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I'm Paul Twidnick and James. Anyway, back to the podcast.
Hi, welcome to Pods with Nick and James. I'm James. Say hello, Nick.
Hi guys.
Today's topic is looking at the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Ingalls.
Many people have heard of Karl Marx or Marxism generally as it's called.
So I thought that this was... it's a massively influential text.
So I thought it was worth taking a look at as I realized my own understanding of the history of communism and socialism was incredibly lacking.
And unfortunately, after reading the Communist Manifesto, or at the very least listening to an audiobook version of it,
and reading a couple of... well, getting through some way through some commentaries on it,
all I can say is I'm still very much in the dark.
If any of our listeners are a hardcore communist socialist and want to get in contact,
then feel free to kind of put a comment up and I apologize if anything I say causes offense.
But I've come at it from a layman's perspective.
I've read it and my attempt here is to give a... well, as even-handed review as I can.
Yeah. So I guess I'll start by asking yourself... now this is a question.
Some people love this sort of question. Some people you ask them and they'll either deflect or you physically see them shrink.
So I'm just going to ask you straight off. How would you describe your views politically or your political position?
I think every movement that has happened, just be a socialist, fascist, communist, has happened for a reason.
It's part of our evolution. But I feel like we are now past the capitalist with no real aim as to what the next step is.
And everybody keeps looking backwards. We've done all that. We've learned from our mistakes.
We need to kind of evolve and move forwards. I'm not really sure what that is at the moment,
but I know that capitalism has reached its end and we need to start looking at another method of social form that really moves us forwards and doesn't move us backwards.
Absolutely. But weirdly enough, I guess this is one of the reasons why you'll see a number of books if you're on audible like myself and you're looking for books on socialism.
There's a number of books like called Why Karl Marx Was Right and all of this lot.
And just to also be super honest, I read through the communist manifesto itself, the not editorial, the...
I also tried to go through a book called Understanding Socialism by Richard D. Wolfe.
The version of the communist manifesto that I listened to was narrated by Charles Armstrong and Roy McMillan,
both of which put a lot of theatricality into their words, which sometimes I felt helped me understand it and sometimes, honestly, massively didn't.
So it's interesting you say that you feel that society's ready to move on from capitalism because that's exactly where Karl Marx stood back in 1848,
which is when the communist manifesto was originally commissioned by a pro-communist group in order to, yeah, in order to kind of like centralize their beliefs.
What I will say about the communist manifesto is it is not a definition of the entirety of socialism, nor would I say is it, although there are parts of it,
which are timeless, like the idea that people would notice that capitalism can't last forever and definitely can't stay in its current form forever,
I also wouldn't say that the communist manifesto is necessarily timeless.
A number of times I'm reading it and Karl Litch, I've got to, yeah, well, Marx, Karl, I'll call him interchangeably,
but there's a number of times when he's making an argument and then he goes, ah, but now that I've said this, surely you will react this way.
And I just, there was at least five or six different times when he makes that sort of statement and I was just like, no, no, that's not what I was thinking.
That wasn't my view on that.
It's incredibly, as a piece of writing, it's, it does look factually at the change of the original power struggle between slave and master to surf and feudal lord to journeyman versus guild master.
And then finally to the modern one, which has been the last couple of hundred years, employee and employer.
It's, it's fantastic that it, it's able to focus on those relationships throughout history, but I will admit it's the,
the emotive and if I'm honest with you dogmatic language used in the, used in the manifesto itself.
Almost gave the impression that Karl Marx or the entirety of history as simply the history of the class struggle or the class war.
So instead of, I'm not, I'm pretty certain you would have, but what's your current understanding of the class war or throughout history.
Obviously, as I understand it, the class war was the working class versus what was the middle class now doesn't exist and the upper class or the aristocrats.
The upper crossed versus the worker.
Yeah. Well, that's it. But like, like the way Karl Marx seems to see it is that he sees what you've just described as just the current adaptation of the class struggle,
whereas he seemed to believe that the class struggle has been happening and it has to a point throughout history. There have always been those who have wanted power over other human beings.
Yeah.
Well, the thing is, we discussed this, it's replete throughout some of the oldest texts in the world is there's always been the monarchy and then the monarchy's friends and then the others, you know,
and like the upper class, the elite and then the minority, who, despite being classed as the minority were actually numerically the majority of society.
Yeah.
Well, it's interesting that. Okay. So the way that.
So, like you said, you had the monarchy, the friends like the oligarchy, and then everyone else, the way that.
So, I'm really sorry about this to our listeners. I've read for a number of times and I'm still struggling to get my head around it. I'll probably come back to it another point.
In the manifesto, it doesn't start by saying, we are this, we want this.
This is how we're going to go about it.
It starts by pointing out the huge successes of the people group that are classed as the bourgeoisie.
Now, annoyingly, as you pointed out yourself, Nick, like the middle class people doesn't exist.
The way that Karl Marx sees it is that the middle class is anybody or the bourgeoisie is anybody who uses their money to influence and control others.
Which in my mind, I get why I've been employed by bad businesses and I've been employed by small bad businesses.
But I don't see the way that I was treated in some of these bad businesses, like some small bad pubs, as I don't see it as a form of inhuman abuse,
which is what Karl Marx saw any use of capital, any use of money to influence the actions, rights or working labor of others as abhorrent is my understanding of what his views are.
He starts in the Communist Manifesto by building up the bourgeoisie, pointing out the huge successes that have happened under the bourgeoisie.
But he simply seems to do this as a way of theatrically blowing up a balloon and then kind of pointing to a people group he calls the pro-teliot.
I might be mispronouncing this here. Sorry, I've literally got the book in front of me. Sorry listeners.
Well, it's interesting, whilst you're looking for the word, I feel that the middle class before they disappeared, they would have been more people trying to become upper class.
So as much as the bourgeoisie, as he put them, were this iconic social form, I feel like they were always aspiring to become the elite, which is where I think he falls short.
I think a lot of what you're describing is almost trying to create an enemy, a common enemy, in order to gain following.
It's easy to create a common enemy using common distaste, reasons why people might unify against a certain way of being or against a certain people by saying,
oh, this is their fault and this is what we've done is we've done this differently and this is how we're better.
So you're going to following, creating that kind of us and them mentality. That's what it sounds like you're kind of getting to.
That's exactly it. I guess I will admit that there are a large number of Karl Marx quotes that I completely agree with.
Like we'll come back to it later, but one of his ones which I find the most beautiful and the most literally the impossible to argue with.
I don't know if someone else is able to argue with this, please let us know. But one quote of his is from each to their ability or sorry from each in comparison to their ability to each according to their need.
It's just basic logic you can't. I don't know. Are you able to find other than my terrible bringing of that or like pronouncing of that like can. Yeah, can you see a hole in that?
No, I think I think that's a very fair way of thinking. I think that's not where the floors lay in Marx work though is it?
No, there would like it. They had to be a pool. There had to be something that he was doing right to gain the following that he gained.
Absolutely. So so Karl Marx was born in Germany. He was he was of Jewish descent, but was secular in his own beliefs. He had a large amount of disdain for religion generally and specifically for the Catholic Church.
Again, that's something which has gone through. So he was ahead of his time and a lot of his sentiments are still held by people today.
He so a rid although he was he is a political theorist. He is a leader of a movement. He was incredibly influential.
But he started off work as a writer for a left wing newspaper. That's how he started his career and that's how he started to get traction.
He then joined a communist group. But from what I can see he spent most of his time working on the writings of this communist group. The Communist Manifesto was originally commissioned in 1848.
He was supposed to be rewritten, translated and reproduced into six languages. It wasn't until much much later when it was re-released in the 1870s.
Now, part of this is... Okay, so all right, I'm not exactly... So this is the annoying thing. I've got some ideas why.
There was a lot of political upheaval in Germany and at several points Karl had to move from one country to another because of literal rulings and persecutions.
One thing I do find weird though is that the communist group which commissioned the Communist Manifesto, which Karl Marx was a leader within, was disbanded by Karl Marx, Karl Marx the following year.
And that's one of the reasons why the Communist Manifesto wasn't produced in the number of languages.
So it's really weird that he did that and one of the books that I'm reading seems not the understanding socialism but the actual Communist Manifesto hardback that I've got in my hand now seems to suggest that the reason why he did that was that he'd started to lose control.
He started to lose control of that communist federation and so he shut it down himself in order to keep control of it.
So I will need to double check my facts before I say any more. There was a huge amount of upheaval and it could be that he noticed that a lot of people were going about things the wrong way and were heading in a direction that would not lead to...
Okay, so right, the word that I was looking up, proletariat, is the word and so the Communist Manifesto separates all of humankind into the bourgeoisie, which represents the middle class, but it's any middle class person who is seeking to dominate others through the use of capital.
And then the proletariat is anybody who works with their hands and produces things through the work of their labour.
Yeah, it's just... It's sort of the simple worker, the manual worker. I want to go back to a point you made earlier actually, where you said that jobs that you'd had didn't feel necessarily like dominance or enslavery,
which was the kind of air that you were going for, which Marx kind of says that people that work for the bourgeoisie, they are essentially their slaves and they're paid off and they're not treated very nicely.
Obviously, Marx was from the 18th, 19th century, 19th century. And how much has employment grown and developed in just in the 20th century, let alone the 19th?
Absolutely true.
So what we experience as employment now in the 21st century is Aion's past, what he would have been referring to back in the 19th century.
Well, you are absolutely right there. I guess the pub jobs to me didn't seem all that different because although we had a dishwasher...
Okay, so if any friends are listening, this is not a particular job that I had in Seven Oaks with a good friend of mine. This is a job that I had in my home village in a small pub, which then went out of business about four months after I started working there.
Due to, well, if I'm honest with you, bad management and just different conditions.
The reason why I see it as this kind of similar job is because although you're right, jobs and labour laws and all of that has moved on,
a number of them didn't really seem to exist like I was paid late quite often.
I was expected to do things which would clearly not be in my job description if my job description had been written down.
All kitchens are required to have a dishwasher.
If the dishwasher breaks down, there's no law saying that they need to immediately fix it.
So for the entirety of the six months I worked in this pub, I was washing up everything by hand, which on the days when the hot water failed wasn't the best.
But you know what, anyway, sorry, moving on from there.
You've actually hit the nail on the head because a number of the things that the Communist Manifesto does demand have actually happened.
And although we may not live in a socialist society or communist society, it's clear that the demand for these things was something that was very real and close to a lot of people's hearts.
And so one of the fantastic things I will say about the Communist Manifesto is that it does seem to have inspired a lot of good.
Like did you know in the 1848 there were lots of people who were against public schooling or just schools generally being available to everyone.
They didn't feel the state should have that much power.
What do you think of that?
I think I've got very conflicting views when it comes to education in the country.
I think there's a right to education for anybody that wants it.
I don't feel it should be enforced in the way that it is and outlined in the way that it is because there's so many different colours of people.
And I don't mean colours in like race.
I mean colours is in the rainbow.
There are so many different types of people that learn in completely different ways. You can't just put them in a black and white school.
Simply this is one way and this is how we do it.
If you don't do it that way then you don't fit in the school.
Which is what the education system is.
I've got four stepchildren, one child of my own, all of whom are completely different to the others.
And there's only one that isn't currently struggling in school.
Not because they're not achieving academically, but because the demands being made of them are ridiculous.
Nine times out of ten.
I will admit that does actually seem to be something that a number of young people that I've interacted with seem to be struggling with.
I was chatting to a couple of secondary schoolers at my church and they were telling me about the amount of homework they've got to do.
And I don't know, it's always hard to tell when people are like exaggerating and stuff.
But it's you know, it seemed real and it also did seem kind of harsh and ridiculous.
Just the sheer number of exercises they are expected to do.
It also be prepared for different subjects.
And this is in like year eight, year nine.
Yeah, I just think that there's a level of education that is necessary.
The basics, maths, English, science.
And then problem solving I think is something that needs to be taught more in school.
And less regurgitation of information.
Learn about this historical event.
Learn about this geological formation.
What's the need for that?
Honestly, what's the need for that?
For a layman, for a normal run of the mill person that's going to leave and do remedial jobs.
And then you have, for lack of a better term, the high achievers that prove their own learning through the basics.
And then branch out into things that they naturally attune themselves with.
You know, I've got a couple of really high achieving kids and they are made to sit through classes such as,
I mean, I've got an autistic daughter who's made to sit through religious studies.
And she really struggles with it because to her, religious studies doesn't make any sense.
She's a very fact driven child.
But she still has to sit through religious studies.
So why can she not apply herself to something like physics or higher level maths?
Which she is really achieving in.
Because that's where her strengths lie.
Why does she have to go through hours of learning in a subject that holds no bearing?
You know?
How old? What year is she?
Because I know she gets to choose your...
She's year 10.
Really? I thought you got to choose your GCSE club.
Okay. So have things changed since the years that...
Your options. You still limit the choices there.
But you can't just say, well, that makes no bloody sense to me so I'm not doing that.
You still have to pick one of these and one of these and one of these.
You know? So you still find yourself doing classes that...
What are her choices?
Because I can understand, religious studies is something a huge number of people struggle with.
If you don't believe in it then you're not going to know.
So religious studies is something that she dropped but she's now having to do like PHSE.
Oh God, general knowledge studies.
Yeah and that to her is not a subject that she's overly happy with.
But she has to do it because she picked art and drama as two of her subjects that she wanted to do.
She's a very creative child but you look at her...
In her math class at the moment she's in year 10 and her math teacher has been setting her A level maths for the past year
and has now run out of work to give her.
She's doing four algebraic expressions in her head.
Stuff that makes me go that hurts, that genuinely hurts.
Like I can do quadratic equations and stuff but not in my head.
I have to write the stuff down you know.
So she's very, very smart, very, very clever but she hates school because she has to go through these subjects
that she had to choose because she chose the things that she liked to do
but she had to fill out a timetable.
So the education system does need to be reformed.
Okay, that's a fair point.
Well it's kind of interesting though that although the system does need reform and does need to change
it is at the time of the communist manifesto.
I'm going to need to double check my facts but like schooling wasn't...
It definitely wasn't enforced the same way it is now
and I don't think it was available everywhere to everyone.
It didn't have the same mandatory thing but it also just plain old didn't exist.
You still had a large number of private schools and public education.
I imagine may have existed in places but didn't exist everywhere.
I will admit it's...
I really enjoyed the manifesto and I really agree with a lot of its principles
in that what it also talks about is something any bourgeois person does
and something unfortunately I think a lot of us do when trying to look or think about business
because of the way that business works.
The moment you stop seeing people as people but see them simply as a unit
which can produce capital through their labour.
Yeah, Karl Marx had a huge amount of disgust for that
and that's something I can definitely get behind just this idea that people aren't people.
Well, the thing is the education system was made compulsory to avoid child labour.
That's something else he was against which I can really get behind.
In the late 19th century it was made compulsory for the younger years
what we would do as primary school I suppose now
to avoid those kids going to the factories.
Yeah, which again at the time of the Communist Manifesto
it was literally saying that he also had hatred for the family unit
because a number of people would use their positions of authority
like their authority over their kids to force their kids into explorative work
as in being brick makers doing the shittier jobs in the factory.
Yeah, and that still exists now. You still get generational work, don't you?
I work in this because my dad did it.
Even down to the sociological aspects of your upbringing
there's so much that is passed down from your elders
which isn't necessarily, for lack of a better term, the right way of thinking
but is passed down as a matter of tradition or a matter of heritage.
More than it is the life lessons that they've learnt, the experience that they've gained.
Yeah, absolutely. That's true. Although the way that Karl Marx,
like so he saw the idea of the bourgeoisie disappearing
and there being no elitism and solely the proletariat becoming the one type of person, the one class
but also the proletariat was supposed to have all this freedom and all this power
because they weren't being oppressed in subtle ways.
Like, do you feel, do you think that people nowadays are oppressed by, well, you know what,
I think yes but I'm going to just ask the question anyway to yourself
and find, get your views on this.
Do you think nowadays we are oppressed by an entrenched class system?
I don't know necessarily the angle you're going for there but I know that I worked in
I'm not digging, I'm just going to general discussion at this point.
I mean, I can only go by my own experience and I know that I worked in the care sector for 14 years
and I've been quite open about the reason I left the care sector
and that is because I described, well this is the private care sector I should point out
and I haven't worked for the NHS at any point during my tenure as a care worker
and the many different roles I did in the sector.
But the care sector is the sector that takes everything it can and gives nothing back.
I got the job, I wanted the job when I started when I was 18
because I wanted to give as much as I was receiving.
So I was being paid work that made sense to me.
I was making a difference to the end of people's lives.
However, I quickly found that companies were making an absolute bomb
off of people like me that were willing to go above and beyond to do absolutely everything
to make that difference.
We were being paid pennies and the company was being paid humongous amounts, ridiculous amounts.
I mean, when I started at 18, the nursing home that I was working in
was taking on average about £1,500 per week per client.
And I was being paid a little over £1,000 per month for what was sometimes 100-hour weeks
because I wouldn't leave a lack of staff on the floor because it was the clients that suffered.
So I would work every hour God sent because they needed me
to work and I was the easy option for them to work.
I did that for 14 years and it took me 14 years to wise up to the fact that it doesn't change in that job.
If there's too many people that are willing to do it, therefore it's never going to change.
Or it's not going to change for a long time.
So I chose to step away and go for a job that I felt I could and you'll know from working with me
I know the limits of my job and I do nothing beyond it.
And that's not me being selfish.
That's me saying my job is this and I will do this.
If what you're asking of me is actually falling within your remit of your job, then no.
I will put that back on you and say kindly, that's your job.
You go do that, I will carry on doing what my job is.
I couldn't do that in the care sector.
Covid was a big one for me because I recently moved to a home.
They knew the history that I had within the sector where I'd been management and a number of different roles.
And Covid hit the home that I was working in.
We ended up down to a skeleton crew of staff.
My manager said, well you've run homes before so if you don't mind you just hold the thought I'm going home.
And it didn't come in again for three months.
I ended up living at the home for 10 days straight.
There was only four members of staff that were working.
And that means that there was only four members of staff that were working throughout the 24 hour period.
Which means that there was only two members of staff on at any one time to support 16 individuals with learning difficulties.
Out of which I think 10 had Covid-19.
I was screaming for help to the super management for days and days.
And it took a resident to die for them to finally give me agency staff and to request help from other homes that were within their company.
Needless to say after we pulled the home out of that hole, I handed my notice in and left the care sector.
Because what they asked of me was not that within my job description.
It was everything they could get out of me.
And what they were paying me was not what I was working.
So I left.
Completely understandable mate.
So does that fall within the question that you were asking?
So yeah, that's so what I was, so the short version of that would have been yes.
Yeah, and that's not, well, my God, that sounds incredibly snarky, but...
I didn't take it that way.
Yeah, sounds like you were being oppressed and you were being abused and a number of employers do do this.
Yes, I was expecting a yes, I wasn't meaning to insult or provoke an explanation of your experiences.
I feel like it deserved it.
What I wanted to show was that this is normal practice.
I worked in one sector and there are multiple where I'm sure there are millions of people around the world
that have experiences akin to what I had and probably worse than what I had.
And yet felt that they had no alternative but to do what they were being asked to do
because of the impact of not doing what they were asked to do.
Yep, completely.
But weirdly enough, there have been a number of high profile court cases to do with the care sector over situations
similar to what you've just described.
So yeah, now completely get there with you.
I guess this is...
That is exactly the sort of thing that Karl Marx was against.
If you've got an audible account or something, I would recommend giving a listen to the Communist Manifesto
and then we can possibly rediscuss this at another time either on the podcast or just over a beer mate.
Happy to...
I think a lot of his points will land home with you from what you've just described there, especially.
Alright.
Okay, so what...
So I think a lot of good...
What I'm going to go back to is in the Manifesto it comes up with a lot of good ideas like...
Like the idea at least of schooling so that kids aren't abused by putting them into exploitative labour.
The idea of no person being able to have the power of capital to behind them to control other people simply through that capital.
And the idea of the...
The idea that paying someone less than the profit or profiting from someone else's labour being abhorrent
are all ideas that were put forward by the Manifesto.
What I kind of struggle with is that Karl Marx seemed to...
Seemed to think that it would all happen very shortly within his lifetime.
And then that we would be in this utopian socialist worldwide society with no nationalism, no difference in race, genders, race, gender,
age, all of that, that everybody would be equal and that we would all have freedom through our combined work.
All of this is amazing ideas but it's just it didn't seem to happen and all of the...
There have been some good attempts at communism but there have also been a number of less successful ones.
The writers in the preface of the Communist Manifesto that I'm currently writing, the guy Gareth Steadman,
gives a good commentary on it and he points out that just as you've got the Crusades, the Reconquista,
a number of negative things kind of blotting Christianity's history, he kind of compared Lenin and Stalin
and Chairman Mao to blots on the history of communism in the idea that it's a good idea which can work
but just there are clear examples in history of when it's been done wrong.
Well, we've covered this in a previous podcast but what's the main point of failure with communism?
The main point of failure is to learn from it.
No, the main point of failure, the reason communism fails.
Oh, because people are bad.
Because people are fallible.
Because people are reasonably corrupted.
And we've covered this in our politics podcast where I said the main reason why human society ends up,
or what, it ends up in a kind of hierarchical society and nothing's ever even, is because humans are always corruptible
and power and money corrupts.
So communism isn't going to be exempt from that.
The idea of it is fantastic.
But you add the human element into it and you have a fallible system.
It's the same with capitalism.
Like the idea of earning for what you do, that works until you add the human element to it and then it gets manipulated into what we see in society now.
Yeah, okay, sorry, I'd forgotten about that conversation. My memory is not quite as sharp as your own.
Okay, well, I've covered a number of points here.
I did find it interesting that what Karl Marx, he suggests as a bourgeoisie socialist, covers what I consider to be a number of good people trying to do good things when he talks about the arrangers of charities,
the funders of hospitals, the philanthropists, anybody who still has connections with the bourgeoisie but is trying to do good within that system,
he still saw that as a mistake because he believed that the entire system was bad, so you shouldn't try and make a bad system better.
You should reorganize it entirely. But it was interesting that because of his emotive use of language and of the very kind of passionate reading done by Charles Armstrong,
that it almost, it just, yeah, the sentences seem to be done with contempt for even those trying to make society better in a different way.
Okay, so I've got a couple of quotes here from Karl Marx and I'll skip the first one that we've already covered from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.
And we'll just see some of these are just literally a little bit are going to seem a little bit abstract and out of place, but we'll just go for it.
Okay, so the first. So another one here is the meaning of peace is the absence of opposism. I'm sorry, of opposition to socialism.
I'm not sure socialism is the bit that goes on the end of that. But maybe you just drop the socialism bit off and you go the the the meaning of peace is the absence of opposition.
Yeah, no, again, like, this is something that I've felt with a lot of his rhetoric is that it had almost become esoteric. Yeah, like self referencing.
Always trying to bring it back to his. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
So great ideals, but always had to make it about that point to give it relevance.
Exactly. Okay.
This is okay this one I'm not even sure what this is taken from but moments are the elements of profit.
I mean, I can understand that times got value by out of context that quote doesn't really make sense to me but that's not. That's not Karl's fault. That's me grabbing a load of quotes from the internet expecting them to make sense.
Right, you know what? Are you able other than other than the fact that time that people's time has value? Are you able to see any sense in that?
I think especially in the capitalist regime that we're in, you think about the different holidays that we have, they try to exploit for profit.
So obviously Christmas is a big one, a massive money maker. But the way that I see that is you look at a supermarket and that's the way you can see how moments make profit.
Because the minute Christmas has gone, that's it. You see the Easter stuff in the supermarkets.
And the minute Easter's done, you start seeing the next thing. And then the next thing.
And you're like, but so what they're trying to do is make you look for the next moment of freedom, the next moment of joy. And now you need to buy all this stuff for that. You know, then it will, I suppose after Easter, it'll be the summer holidays.
And they'll be like, oh, like, don't forget your beach towel and your bucket and spade and every time you go to the supermarket, you know, or if the football's on at the World Cup's on it in the summer, then naturally there's like 20,000 beers in the fridge when you first walk in.
And England flags all over the place. And so they just exploit everything they can that's going on in order to gain that financial element from you.
Yeah, no, that's true. That's true. It's kind of almost predatory and it bites very much.
Yeah, I mean, I find supermarkets very predatory anyway. I would like to think of supermarkets as a necessary means to distribute produce, but it's not that at all.
The amount of wastage that they have is ridiculous. There are people starving in the world and yet the wastage that comes out of supermarkets is sickening.
Anyway, strong case.
No, no, no, no, no, no, that's fair point.
Right, there are some here which have just clearly been mistranslated. So I'm just going to skip a couple which have been mistranslated here.
Okay, so here's another one. The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.
Yeah, yeah, fair, fair.
I mean, I know a number of people that just buy stuff because they're like, oh, that's really cool.
They have to do this and they end up with an abundance of things that are going to be amazing in that one scenario and then never, never got it to hand.
Yeah, because, right, because they've got so many gadgets which are very, very specific. It means when that specific situation happens.
I can't find it amongst all the rest of their stuff. It's not like having a Swiss army knife that does every job you could possibly want it to.
You've got every individual tool for that specific job.
I mean, my mum, I can remember, sorry if my mum's listening to this, but my mum was a massive QVC fan when I was growing up and she'd buy, like, they were such salespeople as well which is where I kind of get the distaste for anybody kind of trying to push sell now.
I used to watch QVC. My mum would be watching it like so much and you could feel the push sell from the salespeople on there telling you all the different reasons why you needed this product that they were trying to sell.
My mum was such a sucker for it. She'd buy the most useless crap that she'd used once. She bought a Hoover once, a Hoover, not from QVC. This was from a salesperson that turned up at the door.
And I swear to God it lasted about six months. She'd run out of filters for it and she never used it again, but it cost her a freaking fortune just because this guy was so charismatic and could sell a pen to an office supplier.
Yeah, yeah. Completely understand.
Okay, that's a fair point. Like it is, it is frustrating that like some people just do have the gift of the gab and just the amount of control that they can exercise over someone simply through charm is ridiculous.
Yeah, I think it's about, I think you've got to have the brain that allows you to look past, for lack of a better term, propaganda.
And so much of advertising is propaganda. It's do this because it's what you need, it's what you want.
You know, and the reality of it is, no, I definitely don't need it. I definitely don't want it. I have a million means to do the job that you're trying to tell me that thing can do without the need of that thing.
Just because that thing can do the job doesn't mean I need it. It just removes my ability to think for myself and troubleshoot the problem when it arises.
Hmm. Not a fair point. All right. One final one.
Oh, well, no, I will do these last three. Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.
Which I think is literally one of the last words or one of the last lines in the communist manifesto.
Well, I like to coin a phrase. I have coined a phrase which I use time and time again, which is please remember that you are one droplet in an ocean.
You are not the tears on your face.
Ah. Okay. So like look, try and remember your position in history, the effect that you have on your other people rather than simply your emotions.
Is that what you're saying with that? Don't muddle yourself down in your own misery.
Remember that you are sat surrounded by millions and millions of people exactly the same as you who if you all band together, the power that the ocean has over one drop is immeasurable.
Try to remember that. No, that's a fair point. Fair point.
Okay. Next one. If you can cut the people off from their history, then they can be easily persuaded.
We've covered a lot about human history recently and how important I feel it is to know where you've been, to know where you're going.
So I think I've made my views on human history and its importance quite clear.
That's fine. I think I could quite agree with that.
There's so much misinformation when it comes to history as a general rule that makes it so confusing to know who you are.
That's fair. I also completely agree.
With a number of sweatshops in the Philippines, the people that they get working there, they've kind of got this factory in the middle of nowhere.
So everyone is away from their families, has to sleep on site.
They employ a large number of 18-year-old girls, essentially, simply because they've found that they can bully them into accepting extra shifts or whatever, simply because they don't have the support of their family.
I feel that history, family gives people a sense of identity, but also so does history. I think if you do displace people from their history, they can still find other forms of strength, but you have robbed them of one of them.
I completely agree with you there.
Right. The final one I'm going to go for. The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.
Mahatma Gandhi. He said, be the change you want to see in the world.
Absolutely. I think that's a fair point. I would agree with both of those statements in that you do have to have an action behind your or following on from your beliefs.
I do find it somewhat frustrating that Karl Marx said that, but then also pointed out that it was up to the working class to free themselves.
And when it came to his own talking about his own successes, one of his largest successes he felt was when he was invited to talk on a subject, when people started changing the subject to something he didn't want to talk about, he got up and left.
That's me done. I'm out.
Yeah. But the way that he talks about it, as if he just saved the world himself through that simple action, but again, that could be the reading of it by Charles Armstrong and putting more emphasis on certain words.
But it was very vitriolic of how when I was asked to speak about this thing, I took great pleasure in going back to my drawing room.
It was just like, but you've achieved, you may have achieved something there, but I don't think you've achieved nearly as much as you think you have by leaving.
Okay. All right, well, thank you very much listeners for listening to this. I realize once again, I've tackled with something that I've learned has clearly been.
I now see all the more is clearly beyond my ability to comprehend. I would recommend the Communist Manifesto, either as a listen.
It's about an hour and a half long, with about 30 minutes of Karl Marx quotes afterwards. It is very interesting to see how this document has changed society as I definitely feel a number of the things which are put forward have been accepted by society as a whole.
It's also interesting to kind of see how every single written work does age as there will be a number of times when Karl is talking and saying, ah, but this objection I hear you cry and you will go, well, no, I'm not a German middle class person in the 1850s.
So that's not where I was coming from. So it's, it's very, it's a very thought provoking read. It will definitely if you are using your money to actively to exploit others, I think it will honestly hit you in the heart.
It's made me more aware like I was.
Well, you know what, like, I was thinking about possibly trying to buy a property and then renting out to people after reading this book, I'm definitely not doing that.
Yeah, it's it's an amazing read. It won't give you every single answer on socialism. It won't make you understand every single class struggle, but I feel it is a very good if not a tool first step to get over and I'd fully recommend it.
I think historically everything like I said at the beginning of the podcast, every form of social structure has had its place and has existed as a part of our own evolution.
You have to understand them to know where the next step is and where it's not.
Absolutely. I'll get behind that. I simply wish I knew what was coming next. Anyway, on that note, have a good night, everybody.
Take care, guys. Bye bye.