I didn't understand much of your video. You say the Internet/technology will become open source and free, but then you just give examples of how all cyberspace is monopolized for profit?? So what is it? I don't see how is it "cool" to abandon Marxism, when at the heart of it lies a Hegelian understanding of history . If you ever thought or read The Capital as a blueprint to a definitive formation of society (and I really don't know how you can manage to do that) then I think you missed one of his central points. Thanks for the video!

As a poet, I am more of a communist than Zizak will ever be, but I am a communist of spirit, not economy.

@Unism You are most welcome.

I would say you’re wasted on KZfaq , except I don’t think you are . And just in case you don’t have a doctorate in philosophy we really ought to bestow an honorary one on you right here for your fluent and accessible content .

Out of all comments I have received in my videos this arguably my favorite one. Genuinely, thank you for this. This at least tells me what I am REALLY trying to do is actually kind of working. (Hopefully.) Trying to add clarity to more complex ideas and show their relevance. Especially with Zizek and other complex philosophies and theory. I still love Chomsky, and he has done wonders for adding deeper context to leftist ideas in an easier way, but his idea that Zizek and what is regarded as "theory" is "pseudo intellectualism" is utter bullshit. That's the goal of these videos. To show that Zizek is saying some extremely significant and relevant things that we would be extremely wise to take seriously. Things that often get brushed under the rug as nonsense, post-marxism, or simply saying nothing at all under fancy language. The stuff Zizek lays out is some of the most relevant stuff we could ask for. It is just a shame that the subject matter is kinda complex for most. Thus, here is what I'm trying to kind of mend.

@@epochphilosophy do you like Todd McGowan? Or Peter Rollins?

zizek's mind is in constant revolution

And so on, and so on...

Actually, he says "dialectical" so much, you could make a drinking game out of it. tavi.

That's pure ideology

Super happy you enjoyed. Thank you for the kind words!

@@epochphilosophy No problem!! Loved your videos so far! Really struggled with Heidigger, but your visual representation of dasien was a massive help! Happy New Year 😊

Even better! Genuinely love these comments. Happy new year to you!

Appreciate this a ton! Yeah, Zizek is certainly not a bad writer, but I think a ton of people overstate his clarity. He is very much not very clear at times lol. Big reason why I try to hammer in videos around Zizek.

Thank you, my friend. Figured this would be a good one.

Many thanks!

Thanks my dude. Appreciate that a ton. Keep up the good work on your channel yourself!

"Henry Ford showed us how." --Joseph Stalin --Stalin was the ultimate utilitarian. Anyone could be replaced.

@@joelfry4982 He didn't seem to be all that good at weighing social utility and personal loyalty.

@@NathanDudani hey I was actually just on your channel two hours ago watchin perverts guide. Thank you so much for posting it btw.

A CEO can be fired by his shareholders

It's a bit more complicated than that

Yup. I've actually been doing the same. Zizek carries a lot from Jeremy Rifkin (a dude who is relatively unknown who really pushed this idea of a new rent economy), and I want to get into his stuff specifically.

Precisely! Even Adam Smith himself (and really all classical economists) highlighted this "rentier class" and their parasitic form as a vestige residue of feudal social relations as rent is value extracted _without_ value produced, a clear contradiction to the justifying logic of "the market". _"Kelp was never augmented by human industry. The landlord, however, whose estate is bounded by a kelp shore of this kind, demands a rent for it."_ - Ch.11 Wealth of Nations Really I think putting the term "free market" back into its historical context among Smith, John Stuart Mill, Malthus, Lassalle, David Ricardo, etc. (and of course Marx) it becomes more illustrative of a market free of _rent extraction_ as opposed to the laissez faire distortion it has transformed into over time being utilized as a dogma of maintaining the social hierarchy rather than one that would attempt to dismantle this hierarchy, but that's just my interpretation because of this prominent and pretty ubiquitously omitted emphasis. Mill has some good/humorous quotes on this as well, but yeah check out ch.11 in WoN as it's pretty much entirely justifiably shitting on landlords for being the parasites they are. Actually on a similar note, the "tendency of the rate of profit to fall" was also highlighted by Smith himself, which makes it quite strange how the cultural characterization of these people seem to be diametrically opposed and I think demonstrates the trajectory of this cultural distortion over time. I think it also may clarify why Marx was emphasizing the market structure mentioned at the end of the video, namely that Marx wrote his critique under an acceptance of the first principle logical assumptions so as to remove his analysis from a mischaracterization of a normative "ought" (in regards to Hume's is/ought distinction), or basically to be an extension of classical economic analysis, which as we can see...did not work at all lol. And of course all this stuff has been quite conveniently circumvented entirely in contemporary econ by simply creating the "orthodox" branch (the fact that this is the common term of distinction used from within the field itself is rather fitting and unselfaware) of neoclassical econ which removes any discussion of exactly this point of the contradiction posed by economic rent, dismissing that focal goal of making "the market" actually serve that universal social good by simply declaring a new assumptive standpoint that all market outcomes are justified inherently. Ironically and inevitably of course this will necessarily lead to the capture of any productive outcomes by the least-productive rentier class and of course it has done exactly that in the rise and dominion of fictitious capital since the 70s and the emergence of this neoclassical/neoliberal orthodoxy. This is super long already sorry, but I think it's maybe worth noting the throughline of dialectical progression with Marx, as all of the outcomes he outlined were implicitly from a class consciousness emerging from the conditions of _industrial_ capitalism as a progression in time, whereas what we have now is a complete takeover of mostly finance (fictitious) capital, which devours not only that productive capacity industrial capital must yield to survive in its symbiotic (though of course also exploitative) relationship it has with the working class, but also in dissolving the conditions that create such class consciousness in the first place as all of it is essentially based in ungrounded ethereal ideological distortion. Hopefully any of that made sense lol. Actually, Vol.3 of Capital (aka the volume that is never actually opened lol) elaborates what I'm trying to get at here, and of course Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism ( www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ ) extends this further to pretty presciently illuminate the inherently dominant role finance capital has when it is unburdened by any tethering to reality.

Also as a follow up that hopefully won't be book-length lol, Smith's (et al) proposed prescription to natural monopoly and its emergent exploitation through rent extraction was a "land value tax" which unlike property taxes, it disregards the value of buildings and other supplemental additions to real estate, as this differentiates value that emerges as an external effect (like good schools, neighborhood, etc.) and is supposed to then redistribute this collected LVT back into the collective source of such value, hence it being a tax. I think Marx liked this as well, as well as many others, and it's something China is attempting to actually structure and implement as they are for the most part acutely aware of the US's trajectory into finance capitalism and how this dissolves the totalizing systemic progression Marx was outlining into a regressive feudalist foundation. This is basically why I would consider Smith, Ricardo, etc. sort of "proto-socialists" as opposed to "capitalists" in regards to the modern understanding of capitalism as that laissez faire proto-neofeudalism bullshit the word has now popularly become in its de facto embrace of rent-extraction as this poses a stark contradiction on its face in terms of the justifying logic of the market itself.

@@epochphilosophy You should definitely check out economist/anthropologist/mentat Michael Hudson in this regard, if you're not already aware of course. After reading Wealth of Nations and being confused as hell with no popular mention of the rent stuff he wrote, Hudson was the only one who clearly put all of this into a historical materialist framework that not only makes _enormous_ sense, but recontextualizes the historical role of even religion itself as it gives it a _material_ power that is pretty much never associated with it in its contemporary understanding, much like the role of economics plays in all of our implicit ideological frameworks despite it masquerading as something purely materially "objective" in its modern form/study. This in particular helped me understand the material basis for the war in Iraq and really all wars, in a more totalizing context beyond the military industrial complex that is, essentially an extension of Lenin: michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/superimperialism.pdf Here's a random vidya discussion with him and the late David Graeber (whose book on Debt and its mythology is similarly quite revealing if not already familiar): kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Z9icfLtyuq3Fnqc.html

if you don't pay for the product you are the product. I can see a future in which you don't have a basic income but every citizen gets a basic package of essential services: food, internet, transportation, energy. Of course this gives the government or mega-corporations (who are already pretty much the same) tremendous power as they might cut anyone off who doesn't behave the way they should. Think social credit, which China already has. The world economic forum already talked about such a future in an article titled "you own nothing and you will be happy".

Don't be a Christian

我和你一样即使马克思主义共产党员，也是基督教徒，并且一样的认为精神创造思想，人不要被意识形态左右，即便在不的现象周边的所有人形成的现实，意识形态如何如何，我做的是不和任何人站一队的独立与怀疑。 另外亚当夏娃是吃了永恒知识树的过去的人，我认为，人要做上帝的人子，通过耶稣的保血，洗净我的身体，可以和上帝交流，并且带更多的人进入基督里面。

You ever read/listen to Peter Rollins?

As the kids say, there's a lot to unpack here. You need to do some grass-touching.

Do not feel bad whatsoever. Appreciate this comment a ton!

More than happy to provide, friend. Thanks for being here.

Don’t the activities of housewives provide use for society?

I think the point of the critique wasn’t how a commodity starts to have value but that they were fighting for commodification of their labor which brought them into the capitalist hegemony.

Thank you, friend.

eNd Of HiStOrY

Damn. Quite the compliment. Super glad you enjoy!

Zizek references McKenzie Wark in this book!

@@epochphilosophy Am I right in thinking that Zizek is somewhat implying that the means of production are going for a revolution of their own?

He's actually said this before as well. Zizek being a sexist, transphobe, homophobe, and a pseudo-intellectual, etc. almost have no real basis whatsoever. Zizek is complicated, so I understand not contending with his work, but most criticisms I see are massively untrue.

Thank you. Appreciate that a ton. If you don't use Amazon and shop elsewhere, continue to do so! Don't want to pull people over to a pretty horrid corporation. Rather, for people who do use them already, it is a good way to help out!

It's a really short essay, so it's not a huge time investment to read ;)

Being a Marxist really do be like that sometimes.

and, alongside that was exploitation of labor for the production of cash crops, rice and wheat on plantations for export, in addition to some manufacturing and mercantilism

What lol

@@epochphilosophy ah nvm. I thought it was a reference to those political compass highlighter memes. Great video btw 👍

@@waylaytrucking Ah gotcha. Was super confused for a second. Appreciate that my friend!

Omg yes! I haven't read this book of Žižek yet but I'm super interested in works going deeper into the ideology of Free/Open Source in the context of capitalism. I've been active in Open Source movements much of my life and often you find people who strongly disagree on each other's economic ideologies work on FOSS Projects together. Nowadays, the ideological war between "free" and "commercial" software is long over and we have Microsoft running GitHub and Google being one of the largest contributors to free and open source software. We need some theory on this!!