Understanding Siege Socialism w⧸ Gabriel Rockhill 

Same!

Awesome 👍😎👍

Thanks for the kind words - Gabriel was an excellent guest! I recommend checking out other episodes of the podcast when you have the chance - which can be listened to wherever you can get podcasts (Apple, Spotify, Libsyn etc.) So far on the show I've covered countries like the DPRK, Laos, China, USSR (focusing on specific republics), Ghana (during its socialist period), Poland, Cuba and more! In some other episodes I speak with people who experienced Actually Existing Socialism in the 20th century first hand!

Yes, I very much wish it was longer! Fantastic discussion!

We've been discussing offering an online course on Marxism, likely team-taught by Gabriel and others. Would that be of interest?

@@criticaltheoryworkshop5299 Very much YES.

​@@criticaltheoryworkshop5299 That would be great!

If you are fishing for compliments, then *incert gushing about your brilliance*, if the question was genuine, then *incert big-eyed pleading look*.​@@criticaltheoryworkshop5299

most marxist in the western world never lived/experienced the devastating nature of marxism first handed so they study and make up theories in the mind never listening to those who actually came from there. cultural marxism which was established to use deception mainly in the west has aimed to win western citizens to the cause by whitewashing what happened in the former eastern bloc or china or south/central america exploiting the experiental ignorance of those in the west.

Yes but stalinism never existed according to soviet primary sources. Read Dr Furr's Stalin vs. Yezhov. Dugin has drawn the same conclusion in his book of the same name (in Russian). Alexander Dugin is definitely NOT a communist! lol!

candy flipping did it for me

did the same to me in 1979 bro. Its been hard living in a capitalist world. But here we are.

I know what you mean. Dialectics were further emphasized during my degree in Ecology; nature (and material existence, in general) proceed dialectically. Change is the only constant!

Stalin....the world renowned academic and philosopher. Lol

@@fruitingfungi According to anti-communist historian Geoffrey Roberts he had a prodigious intellect. Source "Stalin's Library". What a lazy comment!

It is a good introductory text. Stalin's style was terse, concise and lucid. More so if you know Russian.

@@fruitingfungi Grow up and learn to read!!

You mean trots!

@@phoenixartist1 Thanks for the tip! Trotsky sure is lionized in the US.

Operation Galatia and Paperclip would be strong suggestions. "Dulles’ involvement in Operation Paperclip was part of a larger conspiracy that bypassed both law and presidential directive to keep the program going until the mid-1950s"

I know that he references it in a couple of papers, but he doesn't give any footnotes or direct quotations

I have read David Talbot's The Devil's Chessboard but there are other sources.

Capitalist concessions to the working class would (and has) lead to an improved society, evidenced by the New Deal. However, those concessions can lead to complacency in the masses and undermines further progress. I don't have any real answers but I think we need a new constitution, an ammendment, or an ENFORCABLE international policy that ensures essential needs for all; where a proportion of all profits are distributed equitably. That way, social circumstances would continually improve the more that the economy grows. With the caveat that ecological stability is not unjustifiably compromised.

It's a question of transition. And no worker's state is a separate bubble. There is trade with other states. Distribution without money requires a stable state with stable relationships with other state.

@@casteretpollux so how would you make the transition then? What would be the necessary conditions to abolish money? 5 other states abolishing it with you? 10? 15?

Because money is needed for its exchange value and "price signaling" of supply and demand (that's Marx's idea, not Friedman's). Prices, on average, do follow the labor value of commodities. (Your question is about monetary policy, which is a technical, not ideological problem.) At the start of the transition to socialism -- after the means of production have been socialized -- all the capitalist modes and relations of production will still be in place, and people won't know any other way of life. But with the major contradiction of profit gone, capitalist relations and modes are a sufficient springboard for the transition to socialized relations and modes of production. The transition from capitalism will be guided through education, and the application and development of Marxist (socialist) theory and practice. The long-term goal will be to achieve a classless society that provides the material conditions needed for individual development to every person. It will be a new kind of civilization and building it will take generations, probably. Every society will have to do this in its own unique way, while staying true to the guiding principles of socialism. Some people might think it will be easy, but those people are "utopian socialists." Actually it is an ongoing revolutionary struggle, if only conceptually, and there may be dramatic pitfalls. It's a dialectical process. PS. According to Karl Marx, after some time living in classless society free from want or oppression, people will live ever more creatively according to their consciences and inclinations, because 1) they will have developed to that level of consciousness individually and as a society, and 2) the forces of production will be so advanced as to flexibly support everyone's individual needs appropriately. At this point, the power of the state, which exists mainly to protect the ruling class from other classes, will be resorted to less and less until it becomes irrelevant. The next and, according to Marx, ultimate state of human existence is communism, which will be a "one for all, and all for one" society typified by mutual and collective cooperation, and individual fulfillment. Technology will be at the level where people will be able to use whatever productive forces they deem appropriate. Marx's famous edict is: "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs." Some might build mega-structures in the solar system while others might live in a simple and hardy agrarian paradise. PPS. I'm not a communist myself, so, anyone here? please LMK where I effed up. Thank you.

Look at N.Korea, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia, dealing with sanctions. You can't just press a red button and get socialism. It's a complex struggle.

@@casteretpollux So dictatorships shouldn't be sanctioned?

@@asdv-gm4yy If they were to be sanctioned, the US would be sanctioning countless of its allies

​@@asdv-gm4yyTry sanctioning a US president and report back

Hey man is that Barbie? Anyway capitalism is necessary to develop the productive forces necessary for a successful transition to socialism. Didn't anyone ever tell you that? Like Karl Marx maybe?

You didn't understand. The identity of the ship is a construct. There is no atom of 'identity' in the ship. The identity is simply a label. Change one plank, one footprint, one atom and it's no longer exactly the same. Yet it's probably close enough. But does the ship have the same use? Same value? Probably, yes.

Dialectics isn't Marxian per se. But the eschewal of idealism is. The ship of Theseus illustrates a conceptual fallacy. The fallacy, which is idealistic, is that anything can physically exist which isn't subject to change. Change is observably a constant condition of physical (material) existence. This is a dialectical relationship, and also an empirical basis for the rejection of idealism, leaving us with materialism. I'm not used to dialectics myself, so please LMK if I effed up.

I exist, people know a name for me and call me this name. Yet practically all atoms in my body are constantly replaced. I therefor exist more in these processes of renewal rather than in the atoms that constitute my body at this very moment. I will stop existing when stuff goes wrong in these processes. The name given to me doesn’t define me, it just labels a process in nature which makes communication among humans possible. My name will exist for a while after my death, but it won’t be to my advantage in any way. That at least is how I understand the ship of Theseus.

It therefor refutes idealism which would emphasise the importance of my name and materialism which would emphasise the importance of my atoms.

@@antediluvianatheist5262 Well,actually,,if you replace rotten planks with new planks,the ship does not have the same value or use value. Thank you for your response. I do not know what a "construct" is. That is a theoretical term, and it needs to be explained. And even if "same ship" is a label, it is not "simply" a label. You can see that if you think about "same person". Your lover does not want to wake up in the morning with a different person in the bed. Professor Rockhill is supposed to be illustrating the superiority of Marxist (or Marx--Engels) dialectic to something Engels called "metaphysics". I am complaining that Professor Rockhill is being unfair to the broad tradition which discusses identity. The point of such examples is precisely that identity is not given to us by the sense. Insofar as Professor Rockhill (or Engels) is not an empiricist, he should embrace that point. In any case, talking about "construction" itself threatens to collapse into a form off Idealism. I understand that when people are dissatisfied with racism and sexism, it is nice to think: humans made this, so other humans (us) can change it. On the contrary, the problem is that these "constructions" have come to have a life o[f their own in existing institutions, and the process of change is difficult and complex.

You need to contact Walmart, GM, Chev, Amazon and the other transnationals immediately. They have had central planning for years and perhaps you can stop them before they run into the problems you explain.

@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 Learn to read! And also they are not planing their production but their developement, meaning the occupation of market shares.

@@penoge They plan every aspect of their business. And their economies are larger than many nations. You apparently are someone who will lie to "win". I guess that makes you american.

A nice thought stopping cliche to avoid actually adressing any of the points made

@@paulussturm6572 Longer interventions on any RU-vid/Facebook CTW threads have been deleted, so not risking them!

Suffice to say that Marx would turn in his grave

Please elaborate.

@@stephenharper5761 At your idiocy? Yes.

"Siege socialism means Stalin had to do all those purges lol." Literally, yes. Without those purges, the revolution would have failed. Look up how many real plots they caught.

capitalism is a crime against humanity. Capitalism will always demonize socialism because it is the Nemesis of capitalism. Believe what you will but the truth is there anyway.

Go read Losurdo and stop parroting Nazi and Western Cold War propaganda. And Khrushchev's lies, for which Gorbachev could not find any real evidence no matter how hard he tried. Trotsky turned into a counter-revolutionary working with allies within the USSR that had to be defeated.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false"

"I'm not buying your junk!" Luis Aldamiz boldly exclaimed, after a cursory listen of 3 minutes, for he knew well what he was up against. His reading circle of around 17 people, composed of trotskyists and anarchists, was on the cusp of immediate world revolution. They only needed to finally finish the 4 month long assembly in their polycule commune, on whose responsibility it really was to do the dishes, with anarchists arguing that doing dishes was a form of capitalist oppression, and trotskyists countering, that unless all dishes, in all households, everywhere in the world were done simultaneously, beginning the process of doing dishes would be meaningless. After this theoretical dispute would be solved, Luis Aldamiz knew, that it would be easy to convince the population of his country to simply abandon the idea of having a state, as people would simply organize what's best for them in a decentralized way, after having read his manifesto. Once people would show themselves capable of managing nuclear power plants and airports without any central authority in his own country, this way of thinking would quickly spread all around the world, and the wall street bankers and CIA directors would bow their heads in shame, as the capitalist world order practically crumbled overnight. Years of watching the first 3 minutes of RU-vid videos had taught Luis Aldamiz this much.

@@jonirischx8925 - I listened to about 80% of the video and I agree with lots of stuff of what is said but I can't buy the manipulative conclusion of "Capitalism is socialism", when it's not and they're exactly the opposite. They are also not considering the many dangers of developism, remember the Aral Sea.

@@LuisAldamiz Luis Aldamiz! Please do not compromise the glorius people's dishwashing assembly! Your listening comprehension, and capacity to summarize complex topics into simplistic orwellian paradoxes (in 100% good faith) is sorely needed there! The workers of the world need you, Luis Aldamiz, please resolve the 'dishwashing question' with your comrades at once!

@@jonirischx8925 It's not so complex: socialism = worker ownership of the means of production, capitalism = oligarch (few privileged ones) ownership of the means of production. As simple as that. Which category falls modern PR China in? Obviously and very strongly in the second one, all the rest is propaganda and manipulation of wording. Western (or also non-western) people is not as stupid as (in most cases) fall for that narrative. Socialism is demonstrated by collectivizing, internationalism is demonstrated by supporting popular revolutionary struggles such as that of West Sahara and not by selling drones to Morocco.

@@LuisAldamiz Then you'll be glad to know, that China has the most state-owned enterprises in the world, and state control and acquisition of enterprises is increasing at a rapid rate. Also, many small to medium sized state enterprises have a mechanism, in which the workers can collectively purchase the enterprise from the state, and run it themselves. I know this first-hand, as I know people who've worked in such enterprises. These businesses would then technically be classified as 'private', but they are worker run! The state is the representation of the people. What percentage of businesses do you require to be state-owned, to call it socialism, if I may ask?