An Asymmetry: "Pro-Capitalism" vs. "Pro-Communism".

black-and-white video for black and
white issue I'm recording this in Chiang Mai Thailand I recently did get some criticism some complaints from patreon supporters who were asking me questions such as how dare you criticize communism when you do not also criticize anti-communist violence from capitalist a lot of questions along these lines that rely on a kind of false symmetry people often use the term false dichotomy but this is actually a false symmetry there are many reasons why the examination of communism and the examination of capitalism are asymmetrical but I think the most fundamental and important I want to draw attention to in this video is the fact that communism really is defined narrowly and precisely as one economic system one political system one social system and capitalism is not capitalism is really very broad somewhat even vague category of what emerged as feudalism collapsed in the history of Europe I do have an earlier video that I'm gonna provide a link to below this video in which I was replying to a really interesting email I received from a an indigenous person of South America a map Uche Indian and he was writing to me he was interested in my channel he was writing to me an agreement that he thought the vegan content from freely was garbage it's really interesting email to get and it was in very poorly spelled English as I recall but really really memorable email on what's got from this guy and I pointed out in my response to him that he was blaming capitalism for many many things that neither in a strict sense nor in a general sense capitalism could be blamed for so he was complaining for example about the conduct of the Pope as the head of the Catholic Church in I guess what you call the medieval and renaissance period of Europe this is not capitalism we can't simply treat capitalism as a miscellaneous category for everything we hate criticize or disagree with so in the questions I got asking how they are I criticize communism without for example credits American imperialism in Vietnam now if you've watched my channel I think I share a lot of criticism American journalism I used to live in and work in Laos and Cambodia to countries that have suffered terribly under American imperialism so I mean it's not the case that I'm some kind of uncritical witness to American imperialism but again just as we can't look at Italian imperialism in this way we can't look at the Italian Empire the Catholic Empire nor the Roman Empire and just put this into a category capitalism the decisions made by the Pope as the head of the church can't contribute to capitalism in the same way it's not some simple formula we can point the finger at capitalism is an economic system and then explain for example American atrocities in the Korean Civil War the war that created the separation in North Korean South Korea as the fault of capitalism this this really fundamentally doesn't make sense now it's also not easy to say even if you look at crimes against humanity atrocities human rights violations committed by the United States in the the Korean War Corinne Civil War what if you want to call it um it's not easy to say well the atrocities committed by the United States were so bad that therefore it was a bad thing the United States to intervene and defend South Korea anyone who spent some time examining the war that's a very very hard conclusion to come to it's you look at the reality of human rights today in North Korea versus South Korea and on the contrary we probably have to ask yourself the question at what point are the Americans committing so many violations of human rights so many crimes against humanity that discredits a war that in some ways was evidently necessary or necessitated by the extreme brutality of of communism communism that continues to this day in North Korea these are really really tough questions to ask yourself however my initial point when I'm coming back to is the main light motif in this video the nature and conduct of the North Korean regime can indeed be explained largely if not wholly in terms of communism in terms of what is communism as an economic system what is communism as a governing idiom what is communism is a heading in political science and is with tremendous difficulty that you would in parallel explain the behaviors of Japan Holland Denmark and the United States simply under this heading of capitalism let's open it up a little bit further how about Sri Lanka versus Thailand looking at the kana in the last 50 years of two countries like that that are in the same region that are both capitalist Sri Lanka and Thailand are capitalist countries but we can't in this same way say oh well these are all capitalist regimes therefore that explains the conduct of the CIA the conduct of the American army of the American Empire would have you neither in South Korea North Vietnam nor any other theater so why is that as I say it's it's really easy for people to think in terms of a false dichotomy and a false symmetry you can make a checklist of what defines capitalism you can talk about the form of land ownership you can talk with the existence of specific institutions like an including stock market you can come up with you know whether or not labor you know is defined under a contract and people throw to break that contract record a few things you can you can look at just coming up with a working definition of capitalism and then you can ask yourself at any given time you know prior to the Communist revolution was China or was it not a capitalist society the Communist Party of China actually their official position is that China never had a period of calm of capitalism they went directly into into communism without ever having a period they went straight from feudalism into communism at what point are we no longer talking about feudalism in the history of Japan and when are we talking about capitalism when are we what point in the history of the Netherlands are we hunger talking about a medieval economy or a renaissance economy or a mercantilist economy and we're talking instead about about capitalism what we call capitalism today is above all else a set of cultural concepts that emerged out of the collapse of feudalism in Europe and it emerged in a so this is very different even from something like the emergence of the Industrial Revolution there is no revolution that defines capitalism there is no manifesto there is no capitalist manifesto that defines capitalism there is no political party today that defines schedules and there never was right unlike say the Communist Party of Russia unlike say the particular biography of a figure like like Karl Marx so it's actually a profoundly a symmetrical situation philosophical otherwise and this is complicated above all else for the fact that anyone who is pro capitalist in today's parlance is not presumed to be supporting capitalism as it actually exists now or capitalism is actually existed in a particular point in the past they are presumed the meaning of Pro capitalism is to mean that they object to the existence of socialism or aspects of socials and features of socialism within the capitalist economy today now as as many many pro-capitalist economists have pointed out capitalism has always included features of socialism whereas vice-versa socialist societies have a very difficult time including key features of capitalism Milton Friedman was always very eager to point out in his lectures and writing and so on that within the United States of America the the military is in fact a socialist economy within a capitalist economies interesting point in perspective so you know some countries have a socialist health care system within a capitalist society some of the socialist electricity system you know they run electricity in a non free-market manner or what have you especially small countries but were you know they wouldn't be able to really small poor countries that wouldn't be able to have electricity if it was going at free market rates and it's run as something of charity you various sectors the economy I think in most modern Western countries sewage treatment is ruining us so in a socialist manner because it's it's totally impossible to do sewage treatment on a for-profit free-market basis probably a few few countries have tried but the problem is we don't really have a good analytical category for describing discussing and indeed supporting capitalism as it actually exists someone who is said to be pro capitalist is presumed to be pro-american Empire Pro CIA in favor of the American army committing crimes against humanity and atrocities whether it's an example like the CIA and Indonesia or the American participation in the Korean War and those things in a very real sense have nothing to do with capitalism you so we're at a bit of an impasse with this I do not identify as pro-capitalist I identify as anti-communist however if you ask about specific examples because we have to do we can talk about Japanese capitalism Japanese capitalism is a specific system specific economic system specific ruling ideology and Japanese capitalism you can make a checklist just even in terms of economic criteria but also political chair Japanese capitalism is profoundly different from Dutch capitalism or Danish capitalism we can look at Swedish capitalism we can look at Canadian capitalism we can look at American capitalism and then we can ask the question in the future do we want our own country so I'm Canadian do I want the future of Canada to be more like the present-day system in Japan do I want it to be more like the present-day system in Sweden or Denmark and already we have a rich discourse a rich variety of options that are subsumed within this category called capitalism now again I'm using kind of Eurocentric or Western examples here but believe it or not if you care passionately about the politics of Asia I could say the same thing again about about Southeast Asia even I could say you know you look at a country like Sri Lanka you look at what's going on in Thailand and then you can ask the question what is the future of Myanmar what is the future of a country like Cambodia should Cambodia be looking to Sri Lanka as an example tree Cambodia be looking to say Japan as an example what's the future the Philippines can be we actually have tremendous diversity and tremendously important questions to be asked that are within capitalism and we don't even begin to broach those questions or come to useful answers if we phrase this in terms of Pro capitalism and anti capitalism and on the contrary there were really meaningful questions that get asked if we if we ask question do you what do you think about Japanese capitalism what do you think is wrong with what do you think fundamentally beans needs to be reformed needs to be abolished within the Japanese capitalist system and believe me anyone who knows and cares about Japanese politics though that'll start a long conversation in what ways does Sweden or Denmark offer a much more fundamentally positive model compared to France or Germany or England those are really meaningful discussions that happen within this very broad category of capitalism because at the end of the day talking about capitalism is like talking about compost compost isn't one thing capitalism is the compost heap that was left over after the collapse of European feudalism and many different things some good and some bad have sprouted up out of that fertile so it