The Art of the steal - The Social Situation Ep.3 by @beneficencetv on 3Speak
▶️ Watch on 3Speak --- ✅Support Our Channel 👉Cashapp: $BeneficenceTV 👉Ko-Fi donation: 👉Patreon: For the next episode of The Social Situation I analyze the American political oligarchy and apply ...
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Have you ever wondered why American politics is so funny? 2016 has escalated into laughs, from awkward air kissing to sniffing. The Donald's not allergic to kids, he actually signed one, but threatened to reassign a crying baby. Don't worry about that baby, I love babies. A minute later... Actually, I was only kidding, you can get the baby out of here. What's your name? Name. And then there was the childlike delight in balloons. It seemed like he'd seen balloons for the first time of his life. Why this dichotomy of left and right often plays out as nonsense. At one rally, get this thing out of here, will you? Trump attacked his teleprompter. He publicly humiliated. Like this stupid mic. His microphone. Stupid Mike keeps popping. Remember when Hillary barked into her mic? And then this happened at a Trump rally. This is something you shouldn't do. What was that? Is that a dog? Hillary! Uh-oh. That's Hillary! Nonsense with little to no impact on the material conditions of everyday working people. That's a good question. I ask myself that tool, why can't I be rich? Look at me, I'm dirty, I work 10, 12 hours a day, I'm going to take care of my family, and at the end of the week, I'm broke. Have you ever wondered why characters like Donald Trump and other celebrities have become increasingly more attractive compared to career politicians? And I'm that ballot will be their names and mine. As you probably could have guessed by this moment. I have decided in 2020 to run for president. Get ready to take a deep dive into the corrupt world of politics, as we use a Marxist lens to analyze the two political parties and their dialectical effects on the material conditions of the working class. People don't even realize that we're at war right now. We're in a social war, a spiritual war, an economical war. We're supposed to be working together, you know, the United States of America. Why do we have it in our brains that they're the only two choices? Because they've made us think that way, and the media makes you think that way, because they don't cover anybody else. Here, on the social situation. I thank you for your question, but I have to say we're capitalists. So let me start. A very famous and very effective political leader once responded to his fellow members of his movement who had complained that the mass of people that they were trying to organize was hard to organize. were unhappy, but they didn't do anything. Decade after decade went by. And so he responded to them, and he said, you know, it's true. For decades, nothing happens. And then in a few weeks, decades happen. I think we're in a few weeks. Welcome back to the social situation. I'm your host. the benefactor. Today I'd like to take a deep dive into our corrupt political system. I'll show you a direct link between the lack of proper representation for working class taxpayers versus the overwhelming representation for the minority business owner class, leading to a stagnation in progress amongst legislation that directly translates into deteriorating living conditions and a dwindling of the middle class. To do this, we must first apply the dialectical analysis on material. If you've watched my previous episodes, I explain the dialectical analysis and how it is a scientific lens which you can use as a tool to analyze and understand aspects of the world. To summarize, in classical philosophy, idealism is the process of analyzing ideas in order to understand the world. It states that to understand the world, you must first understand the ideas that come from it. Marx was a philosopher. He comes out of a school of thought that believed that ideas were the supreme achievement of human beings. And so the world is really shaped by something prior to the world, namely ideas. So the notion is, sometimes called idealism, that the real world is the product of ideas. And if you want to really understand the real world, go to the ideas that make it what it is. Marx rejected that. For him, the material is just as important as the ideal. In Marxian philosophy, Marx took this one step further. He said that to understand the world, you have to understand the ideas, yes, but you must also understand the material world and the interactions between the two, or the back and forth between ideas and material. Not just how ideas shape our material reality, but also how our material reality shapes our ideas. If you want to see where the material comes from, it's shaped by ideas. But, and here comes his radicalism, it runs the other way, too. The ideas don't come from nowhere. They come out of the real world. The ideas we have as people have to do with the real material problems we have as human beings and how we solve them. Where do we get our food? Where do we get our shelter? How do we get protection as little children from the elements, from our parents? All of these real material matters of life and survival. are shaping our ideas every bit as much as our ideas shape the reality. Dialectical Materialism is the name for a point of view that says, if you want to understand the world, you need to look at how ideas shape the material, but the other way too, and the two have interact. That's the way to see the world. And for that reason, when it came to explaining the problems of capitalism, he never could, and never did, suggest it's all because of the ideas of people about capitalism. It's the real way human beings make their food, solve their clothing problems, their relationship problems, that shape their ideas as much, and he was going to analyze capitalism through that lens of the interaction of ideas and concrete material reality back and forth. Marx uses this scientific lens to objectively understand complex systems by analyzing the interactions between two opposing forces and observing the created changes over time. With this dialectical lens, you can break down and better understand more complex systems, from political economy all the way to science and technology. Before we begin to break down and analyze the political oligarchy within the United States, I must first go over the basics of Marx's labor theory of value and how it relates to exploitation. This exploitation is understood by examining the different kinds of value, such as the surplus value every worker generates with their labor input. Cracking the economic code with the labor theory of value. The labor theory of value, proposed by Karl Marx, suggests that the value of a commodity is determined by the socially necessary labor time required to produce it. According to this theory, the more labor that goes into producing a commodity, the more value it holds. To fully understand this theory, it's important to distinguish between two key concepts, embodied labor and living labor. Embodied labor refers to the past labor that is congealed or embedded in a commodity. It represents the cumulative labor that has gone into the production process, including the raw materials, tools, and machinery used, as well as the labor required to create and maintain them. Think of the hammer needed for the laborer to make that chair. This concept acknowledges that commodities are not solely the product of immediate or living labor, but also encompass the labor that is stored and preserved in them. Kind of like how potential energy can be stored in a system. Just as potential energy is the stored energy that can be converted into kinetic energy to perform work. Embodied labor represents the cumulative labor that has been invested in the various components of a commodity. This labor is transformed into value during the production process when living labor interacts with the inputs of production. In this sense, labor cannot be created nor destroyed. Like particle physics, labor also follows the principles of conservation of energy. Like energy, labor can only be transformed from one form to another, from embodied labor to the value it represents. On the other hand, living labor refers to the labor that is currently performed by workers in the production process. It is the direct exertion of human effort and skill in transforming raw materials and utilizing the means of production to create new commodities. Living labor is the active force that adds new value to the inputs and brings the embodied labor to life. It is through this labor that the final product is shaped and brought to market. Think of yourself, the human employee. As the living labor that utilizes the hammer to make the chair, the labor theory of value highlights the dialectical relationship between embodied labor and living labor. Embodied labor represents the past accumulation of labor, while living labor represents the present labor input that generates value. These two forms of labor can be seen as potential and kinetic energy. Only when potential energy is transformed into kinetic energy will you get any useful work, from an engineering perspective. The value of a commodity is determined by the combination of these two forms of labor. The socially necessary labor time required to produce a commodity takes into account both the embodied labor already invested in the materials and means of production, as well as the living labor added during the current production process. As you can see, this represents a more scientific approach than the utility theory of value. which is a mainstream theory that suggests value is placed subjectively on personal utility. After all, just try measuring how much pleasure or utility ice cream gives you. The answer to that is subjective, compared to asking the question how much labor was used to make that ice cream. An objective approach at examining the underlying variables, which ultimately leads to a better understanding of prices. When using science to analyze complex systems, you must look at objective variables that can be quantified, not subjective ones left up to personal interpretation. I must emphasize that the labor theory of value is not a theory of prices. It is a theory of value. This theory of value does not operate on the premise of predicting or determining market prices directly. Instead, it provides a framework for understanding the underlying source of value and commodities. Prices in a capitalist economy are influenced by various factors, such as supply and demand, market competition, and subjective valuation. However, the labor theory of value offers insights into the social relations and exploitative nature of capitalist production. It is not used to determine prices, but to resolve paradoxes of traditional economic theories such as the utility theory of value. In the utility theory of value, the value of a commodity is based on the amount of utility that commodity has to the individual. In this utility theory, a paradox arises when considering water as one of the most useful resources on the planet for life and its relatively low market value. In contrast, a diamond has limited utility compared to their high market value. This is the water diamond paradox, and when analyzing things through a Marxist lens, you can successfully resolve this contradiction. Because if prices are governed more by utility, rather than labor, then water would clearly have more market value than diamonds. By simply quantifying the amount of labor that has been input into a commodity, you can begin to see how labor directly correlates with value, which can then be used to analyze the more complex idea of price. Price represents the amount of money a commodity can be exchanged for in the market, while value refers to the socially necessary labor time required to produce that commodity. meaning that the value of a product is determined by the amount of labor put into making it, regardless of its market price, but that value can be useful in determining that price, like a fractal, where one part represents the whole. So does labor, value, and price. By considering these concepts of embodied and living labor, we can grasp the dynamic interplay between the past accumulation of labor and the present labor input. In this context, my theories of incorporating the concept as above so below into the social sciences suggests that there might be a similar underlying pattern or relationship between labor, value, and price at various levels. Therefore, all of creation, from galaxies, to planets, to elements, all resonate in unison with a collective chord referred to by our ancestors as above so below. This principle embodies the truth that there is always a correspondence between the laws and phenomena of the various planes of being and life. By exploring this analogy further, there might be common principles or dynamics to consider that operate at both the macro and micro-levels within capitalist systems. This understanding allows for a more comprehensive analysis of the value-forming process and the exploitation of labor within capitalist systems. Just as a fractal pattern repeats itself across different scales, the interaction between labor, value, and price could potentially manifest in similar ways across different levels of socioeconomic organization. A side note here is that Marx's labor theory of value is not original. He based his theory of value off of classical economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo, who were using it to defend capitalism. However, Marx extended and modified their theories in significant ways, Smith and Ricardo believed that the value of an item was determined by the amount of labor put into making it. Marx expanded on this idea by emphasizing the importance of the average amount of time society deems necessary for producing something. Think of baking a cake. If a cake takes an average of one hour to bake, the labor time necessary to produce that cake is one hour. According to Marx's labor theory of value, the value of the cake would be based on that average time. Now, let's say someone invents a new baking technique that cuts the baking time in half. The socially necessary labor time for producing a cake would now be reduced to 30 minutes. As a result, the value of cakes produced using this new technique would be determined based on this reduced labor time. Marks also introduced the concept of surplus value. Surplus value is the difference between the value of the goods or services produced by the workers and the wages they receive. To make money. to come away with more than they threw in. There's no magic here. They haven't overcome the laws of thermodynamics if they understand that you don't get out more than you put in. Well, what happened to how? Well, they're not getting out more than they're putting in. What they're getting out is what they put in, the raw materials, the workers, the technology. and they get out what those things can produce. But what they can produce is more than what they give to their employees as their income. And that more, which they like to call profit, is why they're in business. They want to get that more from this situation, which they do. And that's why they're the employer. That's why they're in the position of deciding when it's profitable to hire someone and what it isn't. That's why capitalism basically holds all of us that are employees hostage. The boss is always in the following relationship to the worker. If you're the boss, you want to get more of the worker and give me less. And the worker very quickly understands. The name of the game for him or her is to get as much out of you as possible and spend the maximum amount of time imaginable of the best. This means that workers produce more value than they are paid in wages, and capitalists benefit from this extra value. Marx argued that this creates a conflict between the working class and the capitalists in a capitalist system. that worker is using his labor to increase the value of a commodity by utilizing the hammer to build the chair. The chair can then be sold by the capitalist for more than the cost to make it. The capitalist strives to increase the difference between labor input and the amount of compensation for making the chair. This is called maximizing profits, and it always comes at the expense of the people who are the ones generating the surplus value. This is called a fundamental opposition of interests. It is a bizarre way of organizing production by putting people who don't trust and hate and struggle against each other. And you know what it does? It produces lots of grotesque in their fleshness. You know what the word sabotage comes from, the French word. Sabotage is a wooden shoe in French. And if a worker was angry at the boss, which he usually is, what he would do is take the Sabotage, and stick it in the machine, messing it up, and that's called sabotage. That's why you have that word, okay? Workers are always doing that kind of thing, because they're angry. Bosses know that. In fact, bosses usually assume you're angry at them, even if you are. And then they spend a lot of money. hiring people with my wife as a psychotherapist to come up with what kind of music to pipe into the workplace to distract you from the anger they think you feel. By reaching 75% refinement on Sienna, you have earned for you and your fellow refiners a five-minute music dance experience. Hellie, please approach the MDE cart. You may choose one genre and one accessory. The workers generate the surplus value while the capitalist exploits their labor and doesn't actually generate value themselves, reminding us that within every capitalist business is a king or queen. Ironic that we spent so much energy trying to escape feudalism only to install kings within miniature kingdoms, techno-futelistic platforms, where the CEO is commander and chief of their own personal sovereign corporal country. It's America, brother. We don't do, Kings. Oh, we do. We do. Just call them something else. What we're recommending is finding significant efficiencies by laying off the people at the bottom of the company and paying more to the people at the top. Hey, that's me! Yes! With the money signs? Yes. It's me at the top! Marx's labor theory of value was not about determining prices. It was part of his larger analysis of capitalism. He used the theory to criticize capitalism by highlighting contradictions that inherently generate inequality and lead to periodic economic crises. Due to the exploitation of workers from capitalist that extract more value than they pay in wages, Smith and Ricardo focused more on efficient markets and the factors that determine value in capitalism. Marx's theory expanded upon the ideas of Smith and Ricardo, providing a critical perspective on capitalist exploitation and the inherent contradictions of the system. He emphasized the concept of surplus value, which highlighted how workers are often paid less than the value they create, leading to their exploitation. Addition to his scientific analysis of capitalism, Marx also called for a revolutionary change in the economic system to address these issues. His ideas aim to challenge the existing order and create a more equitable society. Unfortunately, his revolutionary ideas often get conflated with his objective analysis of capitalism, which is simply analyzing these areas of concern, rather than taking a stance on what should be done about these concerns. Because Karl Marx died before he could finish his work, he emphasized the importance of advocating for workers' rights. but did not provide an exhaustive blueprint for the exact economic structure necessary for transition. However, through his theoretical framework of Marxism, he laid the foundations for a society based on what he called communism or a cooperative community -based society. This challenged the existing order of capitalism, which exists as an individualist competition-based society. I'm going to break down some of the terms we use in this show to give you a better foundation of knowledge and understanding of Marxism…