Marxism lecture by Prof. Raymond Geuss 1/8

This is the last lecture series on Marxism given by Professor Raymond Geuss (Faculty of Philosophy) at the University of Cambridge in 2013.

[@renanvirginio2197]

History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this. Karl Marx

[@vinayaktripathi8883]

1:03 When the professor says 15 minutes it means 30 minutes

[@juancarlosgallegos3902]

This was a fascinating lecture. The description of individualism was particularly illuminating.

[@ElConquistador24]

I like this perspective on Marxism. It seems as if this is a higher level of understanding for Marxism. I enjoy it.

[@manishagarwal23]

Which book is he talking about in the end?

[@guilhermealvesarthur1289]

A very explanatory and argumentative class and a experienced and good professor! the time that I pause the video: 4:14

[@StephenCarvlin]

Is there a syllabus available to track the texts he's lecturing about?

[@jonathanbailey1597]

Stephen CM No, but just get his books! They are fantastic

[@kinky_Z]

Where is Lecture 3 - 8?

[@czarquetzal8344]

How about Rene Descartes' Rationalism? Chomsky expressed his indebtedness to Cartesian dualistism. He eveb entitled his book " Cartesian Linguistics". Hence, Kant might not have mentioned languages, but language is implired in his philosophy. Umberto Eco reconstructed Kantian philosophy into philosophy of language in "Kant and the Platypus". Herder is wrong.

[@annemortimerlloyd261]

Please can you lecture on Kierkegaard and especially on sickness unto death

[@DilbertHernandez]

Pretty sure he writes a chapter about Kierkegaard in his “Changing the Subject” if you’re interested

[@nurulahad3162]

what's the word he says @14:25 and 14:53 ?

[@michaelm8265]

'You can study the constitution of the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, German Democratic Republic)...'

[@czarquetzal8344]

I believe this lecture is for graduate studies class not for undergraduates.

[@baayrdiesmir]

amıcam tatlı tatlı konuşuyor ne güzel

[@MrSnippety]

These Freudian slips are wild!

[@SamItUp]

"Some of them were devious-- er, deviations"

[@galek75]

Insightful, perhaps, but psychoanalysis risks psychologism.

[@micaelablacutt2949]

In spanish please!!!! 😶😶😶

[@pendejo6466]

Burritos?

[@diegoemeltuctotarazona540]

try to learn english! I´m peruvian.

[@czarquetzal8344]

I am thinking of the following: Mystic Marxism, Topographical Marxism, Quantum Mechanical Marxism, Monadological Marxism, Pantheistic Marxism, Animistic Marxism, Confucian Marxism, Hedonistic Marxism, Utilitarian Marxism, Subatomic Metaphysical Marxism, Phrenological Marxism, Egoistic Marxism, Irrational Matxism.... blah, blah, ad infinitum.

[@Valelacerte]

It scares me that even after all the destruction and death that Karl Marx's writings have caused people are still inspired and ready to vote yet another country into the social and economic decline that Marxist ideologies inevitably produce. It's not even as if Karl Marx himself was an admirable man. The man never worked, or ran a business and yet felt worthy of evaluating economic theories; all his income came from his family, or rich benefactors. He subjected his family to such poverty that four of his children died and impregnated his family maid while his wife was expecting and then denied paternity. _“Karl Marx was angry, hate-filled, quarrelsome, neglectful of his family, lazy, and violent. He suffered from hideous carbuncles in part because he almost never bathed. He spent almost all his time at home or in libraries, and almost none where the workers he fumed about actually worked. He mooched off of others all his life, prompting his mother to say, according to historian Paul Johnson, that she wished son Karl would ‘accumulate capital instead of just writing about it.’”_ - Lawrence Reed

[@Valelacerte]

Communism has killed more people than Capitalism, or even Nazism; current score is approaching 100 million. Which countries are in social and economic decline? The most recent is Venezuela, a Socialist Hell hole where people are selling their children for food. I know Communists like to mention Denmark and Finland etc., but these are not Socialist countries; the means of production and distribution is still private. So, a businessman conceives of a product and business, researches its viability, puts together a business plan for funding, makes all the necessary partnerships and connections, obtains properties and manufacturing equipment, satisfies all the tax, regulatory and legal requirements, hires staff, provides them with salaries and pensions and careers, works 80 hours a week to satisfy his customers, shareholders and staff and risks his livelihood on success and is up to his eyeballs in debt, but some bloke who just accepts a position and does what he's told and takes zero risks is the fucking hero who does all the work? If the worker did not exist then the businessman would still run his business, but if the businessman was not there hundreds, maybe thousands would not have jobs. So, frankly, fuck you for being so ignorant as to claim that businessmen don't do any work; they work the hardest of all, take the greatest risks and hence deserve the rewards they get. There are no "proletariat", there are individuals with choices and the free will to accept or reject employment, up-skill and get better employment; no one is a slave, trapped in their job. Capitalism is property rights and the honouring of contracts; that is all. What's mine is mine, what's your is yours and if you make a promise then your word is your bond. Anything else you attribute to Capitalism is not Capitalism. Probably everything you hate about what you think is capitalism is in fact government interference in the free market process; corporations being one of them. Is there poverty and dying children in Europe and the West? No, that's why the rest of the world is trying to get there. The only socioeconomic system that inevitably collapses into bankruptcy and famine is pure Socialism, not Socialism leeching off Capitalism, but a pure Socialist economy. Women in the West are the most privileged and legally protected group in the world. What century do you live in? Women initiate most of the divorces for reasons of "dissatisfaction" and are not barred from entry, but are positively discriminated for in most industries. Nobody is making them have babies, in fact childbirth in the West is dangerously low. Contraception is readily available in any chemist, just like all other cosmetics and medicines; there are no laws against using them. That women are sometimes shamed for using abortion clinics and the morning after pill as contraceptives is perfectly healthy; they have no excuse for not taking precautions.

[@Valelacerte]

OK, so are the intellectuals who publish on political topics the same people who run the businesses? No. Are the political pundits who express their views in the media the same people who run industry? No. Are the teachers in schools and universities the same people who own the means of production? No. Who has the most economic power and is hence the target audience of politicians? The housewives and mothers because they do the most shopping. You're so impressed with that little quote, but unfortunately it's utter shit and is not demonstrated in real life. Does a businessman, who employs thousands of people, have more status and authority than one worker? Yes, because he's done the work and taken the risks that the worker hasn't; he provides thousands with salaries, the worker only provides for himself. People are not equal, not even from birth. Some are born with more, others with less; too bad. There is no inherent fairness, or equality; you have to work for what you have and sometimes it's hard, but it's better than being a whiny victim who hates successful people and blames everybody else for his failure.

[@MrDzoni955]

>Cool, fascist ideology He presented facts and decent argumentation but this is all you have to say?

[@kevc3148]

JFC, more insanity? "why does inequality require so much force and struggle to establish and maintain?" Did you mean to say "why does equality (of outcome) require so much force to achieve"? The biggest force in existence is that which forces "equality". Name one law that forces inequality. Meanwhile, here's some laws or policies that *force* equality of outcome: affirmative action de-platforming safe spaces hate speech political correctness welfare minimum wage universal healthcare public schools social security Since I know you won't be able to name anything, I'll help you out. Here's what forces inequality: Industry regulation (carbon taxes, "green" initiatives, FCC).

[@jonathanbailey1597]

@@Valelacerte This is the most ignorant thing I've ever read. It is NOT a fact that so called communism killed more people than 'capitalism'. The history is far, far more complicated that that kind of reductive twaddle. Capitalism cannot be spoken about as out of step with European and later U.S imperialism, which is a far LESS local phenomenon that the perversions that laboured under the guise 'communism' but were in fact fascism. By analogy, merely because the Democratic People's Republic of Korea calls itself 'democratic' has no one under the illusion that it really IS. Vanguardism was the last thing that Marx endorsed, and it is a false and cynical move to try and lump him in with those lot. And to think that 'a businessman conceives of a product and business' in a vacuum and can do it ALL by himself is about as far from the truth as you can get. That is the 'shopkeeper/entrepreneur' fallacy. Businesses, in the way you describe, cannot do without labour: they only profit BECAUSE labour is exploited, otherwise they couldn't make any profit. This is not mysterious. The simple fact today is that most people work in a gig economy (without pensions and good salaries) in which working full time is no guard against poverty or homelessness. Legislation is not on the side of labour at all (remember 'flexible labour?' and Greenspan talking about how labour was going to have to put up with less??) I know people who work 80 hours a week and barely scrape by, why is their labour worth any less? Nurses, Carers, teachers. So their role is not as important or generates less value than a self-interested entrepreneur? Are you completely insane, or just horrendously myopic? Abroad it is even worse, globalised sweat shops (so you can get cheaper goods and so companies like a certain 'fruit' brand can make even more money) have netting fixed to the buildings to try to prevent the increasing suicides of workers because of the utterly appalling conditions and prospects. This is globalised capital. Moreover, most businesses in the 21st century actually DO NOT work in the way you describe at all. Financialisation has meant that 'value' is generated through DEBT, speculating, and proprietary trading - not through capital investments, or through producing anything at all. Businessmen take NO risks, they actually offset the liabilities onto the companies, and make off with the quick capital returns. You are just completely and utterly wrong on this, the evidence is utterly irrefutable. Not to mention the 20th and 21st century and the wars fought in the name of exporting freedom and democracy in which millions have been killed. There is a humanitarian crisis in the Yemen right now, which children dying and communities starving because the countries that COULD stop it wont step in and stop the Saudis because they buy too much oil and sell them too many weapons. Only a perverse devotion to money and accumulation puts innocent human lives behind profit. You are an utter fool if you cannot see what 'Capital' has wrought on the world over the last few hundred years. Capitalism is about property rights you are right. Rights that are written and enforced by the coercive power of the state. It is no mistake that 1% of the population own 82% of the wealth through 'property rights'. They don't do a single thing for it., it is exclusively through rent-seeking and allowing the appropriation of leveraged assets to go to speculators. Unless you are blind, did you not see what happened in 2008??? Are you completely and utterly ignorant of the facts? The reason poor countries are POOR is because they are perpetually held in DEBT, not because they are simply 'lagging behind' in their capacities. They cannot develop because DEBT, compound interest, and austerity is imposed upon them, curtailing their ability to be able to get out of poverty. We actively produce and benefit from this, which is why the BS narrative about 'charity' and 'philanthropy' is cynically knocked about to launder the consciences of countries who do well out of third world debt. Post-colonial nations were set up in the first place so that all the resources and goods benefit the west, not the rest. That is simply about GREED: plain and simple. You simply have NO knowledge of international political economy. Seriously, get educated before you spout off that kind of dangerous drivel. It is stupid and ideological and makes the world a much darker place.

[@Wip3ou7]

This guy is incoherent. I feel sorry for his students.

[@860hurdles2]

What are you talking about man he’s making perfect sense lol

[@OKnotOK09]

Maybe a Cambridge lecture isn't for you.

[@tomisaacson2762]

I'd recommend reading an introductory text, then trying again. It's hard, but I believe in you.

[@rcherLansky]

@@tomisaacson2762 You related to Mike Isaacson? An antifa POS

[@xxx6555]

Your IQ is too low to understand him. I feel sorry for you,

[@kenowens9021]

Someday he'll realize that he wasted his whole life on a false ideology that doesn't work, and the responsibility of knowing he too led many down the wrong path.

[@benjamin_markus]

xDDD

[@vivekdarknight6024]

False Ideology....That didn't work!!! Developed Countries are developed because of the impact of Marx...

[@wedas67]

Ken Owens Are you some sort of an idiot ?!

[@sopheebolgz7125]

What? Capitalism is what doesn't work, not communism.

[@miat9039]

I mean teaching on how to precisely see a historical figure is not a waste of time. For example thomas jefferson ideas of what america is cannot be put into practice today but that does not make the studies on his life less valid.