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The Fatal Failure of Marxist Leninism · Mechonomist Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: So in Marxist theory,
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: there's an argument that the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: labor it contains.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the labor is determined by the societal value attached to that labor.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that concept is called socially necessary labor time.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And for Marx, that's what drives capitalist development.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Marxist-Leninism, unfortunately, doesn't start with the critique of socially necessary labor time.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: It takes it as a given,
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: and it takes the capitalist commodity as a given,
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: and builds socialism based on what capital values.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the fatal flaw here.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: of Marxist-Leninism is that it values the same thing that capital does,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: which is the capitalist commodity.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Whether or not China is capitalist or whether or not the USSR was capitalist in its core,
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: it was state capitalism or socialism is irrelevant.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's an argument about the definition of terms.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: with the USSR was that it valued the same things as capital did,
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: except workers in the United States had to deal with an asshole boss.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And they were driving a 1978 Pontiac Trans Am,
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: whereas workers in the USSR had to deal with an asshole boss and they couldn't get
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: the consumer goods that people in the United States could.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's ultimately why the USSR failed.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: It couldn't deliver on the promises that it made.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know, to the people of the USSR.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And China has solved this problem by delivering the consumer goods to their society
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: to keep their people happy.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: But in any of these mass society situations, the value is the commodity.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Here's things that aren't valued that are not considered to produce value within
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: either of these systems,
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  SPEAKER_00: child care,
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  SPEAKER_00: elder care,
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  SPEAKER_00: cooking food,
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: cleaning house.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And for us, you know, our movement here in the South.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: We want to rethink what we value and redefine what counts as work.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: So in Marx's theory,
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: there was productive labor,
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: which was that labor which produces a commodity,
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: and reproductive labor,
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  SPEAKER_00: which was that labor which supported the production of commodities,
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  SPEAKER_00: such as childcare,
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: housework,
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: cooking food,
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: that sort of stuff.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: To us, we need to value the reproductive labor more
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: than the productive labor because reproductive labor is how you create a society.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Giving birth is the ultimate form of labor.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's called labor.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the creation of a new human being.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And all of reproductive labor is about maintenance of life.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And to us, that's what society should value is the maintenance and perpetuation of life on this planet.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Marxist-Leninism fails to do this,
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: as does capitalism,
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: because they take as an assumption and as an axiom that socially necessary labor
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: time is the producer of value.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we say the producer of value is that which creates and maintains life.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And these two things are very different in a lot of different ways.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway,
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: so that's my argument for the ultimate fatal failure of Marxist-Leninism and why it
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: fails to produce any sort of new society.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to y'all later.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Peace y'all.