YouTube video transcript

All right, now what's amazing about Marx is that today we say he's wrong. Right? Communism happened in the Soviet Union and happened in China, but it happened in Europe and United States where Marx said it would happen first because Germany was more industrialized than Russia or China. Okay, does that make sense? That's what we say. If you think about it deeply, okay,

Marx is right. After World War II, every society, every industrial society to some extent adopted the ideals of communism. Does that make sense? We call this socialism and not communism, but basically it adhere to, to the thinking of Marx, which is to make the worker the heart and center of your society. And why did they do that after World War II?

Exactly. Okay, because workers create value.

Money doesn't create any value. Money just creates more money. Okay, it's speculative, but the workers create value. They're productive. And therefore you have to treat your workers properly. So in America and in Europe, workers became the heart and center of your society. And the workers, through unions, could demand political reforms. And so off society was geared towards making the lives of the middle class, the working class better. That's why you had excellent health care, great public schools,

cheap universities.

Okay? So the 50s and 60s and 70s was basically the peak

of society for the working class. But in the 80s,

we start to change this. Why?

Why would, why would you want to change the system? It's a great system. Right? Marx is right. Having the worker as the heart and center of your society, as the central organizing unit of society makes a lot more sense than having money as the heart and center. Okay? But starting in the 80s, we start to go back to money. Why?

Production to sustain. And they want more. Excuse me? Like they have the production necessary for society, so they want more. Who wants more?

Yes, exactly. So what happened in the 80s is something called the revolt of the elite.

Okay? In other words, the problem with having a society based on a worker is it becomes too egalitarian, too equal. Right? But if you're like the elite, you don't want equality. You want difference. You want to have power and money in your hands. Does it make sense? So the revolt of the elite happened in the 80s. And this is what we call in the United States the Reagan Revolution. Okay? The Reagan Revolution. The beginning of neoliberalism, free market capitalism. And in Britain it was called Thatcherism. Okay? Margaret Thatcher, the Thatcher Revolution. And so now you need to transition away from the worker to something else, okay? Another ideology that allows the elite to amass power. Okay? So just to show you how radical this revolution was in the 1970s, okay, 1970s, if you were a CEO, the head of a company, okay, you were making on average US$1 million a year. That's pretty good, right? That's really good money. And that $1 million was more than 20 times the worker,

okay? And that's pretty reasonable. Today the average CEO in United States makes $20 million a year. And that is 200 to 300 times more than the average worker in the company. Does that make sense? So

in the 80s, inequality start to explode, right? And so they were transitioning from the worker to a new organizing unit called the consumer.

So they needed to destroy the working class, the middle class. And the way they did it was by introducing a new concept called, called the consumer, okay? So in the 50s, 60s and 70s, the government promised you a good job if you were a member of a society, if you were a citizen, I promise you a good job that you would have for the rest of your life, okay? So in the 80s, the government said, I promise you that you have low prices and a wide selection of goods, okay? Does that make sense?

All right, so this sounds like a subtle shift going from the worker to the consumer, okay? But what this meant was a revolution in society, a revolution in politics. So remember that an example, the worker, the worker has to have political consciousness in order to protect his or her rights, in order to organize and unify and push for favorable political reforms, okay? That's what the worker must do, okay? But now let's think about the mentality of the consumer. And to do this, let's do another thought experiment. And the thought experiment, experiment is this. Everyone in the school, about 500 people,

I decide to give everyone US$1 million. Okay? So everyone in the school has exactly US$1 million

to spend. What happens now?

Think about this. What happens now? Use your imagination.

What happens? What's the first thing you do?

What's the first thing you do?

I've given you a million dollars. What do you do with it?

Well, the first thing you do is buy something, right? What do you Want to buy?

$1,000,000 is a lot of money. What do you want to buy now?

You buy a house, right? That's great. That's great. Purchase. Then what do you do? Then what do you do?

Okay, first thing is not buys a house. Then, Then what does he do?

Excuse me? Buy furniture. Then what does he do? There's something that he must do that's very important. What? What does he buy? The house. What does he want to do?

He wants to take pictures and post on social Media, right? So everyone sees it on social media. Then you see this now has this huge house in Beijing with lots of fancy furniture. What do you do now?

You also want to buy a house, but what kind of house? A bigger house, right? And then what do you do?

You also post pictures, okay? Then how do other people feel?

You think this is funny? Okay? But this happens all the time. So very quickly what happens in the school?

And yeah, you all spend your money and you all go into debt, right? Because you're in competition with each other to buy the biggest thing. And $1 million is a lot of money, but it's not enough to buy everything, right? So you go into debt, you borrow more money to buy more things. And then what happens?

And then what happens?

How do you guys feel about each other? Do you guys have lunch together? Do you guys have dinner together? Do you guys like to share homework together?

You guys hate each other, right? At the end of the day, what will happen is you all go into debt and you all hate each other, right? So that's consumerism. This is what consumerism is. Consumerism creates a competition in society for prestige, okay? To see who can post the nicest social media pictures. This leads to the individualization

or the optimization

of you, okay? In other words, you are now unable

to act together. You don't want to organize, you to don't want. You don't want to act in solidarity, okay? And ultimately, this means that

you develop economic logic, okay? And what is economic logic? It's to see the world only through the lens of capital.

Does that make sense? So when you. When you see someone and you. You might like, okay, well, do I want to date this person? You don't ask, oh, is this person a nice person? You. You ask yourself, how much money does this person have? Okay? Do you understand? You use economic logic in order to understand the world and to reason and analyze the world, okay? Now let me ask you this question today. Is this how China works? Is this how the world works? The answer is yes, okay? Are you like this?

Yes. You are like this, okay? You've been brainwashed into thinking that this is the only way to behave and to think. You're in school. Why are you in school?

So you get a good job. Why? To make money so you can buy things, okay? You understand? That's how you all think. But there are different ways to think about school, right? You're like, I'm in school to learn, to open my mind, to have an imagination, to think critically about the world, right? And that was the way we thought about school when the workers were dominant. But now that consumers are dominant, all we think about is how do I get a good job? How do I buy a bigger house? Because I want to post it on social media. Okay, so if you think about this, what this really is is the perfection

of slavery.

Does it make sense?

What does this phrase mean? The perfection of slavery?

Yeah, he becomes a slave of the money. But. But what? Why is this perfect?

Yes. Okay, you understand if you're a slave, you rebel, right? But you don't know you're a slave. And you like this, you choose this, then you will never rebel. Okay, so the consumerism is the perfection of slavery. Okay. And. And that's why Francis Fukuyama thinks that consumerism is the end of history. Because it is a system that achieves what the elites want and the masses are unwilling and unable to protest and rebel. Okay, does that make sense? It's a perfect system.