ⓐⓡ⊞ⓘⓞ Cicero & Socialism (the Definition of)

but what is the left now I'm a critic of
the left and yet there is no place for me to participate in Western politics except on the left today if you want to ask a simple question a simple but fundamental question like what is the future of higher education in the United States in Canada who cares about having lower tuition who cares about helping the poor access higher education the people who are asking those questions and trying to come up with new answers are entirely on the left and indeed many of them are socialist there's nothing socialist about the question there's nothing socialist about the answer but we don't have a lively free market competition of ideas where the center and the Liberals and the Conservatives are all coming up with different answers this such a fundamental and obvious question is considered a left-wing fringe ideal it shouldn't have anything to do with socialism it's not a socialist problem for my immediate future I don't see any reason why I should struggle to try to create an alternative solution to that problem in the center and the right you're trying to get into bed with the Conservatives they don't even want to hear it as opposed to hanging around the door somewhat uncomfortably to the left and saying hey guys at least you're asking these questions at least on a fundamental level you care I care too can we work together to make something positive happen is it better to have our telephones provided to us through free market competition or through a government monopoly is it better to have our train service operated by 10 companies competing in free market competition or a government monopoly those are very real questions but this brings us back first things last the question of what is socialism the meaning of socialism which have filmed trampled on and misrepresented in so many of these videos or made a survey different people attempting to define the term the meaning of socialism is simply the consolidation of control in government hands it's taking away the element of investment and the element of risk from the private sector and putting in the hands of the state yes on a propaganda level people can refer to that as ownership by the people or the operation of a business or a service for the people but the reality is you're talking about ownership by the state and ultimately for the state if that is a perfectly transparent and perfectly democratic state then yes it will serve Democratic interests and if it is anything less than that it will serve the government's interests hey guys this video is going up on my new youtube channel and it's gonna be promoted under hashtag politics and pajamas nobody else was using the hashtag politics in pajamas can't tell you why and it looks like marking this transition to a new era in my youtube broadcasting experience I said experience not career I'm gonna have to get a new microphone cuz take one of this video was ruined by the microphone dying on us about halfway through look guys this is a sincerely made video and I'm gonna disclose my bias here at the beginning the middle and the end I am NOT a socialist I do not describe myself as a socialist but it seems to me a great shame that the meaning of the word is misrepresented by its supporters its detractors its critics and it's so widely misunderstood now that it seems to be impossible for anyone to take a reasonable position on the matter I mentioned Cicero in the title of this video because I've recently been reading the political philosophy of Cicero it's a famous author from ancient Rome and he's like one of the last major authors in that era that I'm reading I'm very well-read in the ancient Greeks in English translation needless to say I don't read Greek or Latin myself but for many years it was on my mind that one of the gaps in my own education had to fill in was reading Cicero and one of the single most influential ideas that Cicero sat down for the next thousand years was the idea that the best form of government was not any one ideal but a hybrid of several competing ideals and the competing ideals he dealt with in its own time were democracy monarchy and aristocracy now when I read about this as a young man I completely rejected this approach I felt about this the same way that some anarcho-capitalists feel about socialism and the way that I think most socialists feel about capitalism I respond to this approach of cicero's by saying in effect if you think slavery is bad you don't seek to have a political establishment that incorporates slavery no matter how harmoniously you don't try to have a society that retains the best aspects of slavery or a moderate amount of slavery you want to get rid of slavery entirely if you believe slavery is evil if you've come to the conclusion that aristocracy is fundamentally an immoral and evil and counterproductive form of government you don't want to have a society that incorporates a balanced quantity a reasonable you know measure of aristocracy you want to get rid of aristocracy entirely this is a debate that still goes on in countries including United Kingdom England even Australia what is the role of aristocracy and what is the role of monarchy and these in these countries today is it something they should rid themselves of entirely why are they keeping around some some vestiges of it but anyway obviously thousands of years ago even just 1,000 years ago this was this was a much more hotly debated topic um it's very easy for capitalists Pro capitalists to come to this conclusion which is rarely sincere that socialism is inherently evil and then they argue it shouldn't be a part of our society at all well what does socialism really mean a guy named Milton Friedman would provoke both his allies and his enemies but pointing out that within the United States of America the army the United States military was a socialist economy within a capitalist economy it operated on socialist principles evaluated as an economy within a capitalist economy so if you think you can do without socialism and tirely as a pro capitalist do you think you can do without the army there are numerous other examples I don't know of a single country anywhere in the world that truly has privatized sewage treatment do you really think you can do without sewage treatment it whether to what extent it's possible to have a purely private sector electrical grid you know provision of health care services so on and so forth when you look sector by sector throughout the economy most of the Western European countries today are a hybrid of socialist and capitalist elements and they've generally come to a kind of piecemeal solution as to which elements the economy can be privatized if they were socials in the past which elements the economy must be run by some kind of government bureaucracy because they just don't work when they're left up for the free market to decide so I appoint the civil time conversations you know when I grew up in Canada we're going through a period of transition the telephone infrastructure very much began as a government monopoly on socialist principles you might say and believe me I'll come back to how do we properly define socialism we shouldn't leave this too vague for too long and then there was a question of will can we transition from having just one taxpayer-funded provider of telephone services to having multiple companies competing having multiple people come to your door with a leaflet and say hey we hope you'll sign up with our telephone company instead of this other telephone company competing to provide you with better prices now the underlying reality was at that time in Canada all of the infrastructure was built by the taxpayer anyway they were using the taxpayer created monopolies created you know the actual telephone poles and wires and what-have-you and creating a bit of an illusion of free market competition on top of it does anyone really believe that the free market can work in providing and operating prisons does anyone believe that the free market can come to your door with a pamphlet and say hey we hope you'll sign up for our sewage system don't sign up for our competition don't sit up with that company don't sign up for the coca-cola sewage system something for the Pepsi sewage system and we'll just like hitch up your toilet to a different set of pipes to whisk away your poo to be treated at our sewage treatment center before it goes into the river there are some sectors of the economy that you know are incorrigibly socialist in character and this is why we can't have this attitude we can't have the attitude I did research for doing this video I believe I already know the meaning of socialism that that's not what I was researching I did research into how the meaning of socialism is being misrepresented today by both its proponents and its detractors and it's disturbing for me to see the extent to which today there are millions of people who feel that the meaning of the word socialism is something so sacrosanct that it can't be questioned let anyone who consider themselves a good person must use this word positively and unthinkingly and unquestioningly without acquiring to it and the other hand there are millions of people who think that this is an inherent and self-evident evil and cannot be questioned and they also don't seem to really understand what socialism is or the fact that each and every actually existing capitalist economy in the world is in fact a balance of socialists and capitalist elements in fact what would come back to you in some ways in this sense you know is reminiscent of Cicero's philosophy of the hybrid polity of the these different competing elements being incorporated into one state it's not what Cicero had in mind but that was his view of how to balance democracy by having a democracy held in check by aristocratic and and monarchic elements and we certainly have a socialist economy held in check by free-market elements and vice-versa you know a capitalist economy held in check by free Mergen elements I'm sorry I said the same thing to editor no edits no take two let's keep rolling here all right um what is socialism and why is it so broadly misunderstood it's been drawn to my attention back another scholar of Buddhism that I am what's called an Origin est' I like to explain concepts by going back to their origins their first usage so you can imagine in history his philosophy this method I was interested in looking at in their original cultural context their original literary usage what were the meanings of the words involved etc and then it can be done productively when you're looking at ancient Greek and Latin philosophy even when you're looking at 19th century German philosophy it was pointing to someone the other day in a particular text you know the meaning of the word liberal just a couple centuries ago was much different than it is today you had to read the text in a certain way knowing the key political terms to change their meanings the meanings of words can change over centuries they can change sometimes over decades I think socialism is an example of that - I think when Bernie Sanders uses the word socialism or when people say that Bernie Sanders is a socialist we really have to question what the meaning of the word socialism is now and in that context and in what sense Bernie Sanders is a socialist um in what sense was Bill Clinton a socialist what sense was Tony Blair a socialist in many ways the current generation with Bernie Sanders really taking over the leadership at the left is from my perspective much much more hopeful then those those prior decades when but the origins of socialism and to really understand why the word has its moral significance both for socialists who love it and for I don't know enter capital anarcho-capitalists it hate it you have to dial your mind back to approximately the Year 1850 in the year 1850 the Western world was in a period of dramatic transformation it was going from being an agrarian agricultural based society to being an urban industrialized Society at a remarkable rate from country to country were they looking at England United States Canada these countries went from being 80% the rural 80% 90% people being employed in agriculture to being predominantly people employed in cities not entirely in industrial manufacture but with factories being one of these you know rising very visible signs of the Industrial Revolution modernization new technology etc new forms of production new forms of consumption new forms of employment and traditional society in many ways disappearing and being relegated to a very marginal status the functions of government as we see them today both in terms of Social Services and under all of the categories they really did not exist in 1650 not at all even the example of the military being a socialist economy in the year 1650 that's not the sentence the military in essence didn't exist at all you had aristocrats who employed men-at-arms who trained and raised men to be ready for military service the creation of a centralized taxpayer-funded bureaucracy that's in the centuries following thereafter a permanent standing professional army etc and the way wars were organized the government's had to appeal to their taxpayers namely aristocrats very different game in 1650 1650 1750 1850 around the Year 1850 this is really a transformation of society in ways some ways it's obvious like people leaving the countryside and moving to the cities people no longer being employed in agriculture being employed in industry obviously the emergence of new technologies etc etc but in a more subtle and pervasive way the expectations of the government expectations of whether it be democracy or otherwise the expectations of what services should be provided ultimately by taxpayer-funded bureaucrats this was changing profoundly with no manifestos to declare it with no clear single movement clamoring for it in the after metro were one for example you had starvation rubble and devastation but you didn't have highly professional international charity organizations such as United Nations organizations or such as donation driven civil society organizations but that imitate those UN organizations or government organizations you didn't have in effect the government monopolization of charity which goes on under socialism and to a varying extent in in modern Western liberal democracies you have bureaucrats coming out to feed and clothe the poor this latest world war one to a remarkable extent in the World War one period still the work of charity was in the hands of the church but if you think about that period of time from 1850 to 1918 that was exactly the period in which the potential for the government to take on those responsibilities of caring for the poor the unemployed for the government to expand and take over responsibilities that previously had fallen at the feet of aristocrats and the church this profoundly influenced the way that members of democratic societies perceive their governments and in which they perceive themselves the government of course always had advantages the government has the ability to go into debt to an astounding extent not an unlimited extent they can raid millions of dollars going to debt they can spend taxpayers money they can provide a certain kind of detached egalitarian service that the church in that inexorably and in ever inevitably doesn't provide so in the aftermath of World War one the charities that existed at that time do you think that they served Jews Christians and Muslims equally they did not it's a very historical fact and the struggles with this and of wanting instead to have a an impartial and detached bureaucracy administering to people's needs in these times this was itself you know what cause for great optimism about the expansion of socialism if you could say the expansion of the socialist economy we're placing what it heretofore been aristocratic and religious elements of our of our civil society you know what stuff my second installment of my idea I'd ideological review series today we were doing yeah although the meanings of words have changed in ways both subtle and coarse one thing that's remarkably consistent from 1850 to 1918 and from 1918 to 2018 today one thing that's remarkably consistent is that advocates of socialism will always describe the function of socialism as taking over private ownership for the people they will describe businesses and social services as being owned by the people administered by the people but the sad fact is what they mean is these institutions are administered by the state they're administered by the government but as I've already explained if you were alive in that period of time 1850 and for at least 50 years after that it would have been very easy to be optimistic about the whole business's powerplants telephone services all these new and wondrous things that were coming with the advancement of the industrialized Society it would have been very you know easy to be optimistic even about the government taking over soup kitchens giving out food to the poor because look at who they were taking over from they weren't really taking over from a vibrant capitalist society where Coke and Pepsi were competing over who was gonna clean your water after you pooed in it and you dump it into a river with a sewage treatment plant it's not reality it was the possibility of having a professional bureaucracy take over functions that as of said a million times heretofore were dominated by the church and we're dominate in a way that was obviously you know prejudicial and disadvantage but disadvantages to many in a sense nobody in our modern society could ever be satisfied with those vestiges of earlier feudal era being of such importance so almost anything seemed better than that and it's really a separate question when today we look at it without that historical context and we just ask in an open-minded way is it better to have our telephones provided to us through free market competition or through a government monopoly is it better to have our train service offer it operated by ten companies competing in free market competition or a government monopoly those are very real questions but this brings us back first things last the question of what is socialism the meaning of socialism which have found trampled on and misrepresented in so many of these videos or made a survey different people attempting to define the term the meaning of socialism is simply the consolidation of control in government hands it's taking away the element of investment and the element of risk from the private sector and putting in the hands of the state yes on a propaganda level people can refer to that as ownership by the people or the operation of a business or a service for the people but the reality is you're talking about ownership by the state and ultimately for the state if that is a perfectly transparent and perfectly democratic state then yes it will serve Democratic interests and if it is anything less than that it will serve the government's interests just as ineluctably and inexorably as a charity operated by the Catholic Church is not only going to serve the needs of the poor or the alcoholics they're helping it's gonna serve the interests of the church because that is its owner that's its chain of command first of all go back communism it's the idea made by Karl Marx and his congressman manifesto and he said well what we should do is we should oh we shouldn't have government or business owners workers should own the means of production who instead of making goods for money they make it for the good of the people and then everybody's happy there's no money because you can't buy anything there's no greed it's just great but does it hold up in real life so I closed this video by commenting and not for the first time on this channel that I'm a critic of the left and yet there is no place for me to participate in Western politics except on the left it's really disturbing to consider that today if you want to ask a simple question a simple but fundamental question like what is the future of higher education in the United States in Canada who cares about having lower tuition who cares about helping the poor access higher education the people who are asking those questions and trying to come up with new answers are entirely on the left and indeed many of them are socialist there's nothing socialist about the question there's nothing socialist about the answer but we don't have a lively free market competition of ideas where the center and the Liberals and the Conservatives are all coming up with different answers this such a fundamental and obvious question is considered a left-wing fringe ideal I mean so Bernie Sanders apparently has a monopoly on the stunningly obvious issue that tuition the United States of America is much too high even when you just compare it to other real world examples like Germany Sweden what have you you don't have to compare them to the ideal you can compare them to something all too real right so tremendous fundamental question on society who's asking the question who's coming with new answers it shouldn't have anything to do with socialism it's not a socialist problem and yet right now the Socialists have a monopoly on it that's tremendously sad I hope that'll change for my immediate future I don't see any reason why I should struggle to try to create an alternative solution to that problem in the center and the right you're trying to get into bed with the Conservatives they don't want to hear it as opposed to hanging around the door somewhat uncomfortably to the left and saying hey guys at least you're asking these cool Russians at least on a fundamental level you care I care too can we work together it makes my positive happen I could say the same thing again about fundamental questions of ecology do you want to pretend that the Conservatives or the Republican Party are coming up with visionary new plans to take on the ecological problems of our day they're not I could try to be in the ecological group wing of the Republican Party or the conservative party nothing's gonna happen it's unfortunate because as they say on the one hand some people just perceive socialism as an evil that they don't want to compromise with and this is a fundamentally inane misperception of reality as I've said before Milton Friedman himself recognized that the American military is a socialist economy within a free market economy it's a socialist bubble or socialist fear if you like so if you want to have a society that's completely rid of socialism you'd have to be rid of the military because communism in the base of karl marx's thingy his communist manifesto says there shouldn't be government but that is well you could say he's stupid because economically without a government and without business owners you're not going to end off to it because what you have is you have workers that are expected to work without pay and they have to give it to other people so they're basically slaves to everybody she doesn't go down too well so people like hey since I'm not since I don't have to work I'm just going to not work and let everyone else for you mind slave so then that's not good so what do you do obvious you get government to intervene and you know force people to work so now his first flaw there has to be a government as we authoritarian forcing people to work so Karl Marx did not think this / - well conversely of course it's become absurd for socialists to claim that they want to live in an entirely socialist economy we just say a command economy such as existed with disastrous effects resulting in the starvation to death of millions of people in China Russia etc the real-world examples we have to draw from learn from and build on are all at this point hybrid economies they are in part capitalist in part socialist and they've come about through a sort of series of ad hoc decisions as to what the market can and cannot solve for us and what questions have to ultimately be answered through government intervention or through setting up socialist economies within a capitalist context I made this video in part because I heard a discussion amongst vegans on discord and they were really discussing the fundamental questions of economics I considered textbook questions of economics about where the free market starts and stops what are the limitations of capitalism at what point must we necessarily be talking about socialist elements in a free market system and vice-versa at what point must be talking about free market elements in a socialist system those questions we will have with us always every generation is gonna have to ask answer them and I think everyone is serious about politics and economics is gonna have to ask and answer them but we have the step away from is ultimately a moralizing discourse that regards capitalism and socialism in terms of good and evil that really obfuscates the real world questions we now have to ask an answer as I say what's the future of the university system higher education what's the future of the prison system what's the future of ecology with the future of sewage treatment Oh what's the future of prison reform in prison conditions on and on it goes the socialists for better or for worse have a voice have a stake in all of those issues even though they're not in this strict sense questions of bio for socialism and to move forward we're going to need to have really a competitive marketplace of ideas where somebody other than the Socialists has to step forward and start providing you know thought provoke thought provoking answers to the important political questions about Stalin he killed 20 million people yeah Chairman Mao or whatever his name is Mao Zedong well first of all in a communist state people don't like the government cuz they're forcing them to work for no pay at least and if I was a slave I would not want the government forcing me to be slave so I they overthrow something so then they have to cut down on Liberty so people don't have the freedom to overthrow them you're being forced to work for no pay and you're just waiting in bread lines starving to death not too good so we have it's just a terrible system overall so I would rank it on my scale of one to five I would give it one gulag camp out of that's just my opinion though like if you agree with me just like if you don't agree with me subscribe if you like what I do comment if you are if you own if you own the means of production see you at a later point in time goodbye