Communism As Capitalism's Weapon

The ordinary story says the twentieth century was a struggle between two polar opposites: capitalism on one side, communism on the other. The lecture begins by making that picture answer for China. A communist state reforms in the 1980s and becomes deeply capitalist Source trail 0:001:26 Today, we discuss communism, Marxism. We will discuss what it is, where did it come from, and why did it succeed. Now, the 20th century had the Cold War, and so that was an ideological struggle between capitalism and co...That was also a very violent process. But in China, communism transitioned into capitalism pretty easily, pretty quickly, and extremely successfully, okay? And in fact, you could say that today, China is very much a cap... without the kind of violent rupture that marked feudalism giving way to capitalism or Catholic Europe giving way to another order.

So the dialectic is false Source trail 1:26 That was also a very violent process. But in China, communism transitioned into capitalism pretty easily, pretty quickly, and extremely successfully, okay? And in fact, you could say that today, China is very much a cap... . Communism and capitalism may be more similar than different. The sharper claim is not merely that they coexist, but that communism is a creation of capitalism, a weapon aimed at capitalism's real enemies Source trail 1:26 That was also a very violent process. But in China, communism transitioned into capitalism pretty easily, pretty quickly, and extremely successfully, okay? And in fact, you could say that today, China is very much a cap... .

Those enemies are king, church, nation, and democracy Source trail 2:383:53 is that rather than power in the hands of the capitalist, power is in the hand of the king, okay? And what a king often does is redistribute capital in a way that the capitalists don't care about. That is more fear. So...So theocracy is also a major enemy of capitalism. Then you also have nationalism. Okay? So nationalism is the idea of loyalty to your people, loyalty to your nation. For capitalism, that's a problem, okay? Because capit... . Kings can cancel debts and redistribute land. Religion teaches that money is spiritually dangerous. Nationalism blocks capital from flowing wherever return is highest. Democracy lets workers vote to redistribute wealth. Communism attacks all four.

The party replaces the monarch, but the party is still an oligarchy. Religion is abolished and money is what remains. National identity is subordinated to class identity. Democracy is distrusted because workers are said to have false consciousness and therefore need a vanguard to lead them. Capitalism cannot openly destroy these older loyalties. Communism can. Source trail 4:596:24 We call this socialism. So you think about it, the enemy of capitalism is not communism, it's these four other things. You actually think about it, okay? Communism is working with capitalism to destroy all four of these...The class consciousness is more important than national identity, right? Now democracy. No, no, no. This is bad too, right? Because workers cannot defend their rights. Workers have false consciousness. Workers have been...

That is why China matters twice. First it raises the puzzle; then it becomes evidence. The Cultural Revolution destroys religion, tradition, and cultural identity. Afterward, in Jiang's telling, China becomes capitalist and then hyper-capitalistic. The virus did not kill capital. It killed the inherited antibodies. Source trail 6:248:00 The class consciousness is more important than national identity, right? Now democracy. No, no, no. This is bad too, right? Because workers cannot defend their rights. Workers have false consciousness. Workers have been...China had the fastest growth rate, economic growth rate in the world. How did that happen? Okay? So I'm not saying this is true. I'm saying, like, this is something for us to think about, all right? All right. So let us...

Marx's biography is then made suspicious. He writes in Britain, the most capitalist country of the nineteenth century. He lives better than an impoverished revolutionary should. Engels's money comes from an industrialist father. The question is not proof; Jiang explicitly calls the larger thesis speculative. The question is why capitalist Britain and capitalist money keep appearing Source trail 9:0410:04 He wrote most of his works in a British library, in the British Museum. So why did the British authorities allow him to do that? That's a question for us, right? Britain is the most capitalist country in the world at th...They had a nice house in Britain. So the question is, where did he get his money from? Well, what they say is he got his money from his partner, Frederick Engels. And where did Frederick Engels get his money from? Well,... around the theorist of world revolution.

Socialism begins as a simple majority logic. Industrial society creates workers, a middle class, and capitalists. Capital consolidates until even many capitalists lose out. Workers want relief; the middle class wants higher status; democracy lets them act together. Redistribution is the natural pressure of industrial politics Source trail 11:1812:37 So that's a question for us. Why would he say this, okay? So let's look at what socialism is. Okay? Let's look at socialism. All right. The idea of socialism is pretty simple, all right? So before you had a feudal socie...And this will lead to socialism. And what is socialism? Socialism is a redistribution of wealth. A redistribution of wealth. Now, let's, for the sake of simplicity, say there are three classes, okay? You have the rich,... .

Then Marxism makes the idea more extreme. Socialism redistributes property; communism destroys property Source trail 14:59 media religion to brainwash the workers and also these workers need to unite together across the world to have true power okay why because the real struggle is one of class okay consciousness and for socialism to arise... . Socialism can unite poor and middle class; communism makes the middle class fear losing status, property, and distinction. The vanguard party promises to create true consciousness and then voluntarily disappear. Jiang's answer is blunt: power has never done that before Source trail 16:24 And so it sounds right, so why is Marx screwing around this okay? He also says that, okay, you also need a party, you also need a vanguard, an elite to destroy the false conscientious, divide the workers, workers and cr... .

This is the game-theory move: if you want to destroy a popular idea, make it more extreme until people recoil from it Source trail 17:3722:41 extreme the intention is to discredit it to make it illegitimate to destroy the idea all right so if you think about it according to game the people responsible for communism is that marx the people responsible for comm...destroy us so what can we do about it their solution is we have to divide them okay we have to divide them so before the conflicts were about power status religion okay so the first idea is let's create the idea that th... . The old order needs to divide bourgeoisie, middle class, and workers after 1848. Class conflict, abolition of property, and secret international conspiracy do the dividing work.

The Communist Manifesto is read through this lens. Central banking looks like the Bank of England. Communications centralization looks like an oligarchy or party. State factories and compulsory education look useful for capital as well as communism. The communist agenda is not alien enough. It keeps matching capitalist needs Source trail 27:4628:52 in 1838 he signed the Bill ofpm and then in the 18нали you only got owner rights anyway after all you need to end the production right now so collect money and give it to my children, now I can't anymore, okay? This is...It's the same thing, really, right? Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state, equal liability of our work, combination of agriculture and manufacturing industries. All right, so this is th... .

The manifesto's own language is made to sound self-indicting: the proletariat needs a party, the party takes power, and somehow the party is supposed to abolish its own supremacy Source trail 30:0830:53 The public power will lose its political character. Political power, probably so -called, is merely organized power of one class for oppressing another. The proletariat, during its contest, with abortion, is compelled b...And for the proletariat to win, they need a party, okay? They need a vanguard party. But, hey, once this vanguard party establishes itself and destroys class, it will go away. Okay, do you understand? It will give up po... . It also tells local reformers that they are part of a global conspiracy. That is politically strange if the goal is to reassure ordinary people who want a fairer society.

Then comes 1917. The Bolsheviks seize power but are not popular; Jiang emphasizes their minority vote share and the civil-war map around them. Whites, Greens, peasants, Orthodox loyalty, allied armies, and the Romanov mystique all make Bolshevik victory look improbable Source trail 33:2334:40 They launched the October Revolution. So basically they seized power for themselves. And then they have an election. As you can see from this election, the Bolsheviks, even though they have seized power, they're not as...They have the Whites to deal with. The Whites is basically the nobility, okay? And they have also allied armies who come in. They have the Greens, who are the peasants, okay? They have lots and lots of enemies. And at t... .

The Romanovs are the hinge. If the family lives, its wealth remains tied to the dynasty. If the family dies, Jiang says, foreign banks can keep the money. The murder is therefore recoded from fanaticism into finance Source trail 36:1137:20 They didn't do that. They just stuck around. So the question then is, why would they just stick around? The answer is, they never believed they were in danger, okay? First of all, they could not expect the Bolsheviks to...You now get the families of Europe pissed off at you, because you killed their relative, but also you come across as fanatical then on World Revolution, okay? And then you piss off the Orthodox as well. So these communi... . It enrages peasants, Orthodoxy, and European royalty, but it frees enormous overseas accounts from living claimants.

The second hinge is payment. If the Bolsheviks are unpopular and weak, how do they pay mercenaries? The answer given is Wall Street and the City of London. Red Terror becomes a debt-payment machine Source trail 39:5342:11 And the answer is, well, Wall Street, guys. Wall Street and the City of London gave the Bolsheviks money to pay these mercenaries. It was Wall Street who paid for these mercenaries. And you're like, why would they do th...Destroy the Russian economy because Russia's a threat, okay? And then it wants to steal the riches and the resources from the Russians, okay? That's the purpose of financing the Bolsheviks, to destroy the Russian econom... : loot the nobility, churches, banks, palaces, and museums; strip the society; fence value abroad; pay for the war in capitalist hard currency.

The student asks the obvious question: if China professes communism while pursuing capitalism, is communism simply the official language for a capitalist reality? Jiang answers by separating Marx, Lenin, and Mao. Marx looked for revolution in industrial Germany, not agrarian Russia or China. Lenin says the party can accelerate history. Mao goes further: he does not even need workers. Peasants can make the revolution, and industrialization can come afterward Source trail 46:19 Even though peasants, peasants become workers, if you have a party to help the, the process, okay? So, that was Lenin's contribution. And Mao is like, no, you don't even need workers, okay? You can have a movement entir... .

So Mao's revolution is not treated as a pure communist-theoretical event. It is a peasant uprising wearing communist legitimacy Source trail 46:1947:43 Even though peasants, peasants become workers, if you have a party to help the, the process, okay? So, that was Lenin's contribution. And Mao is like, no, you don't even need workers, okay? You can have a movement entir...And also, communism provided a framework in order to industrialize very quickly. So, what's important to understand is that, at this time in history, Mao was trying to actually work with the United States as well, okay?... . The facade gets Soviet support, a framework for rapid industrialization, and a way to keep national sovereignty. Communism matters less than industrialization and freedom from Soviet control.

The last student question asks whether communism simply equals capitalism, or whether pursuing communism finally achieves capitalism. Jiang's answer is more layered. Capitalism is the belief that society can be structured around capital Source trail 49:18 Okay. All right. So, capitalism is the belief that you can structure society around capital, okay? And this was a direct threat to the old order, okay? The old order, which focused on religion, the king, the military, o... . It threatens the old order of religion, king, and military. But capitalism also gives birth to social democracy, and social democracy threatens both capital and the old order.

That is where communism is born in the final model. Old order and capital mutate social democracy Source trail 50:55 So the old order, it was a threat to communism. capitalism what they did was they would mutate social democracy into communism in order to delegitimize okay delegitimize social democracy to make it this into a threat ag... into something frightening: revolutionary, property-destroying, conspiratorial, and universal. But this is not a clean master plan. It is organic, confusing, and unstable. At first communism is a psyop; then it becomes mainstream Source trail 51:53 order are in conflict with each other so they because of this support communism becomes much more extreme which leads to bolshevism okay or revolution right all right does that make sense how the system worked out so we... ; then Bolshevism, which once looked insane, becomes possible.

The October Revolution is the wild gamble that works Source trail 51:5353:05 order are in conflict with each other so they because of this support communism becomes much more extreme which leads to bolshevism okay or revolution right all right does that make sense how the system worked out so we...worked because of the greed of capitalists okay but once it worked out once communism was established in soviet union then it changed the way people saw the world and they thought that now communism is possible anywhere... . Once it works, the possibility-space of the world changes. Communism becomes imaginable everywhere, including China. The lecture ends by sending students into a break to watch current events: Iran, Greenland, Canada, China. The historical model is not finished; it is being carried forward into the next world-game cycle.