crap could be cut out.

Your video, Full Marx, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

You know, the history of communism is complicated. The idea in principle seems nice enough, a government where everyone owns everything. Or as Marx puts it: "all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs."

But in reality, it's never been implemented. It's invariably the case that a ruling party emerges as the de facto "we'll make sure everyone is following the rules so that everything is fair and as soon as it's clear that everyone is following the rules, we'll relinquish power completely to the people."

Except...that second part NEVER happens. Russia? China? North Korea? Those are communist countries in name only. In reality, those are all totalitarian states by any definition. Any opposition to the ruling class when they are questioned ends in murder or massacre by the state; see https://newrepublic.com/article/117983/tiananmen-square-massacre-how-chinas-millennials-discuss-it-now

Freedom of political thought, religion, matters of economics are simply unavailable under "communist" rule.

There's decidedly very few ideas that are less democratic and less American than communism.

@bobknight33 you claim to be a patriot, I think you're a Russian troll who's assigned to this corner of the internet. Go preach your anti American propaganda in between borscht bites somewhere else please.

A Karl Marx for rich people? Funny how if you extrapolate contrary ideas they converge.

It's like watching a Marx Brothers sketch.

Earlier today, I was sent a link to an article in Bloomberg titled Why Workers Are Losing to Capitalists. Marx in Bloomberg? Impossibru!

But nevermind Marx. That opinion piece is 800 words, give or take, on labour's share of income. Yet it doesn't mention policy once. Not a single time. It's automation, it's globalisation, it's Gremlins. But not a single peep on policy.

Nothing on union busting. Nothing on taxes on capital vs taxes on labour. Nothing on minimum wages. Nothing on welfare. Nothing on the public sector.

If you read about inequality and related issues in these papers, there's rarely any agency. It's always something abstract like market forces, globalisation, innovation, etc. Nothing on decisions made by people in power, parliament first and foremost, that often had the explicit aim of reducing wages to "increase competitiveness".

15:05-15:30: you tell Mr and Mrs Front-Porch that your loonie of 1871 cannot be compared to your loonie of 2013 (year of this interview). You went off the gold standard in '33, you abandoned the peg in '70, and your currency has been free-floating ever since. Yes, the ratio of debt to GDP has some importance, but so does the nature of your currency. Just look at Greece and Japan, where the former uses a foreign currency and the latter uses its own, sovereign, free-floating currency.

Pay back the national debt -- have you thought that through?

First, the Bank of Canada is the monopolist currency issuer for the loonie, so explain to me in detail just how the issuer of the currency is supposed to borrow the currency from someone else? If you're the issuer of the currency, you spend it into existence, and use taxation as a means to create demand for your currency, and to free resources for the government to acquire, because you can only ever buy what is for sale.

Second, every government bond is someone else's asset. An interest-bearing asset. A very safe asset, in the case of Canada, the US, the UK, Japan, etc. "Paying back the debt" means putting a bullet into just about every pension fund in the world that doesn't rely exlusively on private equity or other sorts of volatile toilet paper.

There's a distributional issue with these bonds (they are concentrated in the hands of the non-working class, aka the rich), no doubt about it. But most of the other issues are strictly political, not economical.

What if the interest rate rises 1%? The central bank can lower the interest rate to whatever it damn well pleases, because nobody can ever outbid the currency issuer in its own currency. Remember, the central banks were the banks of the treasuries. The whole notion of an independent central bank was introduced to stop these pesky leftists from spending resources on plebs. That's why central banks were often removed from democratic control and handed over to conservative bankers. If the Treasury wants an interest rate of 2% on its bonds, it tells its central bank to buy any excess that haven't been auctioned off at this rate. End of story.

What if the market stops buying government bonds? Then the central bank buys the whole lot. However, government bonds are safe assets, and regulations demand a certain percentage of safe assets in certain portfolios, so there is always demand for the bonds. Just look at the German Bundesanleihen. You get negative real rates on 10 year bonds, and they are still in very high demand. It's a safe asset in a world of shitty private equity vaporware.

But, but.... inflation! Right, the hyperinflation of 2006 is still right around the corner. Just like Japan hasn't been stuck near deflation for two decades, and all the QE by the BoE and the ECB has thrown both the UK and the Eurozone into double-digit inflation territory. Not! None of these economies are running near maximum capacity/full employment, and very little actual spending (the scary, scary "fiscal policy") has been done.

But I'm going off track here, so.... yeah, you can pay back your public debt. Just be very aware of what exactly that entails.

As for the poster-child Latvia: >10% of the population left the country.

Here's a different poster-child instead, with the hindsight of another 4 years of austerity in Europe after this interview: Portugal. The Portuguese government told Master of Coin Schäube to take a hike, and they are now in better shape than the countries who just keep on slashing.

On a different note: Marx was wrong about the proletariat. Treating them like shit doesn't make them rebellious, it makes them lethargic. Otherwise goons like Mario Rajoy would have had their comeuppance by now.

PS: Blyth's book on Austerity is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in its history or its current effects in particularly the Eurozone.

What's up with this music?!

I am a philosopher, I like to provoke,
we live in perverted times,
so let me tell you a perverted joke!

A famous, dirty, horrible joke,
taking place in 15th century Russia.
A farmer and his wife walk along a dusty country road.
A Mongol warrior on a horse stops and says
"I'm gonna rape your wife and you should hold my testicles,
while I rape your wife, so that they will not get dusty."
When he raped his wife, the Mongol warrior went away,
the farmer started to laugh and jump with joy, his wife said
"Hey, how can you be happy?! I was just brutally raped!
And he says: "But I got him. His balls are full of dust."

Well, in reality we only dirty with dust the balls of those in power.
And now comes the dirty conclusion - the point is to cut them off!

Now let me warn you - this isn't Macarena, not Chicken dance,
not Aserejé, not Gangnam style and so on and so on.

We stand no chance, there's no time for romance,
it's time to dance The Perverted Dance™!

Cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
the balls of those in power!
We need to cut the balls
and our faces won't be sour!
Just cut the balls,
make them become Niagara falls.

Cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
the balls of those in power!
We need to cut the balls,
we can train with cauliflower!
Just cut the balls,
make them become Niagara falls.

Oh, my god, why am i doing this?! Singing, dancing?!
I feel like that disgusting guy from Canada, Justin Bieber...

So, the problem with capitalism is that it's in the crisis from its very beginning.
From somewhere, I would say, late 18th century, there are prophets who claim capitalism is nearing its end.
It's like that stupid bird Fenix, the more you, you know, it returns.
I got hungry, let's grab something to eat!
What?! No meat?! Only for vegetarians ?!
Degenerates, degenerates, they'll all soon turn into monkeys.

I dont say let's do nothing,
I say sometimes doing nothing is the most violent thing to do.
So cut the balls, just cut the balls!
And racism is also a problem,
so be like Kung Fu Panda - be white, black, asian
and cut the balls, just cut the balls!
They call me The Borat of Philosophy,
The Marx Brother and The Elvis of cultural theory.
Cut the crap and cut the balls, just cut the balls!

Hey, I am Slavoj Žižek!
No, I am Slavoj Žižek!
No, I am Slavoj Žižek,
Fuck that, whatever, let's all be Slavoj Žižek!

Grab and pull the imaginary balls from the sky,
cut through the air and say bye, bye, bye.
Let's join together, let's fall in trance,
let's dance The Perverted Dance™!

Cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
the balls of those in power!
We need to cut the balls.
and then take the bloody shower!
Just cut the balls,
make them become Niagara falls!

Cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
the balls of those in power!
We need to cut the balls,
let them face the final hour!
just cut the balls,
make them become Niagara falls!

Cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls,
the balls of those in power!
We need to cut the balls,
we need to cut the balls!
Just cut the balls,
make them become Niagara falls!

This stupid repetative mechanic music!
Stop it!

Thank you, thank you very much!

The problem is maybe not the big act "Cut the balls",
but you make small changes and all of a sudden, balls are no longer there.
Those in power look down and say "Oh, where are my balls?"
and suddenly their voices get higher and so on and so on and so on.
I stand by my joke. The structure of the joke is that this so called progressive intellectual,
in order to score his small narcissistic point, oh, I dusted the balls,
totally ignores the suffering there and that's the whole point of the joke.
So cut the balls, we need to cut the balls!

“I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.” -Groucho Marx

As depressing as it is, Trump might very well be the preferable outcome for people in the Maghreb. Clinton has been a major driver behind the clusterfuck that used to be Syria and Libya.

Also, if you browse through the economics commentaries outside the mainstream, you'll notice that the US-based crowd seems to be borrowing yet another word from German: Lumpenproletariat. Old Marx is back with a vengeance.

And if people like Clinton, Cameron, Hollande, Rajoy and Merkel piss on the Lumpenproletariat, you get your Farages, your le Pens, your Trumps, your Petrys. Treat the plebs like rats, and many will follow whatever rat-catcher comes along...

Isn't Leary's whole shtick that he's really just a lucky asshole?

He's in character. He typically gets humbled (owned) in his comedic acts; he's the every man's angry man that needs the humbling experiences to grow rather than be destoyed by hubris.

I've never seen him as the type who competes, rather he reacts with the inhibitions of an angry drunk tellIing it lIke it is. It's difficult for me to see the difference between him being Dennis Leary for real and him being Dennis Leary in his acts. You always get the feeling he is implicitly telling his jokes from the underdog's perspective. He was just wrong about a fact, except he's a comedian, so being owned while in character is the riposte and payoff for the act. Greg's stare down ONLY works because it's against Leary. Two man bit. Three man with Colin's visual gag. (It's like the Marx Bros.)

They both win at comedy, but Greg wins at facts.

Hahaha... seriously, what kind of passive aggressive bullshit is that? "Ignoring the theoretical underpinnings of socialism, because I've decided that that's waffling, I say Jesus was a socialist." Next time, maybe just write TL;DR and make a farting noise while rolling your eyes.

You can't dismiss the actual meaning of the word Socialist as 'semantics', if you're talking about whether or not something is socialist. That doesn't help the discussion.

In order to use socialism as you appear to be doing, you would have to first:
- ignore the history of socialism and its political development,
- ignore the entire body of academic work, current and past, on socialism, and
- ignore how the word socialism "IS used now, like it or not" in actual socialist or semi-socialist countries

By doing that you end up at your definition of the word, yes. But you had to take a pretty long detour to get to that point

Marx's quote on religion is pretty straightforward - it can be, as you say, open to interpretation, but it's generally agreed that he didn't say that your Jesus was a stand-up socialist. He is more commonly taken to mean that religion is a false response to the real suffering of the oppressed; religion provides a fiction of suffering and a fiction of redemption/happiness, that will never translate into real change. It makes the oppressed feel like they are bettering their lives, while actually keeping them passive and preventing them from changing anything.

The slightly larger context of the quote is this: "Das religiöse Elend ist in einem der Ausdruck des wirklichen Elendes und in einem die Protestation gegen das wirkliche Elend. Die Religion ist der Seufzer der bedrängten Kreatur, das Gemüth einer herzlosen Welt, wie sie der Geist geistloser Zustände ist. Sie ist das Opium des Volks."

I don't know how to make that more plain, but I can try. Religious suffering is on one hand a response to real suffering (wirkliche Elend, by which one would mean a materialistically determined actual lack of freedom, resources, physical wellbeing, etc), but it is also a false reaction against that real suffering. Real oppression creates suffering to which there could be a real respones, but religion instead substitutes in false suffering and false responses - it tries to tackle real suffering with metaphysical solutions. He goes on to say:

"Die Aufhebung der Religion als des illusorischen Glücks des Volkes ist die Forderung seines wirklichen Glücks."

This, too, seems pretty straightforward to me, but you might see 4 or 5 different things there. Religion teaches the people an illusory form of happiness, which doesn't actually change or even challenge the conditions of suffering, and must therefore be tossed out, for the people to ever achieve real happiness.

A fundamental difference here is that religious goodness is internally, individually, and fundamentally motivated. 'Good' is 'Good', and you as a Christian individual should choose to do Good. A goal of Marxism is to abolish that kind of fundamentalism and replace it with continuous criticism; creating a society that always questions, together, what good is, through the lens of dialectical materialism.

You might recognize this line of thinking* from what modern Europeans call the autonomous left wing, or what Marx and Trotsky called the Permanent Revolution, which Wikipedia helpfully comments on as "Marx outlines his proposal that the proletariat 'make the revolution permanent'. In essence, it consists of the working class maintaining a militant and independent approach to politics both before, during and after the 'struggle' which will bring the 'petty-bourgeois democrats' to power." Which sounds great, except it can also lead to purges, paranoia, and informant societies.

My entire point is that socialism and Christianity are entirely different beasts. One is a rich, layered mythology with an extremely deep academic and political history, but no modern critical or explanatory components.** The other is an academic theory of economics and politics, with all the tools of discourse of modern academia in its toolbelt, and a completely different critical and analytical goal.

TL;DR? Well, Jesus (in a lenient interpretation) taught that we should help the weak. Marx explained that the people should organize to eradicate the conditions that force weakness onto the people. Jesus
taught that greed would keep a man from heaven, Marx explained that religion, nationalism, tribalism and commodity fetishism blinded the people to its common materialist interests. Jesus taught that the meek will be rewarded for their meekness, and while on earth we should render unto Caesar what is Caesar's; Marx explained that meekness as a virtue is a way of preventing actual revolutionary change, and that dividing the world into the spiritual and the materialistic helped keep the people sedate and passive, which plays right into the hands of the Caesars.

*I'm just kidding, I know you don't recognize any of this


**There probably are modern scholars of Christianity who adapt and adopt some of the tools of modern academic discourse; I know too little about academic Christianity.

<Skip if you're not interested in semantics.>
Stating your annoyance about how people use a word and arguing the semantics of the word only contributes towards clogging up the discussion with waffle and painfully detailed point-counterpoint text-walls that everyone loses interest in immediately. I'm going to do the sensible thing and take the meaning of socialism from what the majority of socialists in the world argue for; things like state control being used to counteract the inherent ruthlessness of the free market (i.e. minimum wage, working conditions, rent controls, holidays and working hours), free education, free healthcare (both paid for by contributions from those with means), social housing or money to assist those who cannot work or find themselves out of work... without spending too much time on the close up detail of it, that's roughly what i'll take it to mean and assume you know what i mean (because that's how the word IS used now, like it or not).
<Stop skipping now>

So without getting upset about etymology, I think a reasonable argument could be made for Jesus being a socialist:
- he believed in good will to your neighbour
- he spent time helping and caring for those who were shunned by society and encouraged others to do so too
- he considered greed to be a hindrance to spiritual enlightenment and/or a corrupting influence (easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle and all that)
- he healed and tended the sick for free
- he fed the multitude rather than send them to buy food for themselves
- he argued against worshiping false gods (money for example)

If we believe the stories.

I also think that a good argument could be made for Jesus not being a socialist. You haven't made one, but one could be made.

Marx is open to interpretation, so you're going to have to make your point about his quote clearer. I could take it to mean 4 or 5 different and opposing things.

'Jesus' wasn't a socialist, though. The ideas in the Bible aren't socialist; it's just that people have sloppily started to associate socialism with vague ideas like sharing and being good to your fellow man. Socialism is a specific economic and ideological model for explaining and directing societal phenomena, and it's sort of annoying that it has been turned into either a spooky bugbear or an adorable care bear. There's a reason why Marx called religion the opium of the people.

Surely Yogi and Groucho Marx are enjoying a rousing one upman match in the great beyond?!? I love me a witty and intelligent smartass ... these are/were two of my favorites