Left Coast Media
Left Coast Media
Marx's Headroom 001 - Introduction and Critique of the Gotha Program
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Before we get into the episode proper, I want to give a huge shout out to our very first patient on supporter at Communists, dog on Twitter. If you guys want to help us thank them, then you know, hop on Twitter and give them praise for donating to keep us going and help us with our very first Patriana goal, which is to be able to pay for a transcript service that hopefully will allow all of our comrades were good, this of whether or not they can actually hear a speak to be able to join in the conversation and see what we have going on. So, uh, if you want to help us out with that, uh, you can go to patrion.com/left coast media and, uh, help us out in that way. This here is our very first of our two series that we are going to be introducing in this new year. This is the, uh, Marxist theory introduction. Um, not so much a course, but rather us learning about Marxism and, uh, reading some of the foundational texts and trying to come to an understanding of it together. And hopefully in doing so we can help other comrades figure out, you know, what Mark's is actually talking about and especially with his critique of capitalism form an understanding of not only the historical context in which Marx was writing, but actually to understand our current position here today in late stage capitalism. The other reading series we are going to be doing is focusing more on sort of like a general leftists and other texts of interests we are going to be introducing or starting with Rebecca Solnit's work that has gotten a lot of play recently hope in the dark, which we have both praise and criticism for and we're very excited to be able to talk about that and record that for you guys as well. So without much further ado, let's just go right into the episode.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1Don't you guys have a standard intro? I don't know how you, how you do your podcasts. I don't listen to it.
Speaker 2[inaudible]
Speaker 3welcome comrades. This is our inaugural Marxist study group episode. We don't actually have a name
Speaker 1yet, so I'm sure by the time I actually put this out we'll have a name. So
Speaker 4guys can vote on a name. Yeah, yeah. Or we could or we could crowd source a name. I mean what could go wrong? Most conflict cause it's like Marxist Study Group, Marxist Leninist Marxist study group. Maoist it's, you know, especially what the switch emerge holding up comrade Pingu about.
Speaker 1Yeah. Mark seemed McLennan face, I'm sure is what the name is actually going to be if we put it out to the Internet. All right. Did the subject at hand. Yeah, to the subject at hand because we are fantastic at podcasting on this show. I am Tiberius [inaudible]. I'm going to be your facilitator for the day. Uh, we have with us outer Siberia. We have El Pope, we have Rosa Liebherr ta. Uh, why don't you guys go ahead and introduce yourselves and give out your handles so that people can yell at you when you get there. Marxism wrong, I guess.
Speaker 4Uh, okay. Uh, I'm at Outer Siberia on Twitter. I've been on this podcast, I've been on this podcast before, uh, where I talked about Russia and it'd be our cast. But yeah, the sister podcast. I look, I don't know how media collectors work and apparently I'm here again for some reason. If as if the first time wasn't bad enough for all of you. Yeah. Hello. I'm Rosa add empress tricks on, uh, I was brought on here are dragged kicking and screaming from my bed. I would otherwise be asleep at this moment. Um, yeah, I hope this is my first time on any podcasts. So
Speaker 1yay. Smashing success
Speaker 5far names, pope, uh, cracked under score repair underscore on Twitter first podcast, longtime Kami, you know, rust belt hype.
Speaker 1Nice. [inaudible] y'all. All right. And today we're actually talking about the critique of the Gutha program, which I kind of like as, as a sort of introduction as to why the hell we're even like in bothering studying some old dead white dude. Because for me it's like doing is probably the most important piece of actually like being a socialist. Like, like getting out and actually doing things is what you're not going to, you're not going to change the world just by having a book club, which, sorry guys, this probably has kind of changed the world. We can try though. Sorry. Um, yeah. What's up? We can change some world. Yeah, I'm sorry. You're back. Yay World. Maybe not this world,
Speaker 5but yet definitely working projects and you know, putting theories to application is fundamentally the important thing we can do, especially in this late stage. Capitalism is many people are painfully aware. There's a lot of theorists online and you know, a lot of old theorists that we're still reading, which are very good, have a lot of good ideas. But what's the point of having ideas if we're not going to do something about it.
Speaker 1And, and you know, you can go ahead and do all the practice and, or, or actual actions that you want, but if you can't step back and apply some kind of framework or theory to what you're doing, then had he really know what you're doing is actually going to be effective towards your longterm goals. So you know, it's, it's really the, the, the unity of, of those two, you know, the actual practice in the actual theory into practice, which is important, which is why we bother studying these guys. That's why we put the x in practice. Yes. So we can actually a role into the book. Do you guys want to start with the, the introductory bits where people tell us what's going on because otherwise we might be lost in a 19th century Prussian socialist in fighting.
Speaker 6I mean we could, nothing stopping us.
Speaker 4Yeah. So in the background section here on the marxists.org version of critique, I forgot the program, it says it critical, they've got, the program is a critique of the draft program of the United Workers Party of Germany. And this document [inaudible] addresses the dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition from capitalism and communism, the two phases of communist society and production and distribution of the social goods proletarian internationalism and the party of the working class. It seems like a pretty good summary.
Speaker 6Pretty good summary. Yep. So in the 1870s after, this was after German unification under the Kingdom of Prussia. The like Mo for the most part, socialist parties were not exactly allowed, but they still collected and secret such as in the case of this party, but few decades later in the 1890s parties were these sort of parties were more or less allowed by the imperial government. And so this party right here finally sort of surfaced openly as the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the SPD. So in the 1890s angles, this was unfortunately, so it's already after a marks die angles, Africa angles basically took this letter that would be, you know, the critique, this critique that Mark's had written in the set in the 1870s and after editing and a bit published, it sort of to say to the newly open SPD, okay look, we had some arguments already with you guys. If you ever founders original founders, we want them, I want to make sure that you guys are staying on the right path. And besides he, everyone's dead. So the sheer power of Marxists, anger, anger, cannot be felt by anyone because they're all dead. So I want to edit this a little bit cause he's still too angry and then I'm going to release it too rude to groups who rude, red, mad, nude online. The classic Mark's way. That's why ankle says that you replaces those parts that are too extreme with dot, dot, dot. Gotta Love Them. Vulgar ellipses cause slips too mad.
Speaker 4He says, nevertheless, I have a made it a few sharp personal expression that judgements where these were material and replace them by dots. Marx himself would've done Sophia
Speaker 6manuscript today. I doubt that. Yeah.
Speaker 1March probably would have put
Speaker 6that starts with an edited to be even harsher.
Speaker 1I mean this, this is the guy who wrote more about sterner than sterner wrote.
Speaker 6Yeah, because he is the guy. Yeah. What? You're so desperate to own someone, your tweets outnumber their tweets. Me. Yes.
Speaker 4Yeah. And also it also is printed in the context of remaining censorship in Germany because he says for reasons are rising from the press law. Also a few sentences of indicated only by dots. So I guess he had to modify some pastures in order to allow it to be published.
Speaker 6Mccaffrey's peach. He would probably have done a lot of damage if this had gone on unedited.
Speaker 4All right, well that's sort of the background. So,
Speaker 1and part of the actual context of the why the text itself exists is uh, that, you know, part of the party, which is a socialist in name at least, but they sort of, they, they fall prey to those sort of like boosh law economics of the time. They, they're very sort of liberal in their thinking and not really actually trying to get a much, much deeper understanding of what it is that they are asking for and why it is that they are asking for it. There is this a passage that I have highlighted here, angles to August payable. Um, our party had so often held out a conciliatory hand to the Lasallians or I at least proffered cooperation only to be rebuffed so often. And so contemptuously by the hos and Clever's hostile mons and Tacos as to lead any child to the conclusion that should these gentlemen now come and themselves proffer, they must be in a hell of a dilemma, you know? And that w which is, which is a great, which is a great line because you know, this is basically like, all right, we have been sort of like add each other's political throws for awhile. You know, why is it that when they need help and they have never given it that that we are sort of like a weakening our own platform in our own position to reconcile with them. Because obviously if they're not coming to us for help now, that means that they themselves are weak. And why should we attach ourselves to such a weak group when they have never shown that they actually want to work with us when there are strong. So that's, that's the other part of this. Yeah. Will that be relatable to like the undying and need for bipartisanship in a lot of liberal politics? Oh, I think absolutely. Oh yeah. A fair amount. Yeah. I definitely remember to read this letter when I was reading this and definitely didn't skip this letter. I mean, I don't think it's, um, I don't think it's terribly necessary to do so, but I, I did, I did find it interesting. So if we don't have anything left to say on the actual context and historical place of this, we can actually just go into the, uh, critique itself. Sounds good. Sounds good to me. Um, if I can find it in my, there it is. Okay. Part one. So, uh, basically we like the, the way that Marx wrote his critique is he, he pulls out a piece of the, the actual golf, our program. The act. Yeah. The Gotham program, which is a, you know, basically the, the party manifesto or like their general form document. Yeah. Uh, and so he pulls it out and says, this is bullshit and here's why. And so the first one is that Labor is the source of all wealth and culture. And since useful labor as possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labor belonged undiminished with equal rights to all members of society, which even if you aren't like even if you don't have like a strong grounding in Marxism, that sounds like an utterly incomprehensible sentence anyway. Yeah, yeah. I it really like I've read worse but a lot worse. But it's like I've written a lot worse. So labor is the source of wealth and all culture gets right. People you,
Speaker 4you hammering your face into a wall because your boss is a dick is a source of culture. Is this what
Speaker 1trow Marxism is? Cultural was salient. Newsom
Speaker 4start with that first part, right? He starts with Labor and source of all wealth and I'll culture and I think what the, the critique that he makes here is that like it's not sort of an objective condition that that is true, but that PR under particular conditions of capitalism, that's when labor creates a surplus value. But it's not true that like just throughout all possible systems of production that Labor would be the source of all wealth because he talks about how nature is just as important and basically that the, this idea that Labor source of all wealth objectively is just taking what Stewart or capitalism and saying that it's always true. Right?
Speaker 1Yeah. As he, as he says, but a socialist program can not allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that loan give them meaning it's, yeah, it's, it's exactly that. It's the argument of, uh, it being natural doesn't quite fit because it is, it is the only, sort of like a natural insofar as that as a response in the material conditions under bourgeois society.
Speaker 4Right. So like in, in, in capitalism because of how labor power is exchanged, then labor greets surplus value. But that's just, that's just the description of capitalism out of the description of like inherent society. Yeah.
Speaker 5Cause you know, capitalism has an always existed or you know, hopefully we'll, it always exist in the future. But I think it's definitely a major oversight on part of the, uh, as PD, you know, with that definition of labor being the sole source of wealth and culture, like you said, you know, with, uh, the whole production value being extracted, there's no real point to really just limit the curation of wealth just to people who are laboring for, for it. They're just more to it. And then culture like, yeah, they're just, you know, working class culture, lurking class personality. But that's, you know, not the end all be all of everything that it means to have a cultural identity attached to yourself.
Speaker 4Does that mean who's Wasi have culture? It's a horrible culture.
Speaker 5Yeah. Is this for Schwab culture? Oh look, is this culture are commodities culture?
Speaker 4Is Tom Radio work or no? Sorry, what Brady?
Speaker 5A culture.
Speaker 6Tom Brady is lumpenproletariat. Yeah.
Speaker 4Think that's, that's sort of the examination of this part here. And he'll say that like it's exactly the boardwalk idea of how it works because here's the board will have very good grounds for falsely subscribes, ascribing supernatural creative power to labor since precisely from the fact that Labor depends on nature. It falls to the man who possesses no other property then his lira power must in all conditions, society and culture be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labor. So yeah, I mean I think that's the sort of the same reason that that this is just how it works under capitalism, but not,
Speaker 6yeah, an objective truth. Yeah.
Speaker 5A true owed to Marx's philosophical ideals in not just economics. Speaking of one could just as well have said that only in society can useless and even socially harmful labor become a branch of gainful occupation that only in society can one live by being idle, et Cetera, et cetera. And short one could just as well have copied the whole of her. So right. Which I think is a great burn.
Speaker 4He's talking about the second part where it says useful labor as possible only inside and through society, which says create, which he points out greets the sort of incomprehensible statement because you say that Labor is source of all wealth and culture, but you can't have the Labor without society. But also Libra must create it.
Speaker 6No, it makes perfect sense span. Like if you just, if you just don't think about it, if you think about it, it works. I mean if you've got the liberal brain worms then it all makes perfect sense. And what is useful labor? Surely only Labor which produces the intended useful results. A savage and man was a savage after he had ceased to be an ape. Wow. Who kills an animal? The stone who collects fruits, et Cetera, performs useful labor. So society not, yeah,
Speaker 4he's just examining this sort of idea of like sort of unproblematic size concepts here. Like useful lever.
Speaker 5Yeah. And I think it extrapolates a little more on like how broad the term labor actually can be applied in many different terms because it's not just, you know, working at a factory, you know, like, you know, sweatshop making Nike's or whatever. It's, you know, domestic labor, emotional labor, you know, anything that you contribute to society or your own little group function or your workplace, whatever.
Speaker 6Yeah. Yup. So then he goes onto the third part. Useful labor is only as possible only in society and through society. The proceeds of labor belonging undiminished have equal right to all members of society and with a very classic sarcasm. Ah, fine conclusion. He's so mad, right? Because you know, like, like a lot of,
Speaker 1I mean basically like everything that has been, this is literally just like three sentences and, and already there's just so much in here. It's like, well, what do you actually mean by that? Like sit down and it's like give that a good hard thing because I don't think you know what you're talking about.
Speaker 6Yeah, yeah. Especially like right down below. Like he, like he meant it was like, in fact this proposition has at times been made used by the champions of the state of society prevailing at anytime. So like cause it is basically what they have said and used against, you know, the lower class against the workers. Like you are only useful within our rules. You're only useful as a member of the society that we made. Everything belong. Everything you make belongs even to us who do absolutely nothing but tell you what to do. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4I think it's sort of departs from the Department of materials analysis cause instead of puts society first before production, so like first their society and then usefully we're responsible only within it within the context of some existing society when in fact whatever existing state of society, like you said, the state aside, if we're really gonna do any given time in fact derives from that. That's actual condition of production. So it sort of has it exactly backwards. Yeah.
Speaker 1Once sees such hollow phrases are the foundations of society, etc. When sees such hollow phrases can be twisted and turned as desired. Again speaking to, speaking to how empty it is and it could mean literally anything that you want it to mean. If you just sort of tack on the right modifiers to it in and of itself holds no like intellectual value.
Speaker 4Yeah. Can you take society and it's sort of again unproblematic way where it's just like, well society, it's there, but in fact it doesn't talk about how society is created and how it's maintained, which again, he says the government is a social organ for the maintenance of the social order. So he's talking about how society is created a maintained whereas the, the platform is just using society and sort of undefined way [inaudible].
Speaker 6In fact, however, the whole paragraph bungled and style and content is only there in order to inscribe the Lasallian catch one of the undiminished proceeds of labor as a slogan at the top of the party banner, I shall return later to the proceeds of labor equal rights since the same thing recurs in a somewhat different form further on.
Speaker 4Yeah. The, the part about undiminished proceeds with flavor is definitely interesting.
Speaker 6It does, yeah. And owns it. Just completely owns it. All right. Now we're actually on the second sentence.
Speaker 7Yeah. I like how he refers to each sentence as a paragraph. Also just to like
Speaker 6could justify the length of his critique
Speaker 7cause like one sentence, but it definitely says the first part of the paragraph. The second part of the paragraph. Even though it's one set is I can just, I can just imagine like mark sitting down with, with whatever he's reading in, in his left hand and like just a fucking ream of paper. Like ad is right here.
Speaker 6Constantly writing and reading about a shit posts we missed. Yeah.
Speaker 4So the, the second sentence though does seem this was like, so throughout this, that kind of goes down to something that's more, uh, specific to the context he's writing in. So the second part talks about how the sentence says in present day society, the instruments of labor or the monopoly of the capitalist class, the resulting dependence of the working class as a cause of misery and servitude in all forms. So his critique here is that
Speaker 6mmm,
Speaker 4it ignores the landowners, which in this case would be more like the sort of feudal land owners of the time or the capitalists would actually own the land on which they're like factory operators or something like that. So, and he's critiquing lasalle here. He says the correction was introduced because it'll Saul for reasons now generally known, which is like the most passive aggressive.
Speaker 6Oh yeah. Okay. Before you basically find an endless, all was very friendly with the Prussian prime minister. Later German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Like they would oftentimes meet up and talk about things and it was in these moments that I think w which we'll come to later on, so I won't spoil them, but there's this, this fact plays apart later on.
Speaker 4Yeah. So he says for reasons now generally known attack only the capitalist class and not the landowners. So his critique is that it's focusing only on the capitalist and not the sort of futile aristocracy that existed at the time is how I read this at least. So I mean it has less relevance to sort of politics today.
Speaker 6Yeah. Like today, the sentence, we're not necessarily be entirely wrong, at least in the Western world where it is absolutely true that the capitalist classes more or less one.
Speaker 7Yeah. And you know, the, the capitalist class, especially when you're talking about, you know, the big industrialists and, and the like, they do own their own land. They owned the land that they're on. It's the rest of us, however, who still are stuck with this, you know, futile property arrangement where someone else owns the land that we have to live on. And so we must pay rents them.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah. I mean, come on, think about it. People, we literally call them landlords. Like how do you think that arrangement came about?
Speaker 6Like we literally preserve this one piece of feudalism and just modified it to fit capitalism.
Speaker 4Yeah. You won't believe this one weird trick mounted
Speaker 1landlords. Oh yeah. Yeah. So that's um, that's mostly about the, uh, much more about the actual historical context of its time. So I think we can probably move on to part three or section three here, which is quote, the emancipation of labor demands, that promotion of the instruments of labor to the common property of society and the cooperative regulation of the total labor with a fair distribution of the proceeds of labor.
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 6As we can see that sentence alone scent marks into just this long, long, long rant at it.
Speaker 4Yeah. I mean I immediately, when I just read it when I just saw a fair distribution. Yeah. That's one of the things that immediately took me off. I'm like this, what does that mean?
Speaker 6Yeah. Yeah. Does any of this mean like it like the very moment you read it's like, okay, under whose rules are we describing? Fair.
Speaker 4Yeah. And especially since we're talking about distribution. Yeah. And with Marcus is going to bring up distribution versus production and the focus on distribution is a major issue here. Yeah.
Speaker 1And whom some among us has not heard that a business owner should not have to pay more to create a living wage for their employees because it's unfair to the business owner. Like this concept of fairness, it absolutely can go in whatever way you want it to go.
Speaker 5Hey, they worked hard for that small loan of $1 million.
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 5So, and then you know that guy who started his own website with a small loan of like $300,000 from his in laws, you know?
Speaker 6Yeah. Yeah. That guy, we're bootstraps, we call those, we call those bootstraps. They pulled themselves up by their $5,000 bootstraps and they went at it. Yup. Yup.
Speaker 4So he does, this is exactly, that'd be Dq. Makes Sense. What is a fair distribution? Do not the bourgeois assert that the present day distribution is fair. And is it not? In fact the only fair distribution on the base of the present day mode of production or economic relations regulated by legal conceptions or do not on the contrary, legal relations arise out of economic ones. So again, he's saying that you're sort of putting it backwards. Say that we're going to define it as fair and that's going to change it rather than changing it
Speaker 6to be actually fair to the worker.
Speaker 4Right, right. So he goes on to talk about this phrase, the proceeds of labor, and he connects it back to the, uh, he's, he's going back to what he said he would come back to, he said, the process of labor, the undiminished Rosie's of labor part in the previous sentence or a couple sentences ago by now, I don't know. Yeah. It takes a long time to go to the sentences when you're marks. He is mad online. So, yeah, he's saying that there's all these unproblematic statements in terms of like, so the proceeds of labor undiminished to, to whom? So are we talking about only people who work? Are we talking to people who don't work? So it's like these sort of thing. The questions are sort of being left out by just saying to all members of society and he talks about all the things that are necessarily going to diminish your proceeds of labor. Um, and again, like if you're talking about people who, who, who don't work, then those people are also like it. That has to be addressed and not just like ignored in terms of that because not everybody's, you know, capable, healthy. Yeah. I mean I think, I think in this case marks is just saying that like you have to talk about it at least you can't just sort of ignore that question. Yeah. It, if you make a statement, it has to address for every scenario for the most part and not just one in particular.
Speaker 1And even with literally everybody working and nobody not working, you still have to account for the diminishment in terms of the necessary surplus required to maintain tools to purchase new tools to put into a general insurance fund in case something bad happens. You know, all of these other things to research and development into new productivity. Yeah, exactly. There is a, the reason why we have, why we have the kind of production that we do is because those, um, that generation of surplus above and beyond what we need as workers to subsist and, and to reproduce ourselves then gets turned around and used at least theoretically for the betterment of society and in a socialist society, you would still need to have that generation of surplus value that doesn't directly go to the, the worker in terms of, um, remunerative. Uh, right. Right.
Speaker 4But that's the problem because I think that's, that's exactly what he's talking about. He's like all these things are goods, but they don't, like if you're talking about a level of distribution to individuals, then you miss these sort of ideas. Right. And you miss how that is still a social good, uh, rather than a good, that would be just divided strictly among individuals. Like we don't just take the social product and just separate it equally among each individual, but we do things together rather. And that's the, and the, and the problem with which he then goes to is the problem distribution. Cause like when you're talking about it this way, it's on a very individual level and not on what we're actually producing collectively, which is where Mark's wants to focus to be.
Speaker 5It's hard to put micro actions into macro applications and I think that's the discrepancy he's really trying to address. And you can't try and solve all issues by solving one issue directly and solving one issue, half acidly. Right. And then
Speaker 4that's what he goes into about like the sort of how it's inheriting these sort of constant distribution. It's like, oh, we're going to have the same production, we're just going to distribute it differently because he says, but within the cooperative society, based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products just as little as the labor deployed on the, on. The products appear here as the value of these products as a material quality possessed by them. Since now in contrast to capital society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion, but directly as a component part of total labor. So again, the idea of distributing things based on the proceeds of labor, which was already ambiguous and he says objectionable today and Kinda was ambiguity. This loses all meaning. So because when we're talking about a cooperative society, then we can't think about it and the labor and these kinds of individual units, which then
Speaker 1causes him to go on this little rabbit hole about labor vouchers.
Speaker 5My faith, my favorite part of the whole thing, the Labor veggies,
Speaker 1which is funny because he's also the guy who would go around to all the Utopian Socialists and say, why are you thinking about the, the minutia about how society is going to run in the future. Uh, you know, when we get to the future we will get to it through the current society and whatever comes next is always necessarily birthed of whatever exists now.
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 1But he does do this, which I think is kind of interesting because he's saying, all right, so you know, in, in a future cooperative society, one that is built not upon private property, but upon social property, how do we actually
Speaker 4distribute consumables and goods and surfaces? Right. Which for him is still a secondary question. How are we produced him?
Speaker 5Yeah, I definitely think that in relation to what we were talking about, not in the critique so much is um, the difference between being like an idealist and being a daydreamer is viewing like future goals. Like, Oh yeah, it'd be great to, you know, do this and that. Like, well, how are we going to get there? Yeah. Instead, what can we do now to eventually lead to whatever we're dreaming about in are, you know, communist utopia.
Speaker 1Yeah. Although I think Mark's would definitely have his hackles up if he heard himself being referred to as an idealist. Yes.
Speaker 7Yeah. Different, different meetings in different contexts. But I just thought that was funny. I had to point that out.
Speaker 4Is this specifically describing says a communist Seidi not as developed on its own foundations, but on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society. And he says that the whole point is that, that the goes back to that sort of what we discussed in the first critique quarter. It was like labor produce all value. He's like, yeah. So in the lower stage where we just emerged out of capitalist side, you were still inheriting that. So we still have this idea that labor is what determines the value of something we distributed differently based on these labor vouchers or whatever. But we're still inheriting that idea and we're preserving the same principle. So we're not preserving commodity exchange. What we're serving the same principle that regulates it. Yeah. Yeah. Trust the process and then, and then, then we get to this equal right thing, right. Then we get to equal, right. And Marcus, his critique of this
Speaker 7hence equal right here is still in principle bourgeois, right? Although principle and practice are no longer at logger heads while the exchange of equivalents and commodity exchange exists only on average and not on the individual case.
Speaker 4Right. But the point is that we're still focusing on the sort of individual labor, which is how he sees [inaudible]. Paul writes a structured like, which is, so the board of all rights kind of operating the principle of the individual and how the, what the is equitable to the individual in a, in the abstract. Whereas, um, Marx is talking about is again, he stayed in that we don't have individual labor in that sense anymore. We have everyone, it's part of the total labor. We're not counting each segment of it. And then that, and that's why he's problematizing it with people who don't work cause he's like this is the total labor. If you're, if you start dividing into the individual segments, you went into the same problems of like, oh what are people who don't work? What about all this stuff we need to do that isn't going to be directly divided among the individuals who made up the workforce. But still also recognizing that there are people who are better at things than other people or people who are willing to work more and saying well what do we do about that as well? Right. But that, that, that would be the problem because if you're talking about equal, right, then you, then you run into those problems whereas you're talking about total labor then that, that sort of problem in quotes, uh, isn't like sort of withers away. The problem is essentially averages itself out. Right. Cause cause if you're regarding cause in order to do sort of individual sort of worthwhile equal, right, then you have to regard people and only one perspective like you said it, he says I'm a right by its very nature consists only in the application of an equal standard but unequal individuals are measurable only by an equal standard. And so far as they are brought under equal point of view are taken from one definite side only for instance, or regarded only as workers and nothing more than seen in them. Everything else being ignored. And he talks about how like oh so you're going to, so again, he's still problematizing this of proceeds delivery saying further one worker is married and other is not, one has more children than another and so on and so forth.
Speaker 5We can't apply things directly for one person and think it'll play the same way for a thousand people in a completely different geopolitical, you know, area or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 4yeah. He's saying we can, but only if we look at them and like this very one narrow side. Yeah. And he's saying that's exactly what's happening in this sort of platform. Yeah. It says, and then he goes for the full skeevy critique. I have dealt more at length with the undiminished proceeds of labor on the one hand will equal right and fair division on the other in order to show what a crime it is to attempt on the one hand to force on our party again is dogmas. Ideas within a certain period had some meaning but have now become obsolete. Verbal rubbish. Well again, perverting on the other, they're realistic outlook, which it costs so much effort to instill under the party which was now taken root in it by means of ideological nonsense about right and other trash. So common among the Democrats and French Socialists. God just love
Speaker 6still correctly. Actually it's extremely correct. Even said, hey, French socialists shakes fist, Democrats, Democrats, fucking French.
Speaker 4It's still, it turns out I was still, nobody likes the French. That is still true.
Speaker 6The one true constant in life. This is liking the French
Speaker 4and he says it was in general a mistake to make a fuss about so called distribution and put the principal stress on it and need distribution of whatever the means of consumption is only a consequences of the distribution or the conditions of production. So he's like, we need a focus if you, you need to get production is the place where you need to focus your efforts. So he's saying that like the cap, the capitalist mode of distribution emerges from the capitalist mode of production. It's like it has to happen. Like if you have capitalism's your motor production, the only possible distribution is what you have, which is exactly the sort of, uh, sort of critique of social democracy. Right.
Speaker 1And you, like he says, vulgar socialism and from an intern, a section of the Democrats has taken over from the bourgeois economists, the consideration and treatment of the distribution as independent other than mode of production. And hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on the distribution after the rear relation has long been made clear. Why retrogress again, which you know, is, is still a very prominent thing because you know, when, when most people who, even some people who are socialists, when, when, when most people in America think about socialism, they think about like taxation and spending. They, they separate the idea of the distribution from the idea of production. So that player in their mind, the only difference between socialism, capitalism is that in socialism we just give people more stuff when that's not actually the case. I rode socialism is the CIA socialist or bail out. So my God, the young fucking Chink Weger from the young social or the young Turks, uh, called cops a socialist a institution is the demo. I mean, only if the storm troopers out in the means of production, right. They own the means of destroying all their on. So moving on to part four then, or section for the emancipation of labor must be the work of the working class relative to which all other classes are on one reactionary mass, which I think goes back to what you're saying about Lasell being, uh, sort of like in bed with the, the prime minister and
Speaker 4yeah. With the, with the sort of old aristocracy, right? Yeah. The boards was that you could form a revolutionary class at the time of when he's writing it obviously.
Speaker 1Yeah. It's, it's, it's part of the historical context and really not that relevant now since they're basically doesn't exist anywhere that's relevant to us. Um, and a futile aristocracy of note. Um, Yep. Okay. So we have sentence five. Yup. The working class strives for, it's emancipation first of all, within the framework of the present day, national state conscious that the necessary results of its effort, which are common to the workers of all civilized countries will be the international brotherhood of peoples, which is basically let's all get behind our nation's because that's an internationalist platform, which just blew my goddamn mind when I read it. Right.
Speaker 4So like to work within the framework of the present day. National State is interesting cause uh, he says right there like the 40 mark or the present day, national state for instance, the German Empire is itself in its turn economically within the framework of the world market politically within the framework of the system of states. So like if we're working within the framework of the, of the nation state, then what are we, what is the revolutionary he asked me to here are we really trying to dismantle the state if we're working within the frameworks of the state to keep the frameworks of the state
Speaker 1right. I think it goes even beyond that because the, the framework of the state is, is bourgeois framework. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's the liberal capitalist framework. And so if, if we are sort of like working within the framework of the state as it presently exists, we are working within the framework of blue and capitalist economics, which if that's what we're working under then are we actually socialists?
Speaker 4Yeah. All right. And the whole talks about the phrase the International Brotherhood of people's is just
Speaker 6complete blue swan nonsense. A phrase borrowed from the Bu's while League of pre peace and freedom, which is intended to pass as equivalent to the international brotherhood of working classes and the joint struggling is the ruling class in their government, not a word, therefore about the international functions of a German working class and is thus it is a challenge to its own bourgeoisie, which is already linked up in brother against it with the bourgeoisie of other countries and have Bismark's international policy of conspiracy.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 4And that that's sort of his point that like the Porch wa the bourgeoisie or going international and we're going to work within the framework of the national state. That's just a recipe for failure.
Speaker 1Yeah, he says that. I like it.
Speaker 4The next paragraph is, is one of the personal favorites from the, in fact the international as the program stands even infinitely below that of the free trade party. The ladder also asserts that results of its efforts will be the international brotherhood of peoples, but it also does something to make trade her national and by no means content's itself with the consciousness that all people are carrying on trade at Hoe,
Speaker 1which God damn spitting that fire getting owned by being compared to free traders. Yeah, seriously.
Speaker 4Yeah. It's like, oh it's okay,
Speaker 5we'll do it exactly like in a nationalist way, but we'll think about other nations. Yeah, well we'll change our profile picture filters, filter to solidarity with other countries weren't in classes. Would it be fair to like compare this with like a more modern type of issue where we're thinking about like, you know, all the regime changes in the global south that had been at the behest of, you know, the United States government and you know, United Kingdom, so on and so forth. I'm saying like they're thinking internationally, like trying to keep their interest together like with unsettling the Middle East, the US, the UK and Germany and other countries like, well we have invested interests. Let's work together to get mutual goals. How would we be able to work within the frameworks of our current state if the state itself and the international community are working against us?
Speaker 1Right. Yeah. I think if you look at, for example, Bernie Sanders Platform, he had, I mean obviously he is, uh, uh, essentially social democrat. Um, Eh, so he had a platform of basically providing sort of safety net stuff. Yeah. Safetiness a social welfare or these kinds of things. Um, but that really only applied to people within this nation. Like he, he essentially would have, um, absolutely have upheld the American Empire International. Yeah. Yeah. Which is ultimately sort of like undermining our own, um, you know, struggle against imperialism as it turns inward here. And that's not to talk about like all of the other issues of, you know, quashing um, like social media
Speaker 5that's democratic and look. Yeah, exactly. Ignoring genocide, all that interesting phenomena that the US government profits and abides by.
Speaker 4All right. So his point is that you can't just say, oh, it's the international brotherhood of people's is pretty cool. And then just say that you're going to work within the framework of the present day. Nation states.
Speaker 1Yes. Solidarity is not just words. Yeah. Yup. All right, well we can go to section two. Yeah, and it's good to part two.
Speaker 4All the others, all the other parts after one are significantly shorter, so
Speaker 5god, I think Mark's just got like a hand cramp in two three and then you know got the Ben gay out
Speaker 7for part four stops. No, bring the sentences. He's just like, oh, whatever.
Speaker 5Yeah. I just give up. Fuck it. Exactly.
Speaker 7Starting from these basic principles, the German Workers Party strives by all legal means for the Free State and socialist society that abolition of the wage system together with the iron law of wages and exploitation in every form. The elimination of all social and political inequality, which wow. There is a lot to, there's a lot to unpack in that.
Speaker 5There's a lot going on here. Yeah, it's, this is a lot you guys. I guess we could just break it down to like what the basic principles are that are being discussed and his relation to what the Hell is Lasalle doing with the iron law of wages.
Speaker 4This is the main focus of his criticism here. He does go back to the Free State Park later. Yeah. But in this section he's mostly talking about the iron law of wages and how much he hates it.
Speaker 1If you read a value, price and profit that that text is
Speaker 7fuck you iron law of wages.
Speaker 4Yeah. Cause this is all about, this is drawing from [inaudible] in theory of population, which is another guy that Mark's really hates. Yup. If you read capital, uh, all the footnotes are talking about how uh, that a mouth is sucked. Yes. I mean he really did. So what does the iron law of wages, somebody want to give a short explanation of what [inaudible] is. Iron Law of wages.
Speaker 1Yeah. So in,
Speaker 7in sort of like layman's terms, the iron law
Speaker 1just basically states that there is a fixed amount of production and a, a fixed amount of currency and therefore there is a fixed amount of the total of wages in society. So that if you would ask for your wages to be increased, that means that somebody somewhere else, uh, is going to have to take a hit in order for that to actually happen. And there's this kind of weird, like it's, it doesn't exactly make a whole lot of sense. Um, uh, unless you have all of these prior assumptions that really don't bear out in reality. So we can actually probably just go into Mark's, um, sort of, uh, uh, backhanding the iron law of wages here,
Speaker 4right? So he does, he argues that it's just cause he says that basically all it is, is developed. There's grand theory population, there's too many people and that's, that's too many workers. And that's why we just go down and he says that in that case, how are you good at bullshit if that's, if that's true. If you believe it's like an inherent part of population, then how are you going to abolish it? That's his first critique. But he says all this is not the main thing. I like that. And he just like, wait, hold on though. There's more
Speaker 1but wait
Speaker 4more. Oh wait, there's more Billy Mays here with Marxism and after this understands, he says that he says to some return to Lasalle's dogma, although they must've known that lasal did not know what wage or higher wages a commodity. So, oh man. So yeah, he says that basically the problem is that the, the wages, wages are a, not a direct value of labor but rather ugly. We're power and that's what surplus value comes from. Um, it's sort of a academic distinction a lot of ways, but it's important in Mark's versus like, um, so like the sort of innovation of the, of adding labor power versus Labor is what allows marks to derive were surplus value comes from because someone like Ricardo had the labor theory of value, but Ricardo couldn't really explain why there's profit in that case. But the CV of Libor power explains it because what you're buying is the ability to work. That is so like that's what he says, the wage workers permission to work for his own subsistence to live only in so far as he works for a certain time gratis for the capitalist. So the, what the capitalist is buying is the ability of the worker to work, not the actual things deliver the worker creates, which is where profit comes from. Um, and that's, and because of that he says that's why wages, that's where this sort of system of wage labor, that's sort of the core of it that you're working, you're only getting paid how much you need to survive to be able to work that much. You're not getting paid how much you create. And that's why he says, well, Saul did not know what we just were. And then he, he has more owns, he says it is as if among slaves who have at last got behind the secret of slavery and broken out in rebellion, a slave still enthralled, obsolete notions. Where does crime on the program of the rebellion? Slavery must be abolished because the feeding of slaves and the system of slavery can not exceed a certain low maximum.
Speaker 5Can't have too many slaves or you'll have to feed them all to bed. He slaves.
Speaker 4Jesus, that's this chapter where he just owns us all about his iron law of wages and how it's bad
Speaker 5after saying that, it really wasn't his idea. You just pray up, stole this one, gave you just a little bitch. Go Fuck Yourself. Making the politics better. You just making
Speaker 4worse. You stole this and it's not even good. All right, we can, I think we're gonna move onto the next section though, right? Part three, part three, the shortest,
Speaker 7the Germans worker party in order to pave the wave to the solution of the social question demands the establishment of producers, cooperative societies with state aid under democratic control of the toiling people, the producers cooperative societies are to be called into being for industry and agriculture on such a scale that the Socialist Organization of the total Labor will arise from them. This is, this is a wild one lot going on. Yeah. Yeah. And I like this because he says that instead of a rising from the revolutionary process of transformation of society, the quote to Socialist Organization of the total labor unquote arises from the state aid, uh, that the state gives the producers cooperatives and in which the state, not the workers calls into being. It is worthy of Lasalle's imagination that with the state loans, one can build a new society just as a new way airway fair
Speaker 5bliss will sell us the rope that they'll hang with. So it's it really too much to ask for a small loan of a couple of small mall. Hey Mister catlyst, I don't like how things are going. Can I have some money so we don't have to do it? Yeah. So more than like $50 million for a bit of communism, come on with the German Workers Party, we'll crowd fund go fund me is truly revolutionary. Even in 1875.
Speaker 7I love that from the remanence of a sense of shame, state aid has been put under the democratic control of the toiling people from the remnants of a sense of shame.
Speaker 5That's still pretty relevant sentence to be completely honest is
Speaker 6unfortunately, the next sentence though, is not particularly relevant in the first place. The majority of the toiling people in Germany consists of peasants, not proletarians nowadays. That's not particularly all that relevant because you know, like we mostly live at least again in the West in a very urbanized world.
Speaker 4Yeah. I think the question of, um, hesitance isn't necessarily also rural versus urban because like a peasant compared to an agricultural worker, a peasant has a different sort of relation, right? Cause like a peasant, how it sort of worked under feudalism was that a president had like a plot of land that the Lord allowed them to use to sustain themselves. But in order to be able to use it, they had to work for the Lord on their land. So, but there is some sort of, it's sort of a different motivation than an agricultural worker now, which is mostly how it works nowadays, is that there's just like a big corporation that owns all the land and the people just work on it just like you would work in any factory or whatever.
Speaker 5Yeah. Yeah, I had this, uh, we started a reading group in my DSA chapter and the idea of what a prowler Terry news came up because we were just going over basic definitions and all that fun stuff. And so most people were very confused on why not everyone at the time would be considered a proletarian. And I think that this definitely is still like a distinction a lot of people may not understand depending on their affluency within Marxism.
Speaker 4Yeah, yeah. Oh, probably just unfamiliarity with like feudalism and how it operated. It's just, it's sort of a different system then. It's not sort of urban versus rural, but it's more of a question. I was just like how the rural economy was organized at the time, but even Marcus was talking about how like it was being, like capitalism was going into the rural area is also,
Speaker 5yeah. And just because you're a farmhand doesn't mean you're a peasant.
Speaker 4Yeah. Present has a very specific relation,
Speaker 1but yeah. Um, Mark's is, uh, giving us some warnings here. Don't let the state necessarily have control over the things that we need to reproduce ourselves and um, be able to build a better world. Right? Yeah. That's the last sentence of the section. Yeah, we can just probably just, um, read that part here. As far as the present cooperative societies are concerned, they are a value only in so far as they are independent creations of workers in that produce Shay's either of the governments or of the bourgeois. Yup. That seems pretty clear. Yeah. I mean that's basically dual power right there. Yeah. And here we come for the last section and this is the, is a
Speaker 6pretty important part I would say. I now come to the democratic section, the freebases of the state. First of all, according to number two, the German Workers Party strives for the Free State. Freestate what is this? What is this
Speaker 4the state for you to, uh, to legitimize your a toilet of labor freedom consists in converting the state from an Oregon superimposed upon society into one completely subordinated to it. And today, two forms of state are merely you are more free or less free to the extent that they restrict the freedom of the state. So the way he's talking about here, what it means as a subordinate to society. Again, he's not using society and a sort of way that he originally criticized, which is to say just uncritically use it to refer to everyone, but he's talking about society as it exists, which just say class society. So it's subordinate to the particular class structure. It's subordinate to the bourgeoisie effectively because that's, that's the dominant force in the class society that exists. Um, and so the state, the Free State is sort of allows, the board was either control it rather than the old willy classes essentially. So prevents the state from being this separate entity from the bourgeoisie, but rather just puts a stay under the bourgeoisie. He's control. Uh, and that's what he, that's what he, that's he says that's what the Free State is. It's just means that the porch was, he can control it rather than it having its own interests.
Speaker 6Okay. So after he owns let's the Lasallians of the German Workers Party, the future SPD here, he would, he goes on to who asked the question, what transformation will the state undergo in Communist society? In other words, what's social functions will remain in existence that are analogous to present state functions. This question can only answer scientifically. He goes on to state between capitalist and communist society. There are lies to transfer the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other corresponding to this is also the political trends transition period in which the state can be nothing but a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. My favorite kind of dictatorship. Yeah. Contrary to how dictatorship is usually used, especially in modern context as single person role. They can't worship in this context is meant to be, you know, the rule of the whole class. So in this case, single class rule. Yeah.
Speaker 4Yeah. Well I think, I think for marks like the sort of classifications of state as the sort of, we could start with borzois political science and how that classifies these state as like a dictatorship or not for marks. That will be sort of a false dichotomy because he says that he says when he's owning them, he says instead of treating existing society as the base of the, and this holds good for any future one as a base of the existing state or the future state and the kids future society, it treats a state rather as an independent entity that possesses its own intellectual, ethical and libertarian. So saying that really the, the, the form, whatever the state is sort of the, the state is formed is defined by the society. Not like it doesn't, it's not just its own independent thing. So that's exactly why his, that, that sort of version of dictatorship where it's like the strong man or whatever, such terms would marks would not fuck with those.
Speaker 5And I think we could also describe it more in depth to like how we hear and you know like the West and America view our relation to the government. Most people, I don't know for you, most people that I interact with, most of my friends and people in my community, they see as the government as you know, like their own thing. And it's just kinda like independently run doing their own shit. Whereas ideally I feel like we should feel like we are the governing body, we are the government quote unquote, because we should be making the rules. We should be a democracy.
Speaker 1Well that's the whole idea of government, of the people, by the people, for the people. It should literally be like the people are the governments, which really doesn't make sense within a capitalist framework. Yeah. Yeah. All right. That's definitely is saying that the state would
Speaker 4B is determined by the just society. So you how the society and whatever class it is, that's what determines what the state looks like. And the, the freedom of the state at the time just meant that the illustrate the state transition because as a society, let's transitioning from feudalism to capitalism. So too must the state.
Speaker 1Yup. And then he goes on to say that, uh, the, the essential political demands within the program are essentially bourgeois demands that have been more or less met already and a lot at other states in not in Germany but not in Germany, in Switzerland, the u s what have you. They exist but they don't exist in the German Reich. And so he's basically saying that the only thing you're calling for is, is for the bourgeois effication of German society. Heidi,
Speaker 4not the push for a socialist society or the socialization of German society. Uh, yeah, he says that in fact by the worst state is meant. This is sort of the last part of the section that in fact by the word state has meant the government machine or the state in so far as it forms a special organism separated from society to Division of Labor is shown by the words the German Workers Party demands is the economic base of the state, a single progressive income tax taxes or the economic base to the government machinery. You have nothing else in the state of the future existing in Switzerland. This demand has been pretty well fulfilled. Income tax presupposes various source of income of the various social classes and hence capitalist society. It is therefore nothing remarkable. The deliverable financial reformers, bourgeois headed by Gladstone's brother are putting forward the same demand as the program.
Speaker 6It is a complete own that he's like, you guys purport yourselves to be socialists, right? Why are your demands the same as bourgeois liberals in Switzerland or in the UK? Why are you making these demands? You should be aiming for more if you consider yourself socialist. Yeah,
Speaker 5and I think that's relatable definitely today with a lot of people's frustrations with the Democratic Party saying like, why are you reveling in your mediocrity? We could have had single payer years ago, but you were, you just didn't want to think big enough. You're just not thinking about the whole grand scheme of things and underplaying what is actually capable of being achieved.
Speaker 4Although I do think that Mark's probably sees the, I think democracy is a German workers party. Is that different from the Democratic Party in the sense of it's like
Speaker 6it was really short. It was supposed to be socialists, obviously libs, the always been a party of the course. Quasi. Yeah. I mean this is this basically like what a lot of us are talking about with the DSA at the current moment, like y'all were socialists. We need to actually have a socialist platform. Yeah. We can't be bothering with like members of the Democratic Party. We can't be bothering with very loosely defined definitions of what socialism is with our, with people who are proporting to run as socialists endorsed by us within the Democratic Party or outside of it. We need to have like the, like the DSA should have a lot more of a, you know, actual concrete definition of what the hell they're aiming for instead of, Oh, you call yourself a socialist. Okay. Congrats. Also all power to the Soviets. Hell yeah. Full frontal power.
Speaker 4Yeah, so even vulgar. I like this sentence here. Even vulgar democracy, which sees the millennium and the Democratic Republic and there's no suspicion that it is precisely in this last form of state of war outside the classroom. Leslie fought out to conclusion, even if a tower is mountains above this, kind of democratize them, which keeps it in the limits of what is permitted by the police and not permitted by logic
Speaker 6so much own, oh yeah. I think we've covered that section. Yeah. Okay. Now for the last part of the main body before just the appendix, we have education stuff. The German Workers Party demands as the intellectual and ethical basis of the state, universal and equal elementary education with a state universal compulsory school attendance, free instruction, free and equal elementary. What lies behind these words? He goes, he goes on in this part to basically see how would education be equal here, especially in say Germany, but anywhere really without like all of these things like in present day education to be equal for all classes or shall it be only where the body of the upper classes with only the barest minimum for everyone else.
Speaker 4Right. So he's saying that like, are you saying that like, look, you can't have equal, what does it mean to say equal education? Cause going back to the same sort of equal right thing, right? Yeah. What does it mean to say equal education in the context of Class Society? Are we going to have, can we really have, how are we going to have the same education for all classes is already saying what the upper classes clearly because of their status is upper class. That's what requires a different level of education. So the question is glass society not education. Education is a, is sort of a PR again a product of class society. Yeah,
Speaker 5it's definitely relatable now with you know, uh, property, text based education systems, you know, wealthy school systems, everybody's got to go to school until you, you're like 16 or whatever and like a junior then you can drop out or whatever. Um, but you know, schools in where Everage home is worth, you know, like one point $8 million compared to where I live, where it's, you know, like 40,000 or whatever the educational system standards and you know, the facilities are going to be drastically different between the two. So
Speaker 4yeah. And he does talk about, he says that, for example, if in some states of the latter country, higher education institutions are also free, that only means in fact defraying the cost of education and the upperclass from general tax receipts. So He's saying that by virtue of left side of you can't have equal education, that's not a thing. So even if you have free university, well at the time that meant basically just do you find the cost of education for the upper classes? I would, I would say that now it's probably different in terms of how many people, uh, you get a college education. Yeah. Or can get a college education if they were able to actually have access to more pay for it. The current economy requires more people to get a higher education because of certain positions that certain workers at the the economy requires. So that's why more people can go to college because it has to be that way. Yeah. So I think that's, that's sort of his point about education. I mean, you have some other things to say about freedom of science. Freedom of conscience. Yeah.
Speaker 7Awesome. You know, he's, he says, yeah, after having dispense with the equality of education, he talks about, uh, elementary education by the state as being all together objectionable, a defining by a general law, the expenditures on elementary schools to qualifications of teaching staff, branches of an instruction, et Cetera. And as, as, as is done in the United States supervising the fulfillment of these legal specifications by state inspectors is a very different thing from appointing the state as the educator of the people. Government and church should rather be equally excluded from any influence on the school because if you allow the, uh, the state or the church to set what people actually learn, they will then turn that into a tool of propaganda to preserve the existing class society. Um, which you know, is pretty much exactly what the Prussian model of education was like explicitly designed to be. And that later became the model of education for basically the entire Western world.
Speaker 4Although I think in this case it's more applicable to say that like, yeah, we can't in this particular class, society of course to have the state do it would only reproduce the same society. I think that's what he's basically arguing essentially that it just reproduces the same thing. So we can't have anything else except by ball she class society. But at the same time it might be nevertheless, despite state education being like, even though it is being what it is, it's still might be like as a reform better. But he is saying that like it doesn't fundamentally solve the problem of class society. Uh, and when she goes on to, I'll say that freedom of science and pretty of questions are again, things that already exist in the, in the Prussian constitution or in boardwalk demands. Yeah. I think that's that section. Yeah. Which, um,
Speaker 7yeah, but I think that basically wraps up that section. Um, do we have anything in the appendix that we want to, uh, touch on?
Speaker 4Uh, I dunno. Dewey
Speaker 5look at it. It's just kind of straight forward. Uh, he talks about normal working day restriction of female labor and Child Labor. Uh, which you know
Speaker 4is, and the normal working day part is interesting cause he's saying that like this platform is, is indefinite. What do you mean normal working day? Why don't you state what you're trying to make the working day?
Speaker 5Cause the working day is different depending on where you're at, what job you have and you know also what timeframe because the working day, you know, 1875 is different than the working day in 2018 for a lot of people.
Speaker 4Right. But I think it's sort of similar to the criticism. People make a of democratic messaging that it's like well why don't you just say what you specifically what you want to achieve. You just be vague and say oh we want the working day to be normal. Just tell me how long do you want it to be? Eight hours. What I mean like just
Speaker 5I'm advocating for the eight hour work week
Speaker 4or more. Everybody deserves healthcare. It's like okay, yes they do. How do you want to make that a guarantee? Right? Like, what are you, what are you, what concrete thing are you saying it should be done? Yeah. Cause otherwise this, the sort of normal working day allows you to like, yeah, fiddle with it when you can't get vagueness is not revolutionary. Alright. And yeah, there's some things about uh, you know, liability law. Yeah. It's just stuff seems like I didn't really, when I read this, it was kind of confusing cause it was like stuff the same, relevant to that part, uh, to that specific polity.
Speaker 5Kids shouldn't be forced to work, you know.
Speaker 7Well, the only thing, the only thing that I actually have highlighted in this section is a number five, which is regulation of prison labor, a petty demand in the general work in the general workers program. In any case, it should have been clearly stated that there that there is no intention, uh, from fear of competition to allow ordinary criminals to be treated like bees. And especially that there is no desire to deprive them of their sole means of betterment, productive labor. Uh, this will surely the least one might have expected from socialists,
Speaker 4I think. I think that what he say, it was kind of confusing to me what he was saying there. Cause it seems like you saying that we don't want to deprive people and present have the ability to work. Right.
Speaker 5I was thinking more along the lines of we shouldn't deprive them of ways to better themselves and their situations so that they are inhibited from doing productive labor later.
Speaker 4I'm not sure it's, it's a specific policy issue. Yeah. I think what marks is specifically saying here that is that um, the only thing that that you have behind, uh, within the cage of the prison is your productive labor. And um, I think he's saying to not regularly
Speaker 5defining what Labor is again, because there's different kinds of labor, emotional labor, physical labor and productive, which is productive labor. So you could say productive Labor would be, you know, reading your betterment is through productive reading, understanding different scenarios.
Speaker 4Well, the thing is that he does say there's no, it should have included say there is no intention from fear of competition to allow ordinary criminals to be treated like beast, which is what makes me think that he's talking about like prisoners working, you know, like you would as a way to work or whatever, which um, I'm not really sure it's, this whole section was kinda confusing cause it's talking about like sort of my new chain of oppression, politics and certainly, uh, marks is not necessarily as just because he has a good method. Does that mean that he applies his analysis perfectly to all specifics?
Speaker 5Yeah. Also, I have no idea how the hell pression prisons work. So.
Speaker 4Right. And at the end he says Dixie itself, the, I'm an amalgam,
Speaker 1I have spoken in safe my soul. Yes. She's just basically like, all right, I got this off my chest. It was like, look, I told you, I told you it was bad. That's all I told you. I told you, I warned you about the Assalis I wore here when he listened to. Exactly. Um, yeah. So I'm in, that wraps up the critique of the golf program, which, you know, while being a critique of this specific thing in a specific time I think really gives us a point to say like having as having a framework for analysis allows us to actually take a critical look at at the, at the things within our own political context and say, what is this actually doing? What are they actually saying here? How do we, how do we figure out whether or not this is going to be something that's actually going to be helping us in the long term or even in the short term. Okay. So, um, then I think next time we are going to be doing value, price and profit as the sort of like introductory one o one text into like the basically like what, what Marxist critique of capitalism is the short version of capital. Yeah, the, it's the, it's the condensed introductory version of capital, which I appreciated because I started reading capital, uh, not too long ago and yeah, mags I have, yeah, I have read volume one. I started reading volume to volume two was actually like, volume two is debt is just math. It's just like a bunch of equations just recently. Um, so it's pretty tough. Uh, I haven't, I was reading the David Harvey a companion that's, which seems fairly useful even though I don't agree with David Harvey on everything, but he at least reads capital. Well. I mean, the guys literally just been teaching like Mark's like capital essentially as its own thing. It's like, what, 40 years now? Something like that. Like, Jesus, that guy's been going for a long time. Um, yeah. Uh, so that'll be our next show. Uh, and then I guess a as a, as a point of a administration here, um, like the whole idea behind doing this is not just to get together and have fun talking about how red mad nude marks gets online when he reads something he doesn't like. Um, but it's really to give a sense of direction for people who are trying to approach Marxism. And, uh, this is really just a sort of like the introductory episode to say like, this is what we're doing. This is why we're doing it. Uh, and as we go forward, yes. Hopefully get better. Um, yeah, Lord, think we can do both. We can talk about how red mad and nude he is. And you can also explain what he's saying. So, you know, the, the whole point of the whole point of doing this online, uh, you know, in, in a recorded format is so that there is a, there is an archive that people can go and listen to, uh, and sort of like learn along with us. And, uh, hopefully as we go along we can provide, uh, a sort of like, um, better study guide for people who are trying to get into Marxism. And, uh, you know, I think the best thing as an audience is not just to like passively listened but to get actively involved. So, um, you know, if you guys have questions, criticisms, feedback, definitely, um, definitely hit us up on our, uh, uh, Twitter handles. I am at checker informant, I'm at Outer Siberia cracked underscore, repair underscore. And uh, we unfortunately don't have a empress Trixie right now. Uh, do we know her? Let me just make sure I don't mess it up though cause I will pull it up on my phone. Yes, she would be at empress underscore trick sauna. A. T. R. I. S. A. N. A. All right. So with that we will sign off, uh, and catch you at the next study room meeting. I don't know what we're going to call this. I don't know how to, I don't know how to roll out of this. This is just kind of Marxists roll out.