What if the real debate was the friends we made along the way.

Destiny got a birthday card in this debate

Took a 48 year old, actually well-read boomer to provide a wealth of knowledge and have a serious, productive conversation on the tenets of Marxist political critique. Love Douglas Lain!

I think this guy was very intelligent and respectful, he also understands socialism and communism more fundamentally than Caleb. +1

Hello, zero books readers!

I love how his kid walks in the room and is pumped he’s debating the guy who exposed jontron.

My god it's a debate where destiny's opponent isn't stupider than a brick and doesn't understand basic rhetoric. This was really enjoyable to listen to.

The majority of slaves in ancient rome were of mediterranean and european descent while there were black soldiers who were not enslaved and often lived in families of "white" people. Their inherited physical characteristics were not related to slave status. Also, about African slaves. Historians argue that racism towards black people was borne out of their enslavement and not the other way around.

This was a really good chat.

LMAO this dude said stalins concentration camps were so much more humanizing than the Nazi camps because they were forced to right happy birthday cards to Stalin🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. Why did you let him get away with that destiny?

This is why Gen Ed in college is so important. You learn to dicipher and evaluate info.

In this episode of Destiny Ball Z, Destiny has battled the elite warriors from planet Tankie for the past several months. Each Tankie with a unique fighting style developed through rigorous internet battles. Will Destiny's training in the hyperbolic chat room pay off and score him an easy victory, or will he get published in this debate.

The reason why this old man says modern slavery is rooted in capitalism and not in racism (whether he knows it or not) is because racism isn't part of the reason for slavery, but a product of it. Slavery before was a form of domination between one nation to the other, regardless of race. The commonality between enslaved races in modern times isn't just their non-whiteness, but their lack of development in military and social structures, which is why countries like Ethiopia and Thailand were never colonized, but all the countries surrounding Russia were technically colonized by the russian empire, if we consider colonization as the occupation of the land, the exploitation of resources, the attempt at erasure and assimilation of culture and the discrimination of the people as sub-class citizens. The reason for colonization was capitalist, even if said countries still operated under the guise of kingdoms or empires and held some form of feudal social structure. And then racism happened as a byproduct of slavery, even amongst white countries where the procedence was sometimes used to try and determine different race (like the aforementioned russian empire, or the british empire within the british isles), and it was continued for capitalist reasons (slavery becoming a powerful mean of production and then becoming illegal meant that those lands where it was used turned quickly into racism as a way to produce cheap labor and exculpate it). So yeah, while there's always been slaves, the reason for their existence is largely capitalist in nature (with some cultural exceptions), and racism came after the fact, even if natural bias against the different is part of the basic psychological structure of animals in general.

"Government is evil" is a specifically American right-wing belief. In Europe there is pretty much no right-wing party that is not for big government. And there are very few libertarians.

Douglas, repeat after me: "If, for whatever reason, racism would continue to be a problem even with a more equitable economic system, we'd use the same methods to fight it as we use now. We legislate against it, set up watchdog organisations, create awareness campaigns and whatever else we need. This problem is worse under capitalism, and would very likely be lessened under capitalism, but it's possible we'd need to do more to stamp it out (almost) completely." You're not giving any ground by allowing for this possibility. We don't need to solve every problem 100% via economics.

A good conversation! Holy shit.

Jesus, Destiny still doesn't know what a tankie is and loves strawmaning his opponents as such. A tankie is someone who fetishizes the authoritarianism of the Soviet Union and Maoist China. Yes, that means they also fetishize the iconography, but at the end of the day, the vast majority of tankies have little regard for Marxism or any form of dialectical materialism. Tankies can either be edgy memelords or folks that actually like the authoritarianism of the USSR and China etc. They sometimes are close to Nazbols but not always quite the same. Strawmaning breadtube into this pigeon hole is incredibly disingenuous. Especially since the USSR and China were not the first to create things like the red flag, or the hammer and sickle. Many of these forms of iconography have been around well before these two states and even to this day they still are used in many leftist movements, just look at the flag color of the Labor party in the UK as a small example.

So, it's interesting - Destiny said one thing that's frustrating about socialists/communists, and the left in general for him, is the lack of unity due to bickering and nitpicking between various left-wing ideologies, and that the lack of unity in favour of in-fighting and purity testing is a disadvantage at fighting the right because there is less of this on the right. But he also said an issue he has with socialists and communists is that not only are there a lot of tankies and Stalinists, but that the other people who are non-tankies and non-stalinists don't do enough to push back against them or call them out, and will provide cover and in some cases support for those parts in their movement, and even goes as far as to suggest that many people on the left who identify as social democrats, democratic socialists, anarchists, left communists, etc. are actually closeted tankies and Stalinists who are just hiding their power level. So, which one is it? Is the lack of unity amongst the left a problem? Or is the unity between stalinists and non-stalinists a problem? Or am I missing something that just wasn't explained or delved into? Does he think that the lack of unity between say, socialists and non-socialist leftists is a problem, and thinks THAT is the unity that needs to be taking place in place of the "unity" between, say, anarchists and Marxist-Leninists? Does he think that non-stalinist socialists are more likely to ally with stalinists than they are with Soc Dems or "regular" liberals, and he thinks that's a problem? If that's the case, then fine, but I feel like that needs to be articulated much better. Otherwise, the two issues stated above that he said he has are contradictory and don't go hand in hand with each other. With regards to the issue of racism in society being a result of structural and class divide vs. being a result of inherent tribalism, I think there was a bit of talking past each other here between Destiny and DL. To be charitable, I think when DL says that racism is a result of capitalism and class divide and is thus more structural, he's saying that's where the starting point was, and over time it has become so ingrained in society that now it has become more internal and on an individual basis because of how we are brought up and our environment where those racial divisions already exist due to class. He goes into this a bit with regards to things like red-lining kind of laying the foundations for why cops and judges have racial biases. But it goes back further than that with white capitalists using racism as a tool to drive poor white and poor black people apart to prevent them from fraternizing and socializing and thus forming better, smoother coalitions against the upper class. Destiny will say that simply transitioning a predominantly white society from capitalist to socialist - he uses Tennessee and Louisiana as examples - that you will not magically get rid of racism that a lot of people in those states hold on to. He's correct, you'll still have to work to eliminate the racist attitudes amongst the population, but the reason you have racism amongst those people because that's a result of the environment around them and their upbringing, not because of their inherent tribalism. Tennessee and Louisiana are already deep red, probably racist states. By contrast, other predominanly white areas, such as New England or the Atlantic provinces in Canada, wouldn't have that same issue if you transitioned to a socialist system because the level of prejudice against black people isn't there despite black people making up a very small part of those areas. I probably didn't articulate that all that well and typed too much, but that's how I viewed what people say when they say that class divide is the predominant motivating factor of racial tension in our history, specifically American history.

"Recriminalizing homosexuality?" That was something that Stalin did. Homosexuality was legalized under Lenin.

Destiny is the subject of the book Capitalist Realism.

The stuff about Roman slavery Destiny doesn't know about... Slaves could become free and no longer be viewed like property... Also Roman slavery didn't have to do with race... At least, not necessarily... For example, the pater familias ("father of the family" and basically the head of the household) during the event of a childbirth in the household would do one of two things: 1. Lift the child as a sign of acceptance into the household. 2. Leave the child and turn his back to it. If the pater familias chose not to accept the child into his household then the child would be abandoned where it'd quite likely either die or alternatively have some slave discover it, at which point the child would become a slave despite having biologically had 2 Roman parents... Though, the slave could also hypothetically become free if they proved they were a Roman citizen (rather difficult to do though) so I guess you could point to that... Another thing though is there were times where enslaved people became gladiators and could basically earn their freedom and live among Roman citizens fine... There was a Roman gladiator named Flamma who was Syrian and he was offered this freedom 4 times (though rejected it every time since he really enjoyed being a gladiator)

Destiny didn't try to dunk on his guest and I enjoyed it more this way.

I don't think you understood what Douglas Lain was saying even through he explained it very well to you.

Destiny really made a great point in regards to class and race. In a stateless society wherein the burden of labor doesn't determine your ability to have control over the material apparatus' you can still have prejudice. In a hypothetical state-less america, if the demographic skews white you can still stifle the political influence of minorities by virtue of prejudice. The history of white marxists and exclusion of black and brown individuals in discourse is plenty big and easy to find historical examples of. Marx himself wasn't the most pc person ever.

I like Douglas.

guy was cool until he got into the class reductionism bit

Damn, every time he debates a lefty now it just ends up as "how does your system defeat racism, and btw, racism is innate to the human condition. Go."

Doug Lain is amazing I'm so glad he got on.

I really feel like Destiny just hates Tankies. Which is good but like real lefties do too.

Destiny not understanding the difference between the foundations of Nazis and that of Communist revolution is very... Smooth brained. I actually don't think he doesn't get it and just doesnt WANT to get it.

dudes 48 but he talks like he's 84.

Destiny finally made some distinctions on Leftism in this debate

"I wanna quote Zizek" Saw it coming from mile away. The Soviet system was more dehumanizing because it required its prisoners to thank it for their de facto execution.

Incoming Far Leftists vs Liberals battle in the comments in 3....2......1

Destiny's points about racism are actually clumsy. Obviously Black Wall Street was destroyed because of the high class of the black people in the community and the resentment of whites built on the history of racism at the time. Obviously there would be racism historically contributing to social friction in future societies that grow from this one, but the structure of our society and economy drives the process of rooting out racism.

Destiny's thought experiment about lynching applies to any democratic system. He is using it to show that socialism doesn't solve all problems. A good response to this is to agree that socialism doesn't create a utopia.

Wow. An actual educational debate/conversation on Destiny’s channel! Awesome!

After watching these debates I find it a little sad that we're stuck arguing between the status quo, and hundreds years old ideas like Marxism. I guess it's nice that alternative political ideologies have finally gained traction in countries like the U.S., but unfortunately all its proved is exactly how sheeplike and unimaginative most people are. These days calling yourself a socialist or an anarcho-communist or whatever-ist seems to be more about self-branding and internet tribalism than anything else. Is it possible to come up with a new way of doing things that is also not the status quo, or have we really exhausted all the ideas out there in spite of the world having changed completely since Marx's time?

Maybe I'm super naive but I feel like Destinys white vs black point only makes sense if 100% of the white people are racist or at least a number the overcomes the normies and minorities. Which is a pretty big grant. And, I feel like Douglas isnt an anarchist anyway... I don't know. And after bringing up Chattel slavery, Destiny jumped to Roman slavery and India caste system which enslaved people that looked like the slavers, and isnt at all like chattel slavery anyhow so I missed how it enforced his argument. Like, current day slavery is within culture groups and is normally called indentured servitude.

This guy may fail to answer some questions... Yet, in one video he made a more appealing case for socialism that Hasan and Vaush through all their careers in KZfaq.

This was a really good discussion and I thought Lain was doing well until he began discussing racism. I would not say that he holds the majority view that racism will magically end under a classless society. It's a separate issue that must also be accounted for in order to create a more just and equitable society. Although I would say ending racism might be even more difficult than ending capitalism

Man Destiny comes off less intelligent when he debates people with brains. edit: lmfao, before y'all jump to call Lain an idiot maybe listen to the words he says in the video?

I really like this kind of interaction with Destiny, him just asking the right questions and letting the speaker trot out their thoughts and only interrupting when they say something pivoty or that needs further definition; this way the person effectively hoists their flags and with Destiny adding the right questions, we can see what their views really are.

This is way better!!!!! Thanks to Douglas Lain for participating. Notice how much more information and discussion was shared.....rather than just debating. MORE OF THIS STEVEN!!!!!!!!!!

Finally someone who can form coherent arguments and list off great leftest talking points!

Wait what? We don't live in tribes anymore therefore no natural tribal tendencies? That's not how evolution works. Selection pressures impact evolutionary direction of species over time - lots of time. If a species has been shaped by a particular selection pressure resulting, for instance, in a proclivity towards tribal identification and behavior that doesn't simply go away because you have a few hundred years or so without the selection pressures that made the species so in the first place. The idea that tribal identification is predicated on class inequality or largely driven by it in ways it wouldn't be in under other social schemata is frankly speaking illiterate to the research on human tribalism. Social tribes have nothing to do with tribalism concretely as a political order in academia outside of concrete history and anthropology, and is found in almost all human endeavors. Generally, when we speak of tribalism today, it's understood in its psychological and sociological usage. It can be triggered as easily as simply having a bunch of randos in a room and assigning them different color bands to wear on their arms. We see tribalism expressed in religion, sports, and even fucking playgrounds, over both concrete and abstract/symbolic differences that have no direct relation to social class at all, real or precieved. The problem with tribalism is arguably literally one of the biggest hurdles to human unity and progress at scale, which means that any effort to create human social systems generally necessitates instances of checks and balances to protect outgroups from being made and mistreated. The idea class emancipation will stop expressions of tribalism is frankly speaking naive as fuck, when you could argue the fact of class inequality to itself be a product of tribalism at scale.

Isn't it a special kind of cruelty to make people in concentration camps write birthday cards to their captor?

These comments truly are a remnant of when Destiny’s audience was much more tankie adjacent, and Destiny had to do a big purge.

Destiny not to meme on you but you really need to read history and some theory to engage in these kind of conversations

This guy just wants to just forgive the results if the intentions are good..

I'm more or less a socialist but I'm with Destiny on this one. So many (mainly white) socialists think that racism and prejudice in general would be solved if we just establish socialism, but I'm not so optimistic. Asians, for example, have been doing well relatively speaking in terms of income but still faces lots of discrimination and prejudice in the west. Of course racism is related to class, but there are different ways in which it can function that I believe would still exist even in a post-capitalist society, and Destiny gave some good examples.

This was my favorite conversation I’ve heard Destiny have thus far.

Came here to remind Stephen to please log off Twitter for the love of god

Douglas is one of the best of KZfaq.

Have Douglas Lain on more often!

Socialism may not magically solve racism, but it creates an environment where dealing with systemic racial disparities is possible. What's capitalism doing to solve racism again?

Destiny knows nothing about history....

Sorry racism will still exist even if capitalism goes away. It’s actually fascinating observing how racist a lot of working class people are, not all of them ofc but more than any liberal I’ve talked to.

Looks like Destiny have no serious issues with Socialists & Communists - so easy vague theoretical talking with no pressure

The only thing more dangerous to breadtube than destiny is breadtube

When you talk about slavery and discrimination this is a issue of structure. Liberals acknowledge it through terms like 'structural racism'. When you look throughout all of the instances of slavery you ask yourself one question and you'll find your answer. People are enslaved to what end/purpose? The answer has remained the same throughout time. Did you get it?

The conflation of Marxism-Leninism and worshipping Stalin was weird but okay. And the talk about race was cringe on both sides. Yes, there is inherent tribalism and that constantly has to be fought by socialists. Idk which socialists he talks to that they reject all identity politics, but I haven’t seen that. But Destiny seems to think that Liberalism is particularly good at protecting minorities from the tyranny of the majority. But all of these reforms had to be fought tooth and nail, a fight which included a lot of white people. It’s somewhat useful in cases of insular communities where most people really are very racist, but only where the power is structured in a way where minorities in those communities can actually appeal to higher authority..which often doesn’t happen...

At first I hated this Destiny liberal arc but its introduced me to a lot of great lefties, keep it up.

Read Eugene Debs speech while running for President, and learn why comrade is used.

This debate is so strange because Douglas Lain does cultural criticisms, in the same vein as Zizek, adorno, Althusser, etc. This is far from what destiny does which is data driven economic "analysis" or debate.

Destiny was forced to write birthdaycards in this debate

Don't socialist and communist all look like they live in a basement with no haircut, stuck to a computer chair eating chips out of a bag, and yelling "Mom, meatloaf!!!!" Lol.

the most calm chat. this is one of the best ones

I feel like the problem with the question of how you would deal with majority-minority problems in an anarcho-whatever system is that there are a nearly infinite number of social abstractions that could be created to deal with the problem. Each would have different levels of justness within the hierarchies and effectiveness at preventing the oppression of the minority. It puts people on the spot when they have to juggle all of those variables and go on the record with a half baked idea that they can only assume you will immediately critique.

I came here to watch a debate but ended up getting a lesson on Marxism. Love it.

“You would be so productive that people could do what they are driven to do”… 🤦‍♂️ I swear these dudes believe in some sort of socialist magic

I think the argument should not be that socialism would end racism but that it would not exacerbate it to the extent capitalism does.

"To be a conservative, all I have to believe is white supremacy." "Conservatives value the status quo". Destiny doesn't seem to understand Right-leaning values AT ALL. He may have been half-joking, but still...After all, Destiny doesn't read books and only learns political ideas from memes...

The fixation on the word comrade is born out of ignorance on Destiny's part. The word comes from the term "camarada". It means chamber mate in Iberian, and proceeds the concept of communism. Comradery and comradeship have been used to describe friends/colleges/siblings for a long time. I think soviets used a similar term, but the association mostly came from western media. You will find the terms comrade and comradery all over the US military writings and slogans.

Destiny was actually disingenuous in this debate, he kept switching the goal post and Laine maybe did not notice, Destiny used the same tactics he rails against, shame Destiny.

This is probably the best debate I've heard since discovering the Destiny channel. Wish it would have been longer but Lain seemed to want to end the discussion. This is the kind of information Destiny needs if he is to progress into political discussions. Did not detect any BS here at all.

Destiny’s insistence on directly comparing all slavery as exactly the same was super annoying

When is this Destiny vs Commies arc going to end?

Dude started out strong but his arguments became so meek and semantic after a while

Destiny getting points from chat is the highlight of this debate.

"I am not a tanky." Then immediately starts downplaying the interment camps in the soviet union and says that he sympathizes with the revolutionaries that built the gulags.

this guy started off real well but it goes down hill half way through =/ I had high hopes for this guy. He keeps backing away from answering questions by saying he is being pinned into a position but destiny keeps asking him to clarify or stop him if he is giving views to Douglas that he doesn't believe. They start by saying no one agrees with what socialism even is so of course it is up to Douglas to pick his specific brew here. I live in the south, and I'm sorry but racism exists and even IF capitalism caused it that doesn't matter anymore. Now it just exists. I also agree that in a more utopian world or more economically fair system that over a long period of time we could work toward getting rid of racism. I base this thought on my belief that if people are well enough off to survive comfortably together that over time crime will decrease and tensions will lessen and if people are seen as equals then it is harder to dehumanize and see someone as the "other" or the "cause" of their economic strife thus reducing general racial tensions, but this also requires mental health be taken extremely serious and include addiction under that as well since not all strife is economic. However, I don't think it will remove racial tensions completely. It just seems like socialists always give this idealistic view that doesn't have any structure to it. I've been pretty social leaning for most of my life and I believe I can give a well formed opinion on these matters, although I may have to do some light reading and remembering to best formulate my ideas as it's been a while since I specifically discussed the formation of a socialist government, but the general people brought on here and many other tubers I watch seem to have lofty ideals and no real solutions. I too want to live in the best of all possible worlds and I don't think we are there yet, but I think I can at least give some examples of how we are not there yet and how we can make strides to get there..

I'm not very far in the debate, but does anyone know what Destiny means by tanky? People tend use it in different ways. I think he just means someone who defends aspects of the Soviet union in general.

Race, as we understand it, is entirely an invention of capitalism. The consensus amongst biological anthropologists is that race isn’t even a real thing genetically. It’s not like the difference between Neanderthals and sapiens. There’s not set genetic differences for the different races. There is no ‘white gene’ it’s an amalgam of genes. Race is looking it from top down, deciding people are different based on physical and cultural differences, whereas when we look at it on a genetic level this isn’t true. We’re all humans. Of course racism still exists but there’s literally no science to support it. Tribalism is tied into our dna, but humans are self aware? We can grow out of our genetic behavioural constraints. I think human society is a monument to our ability to adapt and grow, not our deterministic origins. Race, as a concept is an invention. Racism as we understand it today is not entirely tied to class. It has mutated out of its origins as a class based invention to isolate the working class into sub groups. Doesn’t mean it’s origins lay in classism. Also the communist Alabama hypothetical is ridiculous. If current day, right wing racist Alabama was given a communist state, of course racial violence and discrimination would continue. The whole communist system would collapse as the system was not manifest and driven by this racist right wing population. The only way for communism and anarchism to work is for the people to actually manifest it themselves in an organised decentralised fashion. And that community, that chooses radical equality, support and freedom would be paradoxical to commit racial violence. If people hate black people they don’t just hate black people. It’s emblematic of a hateful and reactionary psychological profile. Those people wouldn’t choose communism. It comes down to an education issue: the people have to want and understand socialism for it to function correctly. If not you just have state capitalism which does lead to mass discrimination and violence. Fairly simple. Zero Books did a good job just got caught up in this obtuse hypothetical

I'm curious how Destiny defines "tankie".

Next time someone doesn't understand tribalism, drop the Ford versus Chevrolet driver rivalry as an example.

One thing that's always confused me is that it seems communists who believe we don't require a government seem to think that lack of material equality is the ONLY thing that causes conflict, but it seems like historically, and currently, that hasn't been true. I truly don't think people are inherently moral. We have let ourselves be divided over many things like race, religion, creed, ethnicity, tribe, culture. We've seen schisms over the smallest disagreements in similar ideologies. While I agree it would cause more equality and therefore reduce some suffering, not every crime is committed for material gain. There are crimes of hatred, passion, people with mental disorders, psychopathy. Surely a new revolutionary would come around and ask "why should we be completely materially equal?" and perhaps start a political or violent movement. Maybe in the future when it seems people are willing to let go of religious, racial, and ideological differences, then this would hold true. And this applies to all people because I think it's been made clear recently that there are people of every political ideology who embrace holding on to those differences in a negative light. Also the argument that although we evolved to be tribal because we aren't in tribes now, we somehow don't maintain those evolutionary traits? That's very recent by evolutionary standards as Douglas himself said when he said it was changed by capitalism. That's not how evolution works. Vestigial effects of evolution can last a very long time I imagine social and psychological evolutions are even more complicated. We also don't live in the wild where we have to run from predators anymore, yet we have fear drives and particularly have evolutionary reactions to predators. It takes far longer than a few hundred years for deep evolutionary traits to change. Certainly, tribalism has not just disappeared because we started living in cities.

Destiny is wrong about Roman slavery, there definitely where slave rights and class was the deciding factor.

Destiny, if you want a conversation on anarchism, get "Beau of The Fifth Column" on your show.

Class isn't the source for racial prejudice, but it did and still institutionalize racism, so much so that the concept of race as we understand race today was founded to distinguish who was PROPERTY and who wasn't.

I wish douglas early on elaborated on th3 differences between nazi germany and USSR. Nazis were a reactionary group that wanted to return to a better time, and even without the anyi-semetism, they wanted to return back to a time where there was a facist leader. While the russian revolution wasnt that kind of reactionary traditional facist state goal, but one rooted in the goal of the proletariat finally having power over their own lives (obviously it went no where near that goal and just went to ultra totalitarian stalinism), but this is all in terms of what douglas and destiny were talking about, sympathizing with the average people's drive towards those 2 different goals. Nazis => reactionary past Soviets => new revolutionary future

Destiny got lectured in this debate

You can take away distinction between just survival levels by just having a safety net. Now if you don't have a distinction between the extra ambitious then you devalue incentive

Bring in Ben Burgis and Wolff

the only thing worse than someone who is wrong is someone who takes a million words to say it slowly.

Yes, Romans had slaves, *BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY ON RACIAL LINES.* You had white slaves, brown slaves, and black slaves in Rome. The arbitrary concept of it being okay to subjugate one type of people based on skin color alone didn't arise until the American slave trade under capitalism.

Destiny should’ve pulled a Jesse lee Peterson just answer yes or no

I don't understand why communism is responsible for every bad thing a "communist" nation does, but capitalism is not responsible for every bad thing a capitalist nation does. Homosexuality is illegal in a lot of capitalist countries. I'm starting to think that this Destiny guy needs to work on his understanding of social systems.

if your definition of crypto-facist is someone who loves western culture, then sign me up. it is n ot bigoted to say that western culture, which encompasses all races,, is clearly the best qualitatively. the best justice, healthcare, living standards, equality, and so on down the list. it is better

the guy take on crime was stupid i could make the same take with poverty