Why Communism is Conservative

[Applause]

so it turns out that the giga chad guy

it turns out that this guy is a

communist or he's like he has astolgy

for the ddr gd are made in gdr right and

by the way east germans and russians

have a very profound closeness with one

another

for historical reasons right and it's

got like 4 000 likes and the american

lefties are so excited by it they're

like oh my god he's just like me

and it they got so excited and happy at

this news they were like they literally

think that like this is

who like that guy is on their side like

this is the representation of them and

that leftoids are the true chads or

whatever right i had to ruin the party

you know me i had to ruin the fucking

party right i completely shattered and

destroyed this fantasy for them you want

to know what i did here's what i did i

said stop assuming he's one of you

american leptoids he's a real communist

which means very likely conservative and

would be considered a fascist right

winger here in america just like i am

and caleb is and so many others are in

america this guy would be 100 percent

pro dave chappelle this guy would be 100

percent um not on board with gender

criticism whatever the fuck that is he

would be 100 percent a down-to-earth

conservative guy because that's how they

are in eastern germany and eastern

europe and in russia that's how

communists are right they're very

similar temperamentally in terms of

their mentality and in terms of their

values as are american conservatives

they're very similar right

um continuing on let's see where the the

the current war stands so this is 5 24 5

13. should i just address this argument

first because maybe you guys like aren't

sufficiently

aware of why this is a stupid fucking

argument i'll explain it in a really

simple way though

very conservative does not mean

you are criminalizing abortion or

homosexuality okay and i don't know why

this person is saying lgbt relationships

when in the legal code in the gdr they

were talking about homosexuality right

regardless this was a straw man from the

very beginning because i was not talking

about lgbt or whatever um and it's weird

that they're mentioning lgbt when all i

said was pronouns in the bio you know

the majority of leftists who have

pronouns in the bio are cisgendered and

straight okay so i don't know what you

what angle you're trying to come off

when it comes to that this is actually

just not true in terms of any bearing on

the conservatism the overall

conservatism of the uh

the the german democratic republic right

there's an assumption here and it's

called i would call it the american

exceptionalist notion of progress which

is inherited from wig history so the

stereotype of wig history is basically

this idea that there's such a thing as

linear progress and the more shocking

and provocative a new cultural trend or

state policy is in regards to the status

quo of society and culture that is like

an index of some like historical

progress that there's just the it's just

going to keep keep on happening until i

don't know we we make furries become

acceptable or something and start

fucking animals and and and make

pedophilia normalized or whatever right

this is actually not a materialist view

because from a materialist this is the

bourgeois wig history notion of progress

so the american exceptionalist view of

progress is basically this idea that all

cultural realities are arbitrary unreal

and do not have any substantive material

grounding and that as the passage of

time increases all of our cultural

realities will increasingly become

knocked over and that all that is solid

will melt into air finally until we have

nothing but thought slime jellyfish goo

and all of the stable stratified to put

it in delusion terms structures of our

society will dissolve and everything

will become gray goo where we're all you

know pansexual and we all have orgies

all the time and we become robots and

and we basically enter a post-human

future where we have artificial wombs

and all the things that we find shocking

and unhuman and inhuman and offensive to

the senses will eventually become

completely normalized right so this

sounds like he's the gdr was not

conservative because back then they

decriminalized homosexuality and they uh

they allowed for free abortions right

and that means that if it was 2021

because time has passed they would even

be more progressive you know but but

here's the thing right the materialist

view will basically be there's an upper

limit to this there actually is an upper

limit to this so-called progress and

that limit is something called material

humanity it's called material humanity

there are objective human realities

there are objective material and human

realities that's the materialist view

you have to keep in mind something that

what this person is saying just because

if you were in a if you were lgbt or

homosexual you were not being put in

jail and he's saying that this is proof

that gdr wasn't conservative and he's

also saying that because they had

abortions the gdr wasn't conservative

abortion culture is also rampant in

china a given culture's tolerance of

abortion is relative not every culture

is going to have the same view or

understanding of abortion for example in

peru and in latin america abortion has a

very different significance than it does

in china for instance but both are

fundamentally conservative because

conservatism is not about some kind of

like immutable transnational and

trans-historical values that are just

preserved for their own sake

conservatism in 2021 is specifically

referring to this question of humanity

you are conservative because you believe

in a material humanity that is not

premised by arbitrary liberal individual

wills that's what it means to be a

conservative today to be a conservative

today or maybe in general is basically

the view that even if you go back to the

first conservatives like edmund burkey

and the people reacting to the french

revolution who by the way

marx and engels had a very ambiguous

relationship too uh engels recalled in

his um assessment of the reactionary

theorist thomas carlisle that thomas

carla was just about the only human

thinker that was available in the

british canon at the time or something

along those lines angles was critical of

carlisle of course he appreciated the

fact that carlisle was not like some npc

he actually had some kind of humanness

to him right and carla was an outright

reactionary he wasn't just a

conservative okay we have to understand

um

the meaning of conservatism here right

because a lot of people have this idea

that conservatism means you're anti-gay

and and well first of all let's i want

you guys to be very i want you to like

be very um careful here in your

understanding

because

the gdr did not have an lgbt movement

open like very very open and outward

displays of lgbt was still considered

taboo um it was considered taboo

especially in media and in movies it

wasn't until the very last days of the

gdr which was just this period of total

liberalization that you would find um

that you would find those things and

because the gd this is something that

also happened in the ussr so western ng

and i'm not saying this as an anti-lgbt

guy i'm just telling you the truth of

the matter western ngos and the people

behind the color revolutions in eastern

europe had so much power and sway over

the course of those the governments in

society the civil society at the time

which is basically the urban

conscientious you know people who led

the color revolutions it appeared that

the soviet union and the gdr during the

80s and late 80s became even more

progressive than the west but that

wasn't because of communism it was

actually because of the total opposite

it was because of the complete wholesale

liberalization when you're talking just

about the decriminalization

i was referring to in the late 80s like

the stuff about the

the movies that were finally like just

about lgbt stuff and it was becoming

more visible and that's what i'm talking

about it just being decriminalized i

need you guys to understand what

decriminalization means

decriminalization just means you're not

throwing people in jail for it i am not

even an anti-lgbt my views are way more

nuanced i would say that the gdr was way

more conservative than i am on this

question the plain truth is that there

was no lgbt acceptance in the gdr there

was no promotion of lgbt it was not

something promoted in society it was

just something that wasn't criminalized

meaning you wouldn't go to jail for it

that doesn't mean they promoted it in

their society it doesn't mean it was

considered acceptable by society so the

gdr was just extremely conservative by

american standards it was yeah exactly

it was tolerated but not promoted i

really think people need to roll back

their

expectations when it comes to this but i

didn't even for me this was not even

about lgbt whatsoever this was about

having firm strong conservative values

such as a love of country a sense of

solid roots and belonging among your

people a sense of pride in your

traditions and a willingness to

safeguard your history and your

traditions and even in a sense your

identity your national identity your

patriotic uh

country identity right these things were

like given in the ddr at the time

regardless of you know

this legislation he's talking about but

this guy's trying to project this idea

that in the gdr you have like the

equivalent of like american leftists

wielding state power and they were

actually in power and nothing can be

further from the case and this would all

be very this would be way less sad when

you take into account again i'm not even

saying i agree with this personally but

the gdr was an outlier compared to the

rest of the eastern bloc and the reason

it was an outlier was precisely because

it was the most western country in the

eastern bloc in almost all the other

communist states it was not

decriminalized it wasn't decriminalized

in the soviet union i mean why wasn't it

i don't understand why wouldn't it be

well the reason is because the gdr's

proximity to the west and western

liberalism especially when you're taking

into consideration the pre-war legacy of

the german communists you also have to

take into account the way in which the

communist party in germany gained power

it didn't gain in power on a mandate of

the the german peasants um like the

soviet communist party did it gained

power because of a war which allowed the

communist intellectuals to have way more

like leeway in terms of experimentation

with stuff than other communist parties

were right but that was a bad thing

right what was a bad thing no i'm just

talking about the plain facts of the

matter since this person wants to bring

up first of all the category of lgbt was

not recognized or legally valid or

it had no relevance in the gdr uh what

they were talking about was

homosexuality which was just not

criminalized if consenting adults had

relationships you're not going to go to

jail for that that's their policy right

that doesn't mean in social security

only in 1974 and croatia tito yugoslavia

as a whole was very liberal right if

this was a straw man argument through

and through from the very beginning this

was just a straw man argument the fact

there's this so we have to really break

down this assumption that's being

implied here that oh for its time it was

very progressive but this implies a

static and linear view of progress that

implies a certain ends every sense of

progress implies an end what is the ends

of progress right if the gdr was

progressive for its time which means

that in today in 2121 they would have

been even more progressive and that over

time it's just there's a line going up

and it's just more and more progress and

acceptance but to what end what is the

ends of that is what as marxist as

materialists as

people equipped with the materials

dialectic we have to interrogate this

question

what actually is the ends of the

so-called progress because

[Music]

how can progress be infinite when our

material humanity is finite our culture

is finite in a sense now culture changes

but culture does not change at the scale

of rationalistic individual whims you

understand yes history and culture

changes but it doesn't change because of

uh voluntary will

on the part of individuals it doesn't

change because individuals cast in a

cartesian way into doubt all cultural

norms and decide to critique all these

norms and set them up on a new basis

from the perspective of a purely

individual or rational individual right

they change according to a more organic

process of the development of history

and the material relations of production

which is something that is unconscious

in its content and something which in

terms of its scale happens gradually and

over time it doesn't happen because

people say well

why is it that women are the ones who

have children and men are the ones who

have sperm why is it that men are more

masculine why is that that that's not

how it fucking works though right now

these people thinking in a way they're

like well huh you're just a conservative

reaction and 100 years ago you would

have been a reactionary and you would

have said the same thing about women's

suffrage no actually that's not how it

works because there is no infinite

linear

progress these things actually happen

for reasons women's rights and this

progressive things that are associated

with the communist experience and

modernity as a whole i might add these

things have a finite significance it's

not just that as time goes on society

just became more progressive

leading to the end goal of the complete

cultural equality and elimination of all

differences between people

actually it was because what is implied

by the modern subject being applied to

all genders and all people regardless of

their sexuality is this basic and

minimal and i'm writing a sub stack

about this it's going to be called

marxism versus americanism right and

it's precisely about this topic it's

just that we do not make absolute

assumptions i'm actually going to stress

this i'm going to turn the music off so

you don't get distracted this is a very

important point the

real historically revolutionary

significance of modernity and women's

rights and those kinds of things merely

lies in the fact that we do not make

absolute assumptions epistemically about

the nature and role of

women and men in society what that means

is that let me explain it to you this

way in modern society we have a

different understanding and view of

knowledge than people did before in the

past people's sense of knowledge was

highly

um intangible and intuitive and based in

faith and based in some kind of sense of

sublimity it was not based on some kind

of axiomatic systemic sense of absolute

certainty so there came a confusion

between truth knowledge and certainty

now knowledge in the past did not mean

certainty because let me give you for

example the islamic perspective right

certainty in the from the islamic

perspective all you can be certain in is

god and that there's one god now you may

have knowledge of the truth of

traditional gender roles and all those

things but you're not certain that those

things are eternal and those things

exist for themselves only only god knows

right that's what you would say this is

only god knows right it's in the hands

of god that's it you're not certain

about it but after western modernity

there is a clear confusion between

knowledge and certainty right and with

modernity these old traditional roles

were finally subject to the question now

we have modern certain knowledge over

the natural world and scientifically and

so on and so on where it's a matter of

life and debt we do have to be certain

about some things in modern society our

modern technocratic modern society

because it's a matter of quite literally

a matter of life and debt for so many

people so many people are living today

because we have some kind of like modern

technical certainty over how you know

medicine works or how even agriculture

works and and and how things like things

along those lines i think about

astronauts and the iss or people in

submarines those rest that's a matter of

life or death so life is in the hands of

some kind of certainty right with

modernity this is kind of also the

meaning of all that is solid gets turned

into air from the communist manifesto oh

norms and all traditional values and all

those kinds of things get subject to the

standard and the rubric of um the

question of modern certainty right for

example the question arises well why

can't women vote if women want to vote

why can't they vote um if we are

universal citizens and that we have this

certain relationship between citizens

and the state and the citizen votes in

the modern society why shouldn't this be

extended to women well if you were to

respond to that by saying oh it's

because women have certain immutable

characteristics which disallow them from

knowing what's best for themselves

you are

doing something that's not conservative

whatsoever you are making a pretense to

a strictly modern sense of certainty the

emancipatory if you want to call it that

i hate that word significance of

modernity merely lies in truly opening

ourselves to things we don't know with

certainty it means we don't know what

certainty what women's role is what

man's role is we have no way of knowing

this axiomatically systemically and with

certainty but

here is where the problem of american

bourgeois americanism and the

corresponding communist response enters

in with american bourgeois americanism

you have a completely different view

it's not only that we are not claiming

to know with certainty the nature of

women's

role and man's role and and the nature

of culture you are also saying that for

example the authentic expressions of

sexuality and culture and gender that

arise when we say we're not going to

pretend we know with certainty even if

you don't know the certainty some kind

of natural organic gender roles healthy

gender roles are able to breathe and

flourish and people can get accustomed

and used to these roles and they're not

being forced into them but they

authentically arise as the norm now

americans take a step farther and they

say ah look at all of these particular

and determinate expressions of culture

and gender and tradition these are the

result of oppression and this is a

hidden oppression and you ask them well

is it a political oppression as in

people are being forced politically oh

no no no it's not a political oppression

it's a form of cultural oppression now

here ladies and gentle gentlemen is the

genesis and the origin of the american

new left and the counter culture during

the counterculture there arose this idea

that even beyond the modern bourgeois

democratic equality there's this hidden

system of control and oppression that

permeates private life and that we must

go out of our way to shatter the norms

and break the ceilings and and

completely overturn the traditions and

so on and so on right this is what is

complete this is where this so-called

linear progress that the leftists

implicitly believe in this is where

communist states began to draw their

line when it comes to embracing the

progressive role of of bourgeois

democracy they drew their line precisely

here the communist states responded to

this by saying no that's not true we're

we may not impose and and make

assumptions about the nature of gender

and culture from the perspective of the

state but we're not gonna assume that

all of our natural human realities are

the result of some kind of hidden

oppression and therefore try to overturn

them or or disturb them so during the uh

60s and 70s the communist states

increasingly started to crack down this

actually be let me actually really

contextualize this historically it's

really after world war ii during the

stalin era after world war ii that you

start to see the ussr crack down on um

jazz music and and crack down on

american foreign cultural uh influences

and and you had a newfound with the

zdanov china right the leader of culture

in the ussr who is uh zidano he

emphasized the nate the decadent nature

of bourgeois society and bourgeois

culture and completely strove to root

out these foreign influences from soviet

culture and from soviet society they

said we know it's lo we look at what's

going on with america and its so-called

progress and we will not have any of it

here after stalin died khrushchev and

his clique embarked on some kind of

liberalization and americanization right

so there is a little bit of lacks when

it comes to that but ultimately this

this was not because of the progressive

movement of time or because communism

was progressive in the american sense it

was because after the death of stalin

you had a period of liberalization and

an openness to american culture so what

does it actually mean to be a

conservatism communist conservatism

mostly rears its head in zdanov china in

the 40s and 50s and it was primarily a

response to american liberal cultural

universalism this is where communists

thoroughly planted their feet in the in

the ground and said actually we are

conservatives in a fundamental sense in

a more fundamental sense and in a way

that is reconciled with modernity

communists are conservatives because we

do want to preserve the traditions and

the cultures and the heritage of your of

our national histories and our

civilizations and our cultures we don't

want to liquidate these things and

embrace american universal

cosmopolitanism and american culture and

jazz music and all that kind of stuff we

do believe in a material humanity now

the reason they're not reactionaries

is because they say this and

also implying that they're reconciled

with the fact that modernity itself is

part of this continuity the reason this

is the significance of stalinism that's

important to understand here stalinism

is a form of kind of conservatism of

russian civilization but the real

significance here is it's basically

saying this modernity is part of the

history of the russian civilization it's

part of our history this very modernity

of technological modernity and change in

the nature of uh gender roles where

women are now educated and they have a

choice right and they can enter the

workplace and so on and so on this is

part of our culture part of our heritage

and part of our history right this is

the communist view it's always been a

straw man that conservatism was

anti-modern conservatism was not

anti-modern conservatism was merely a

form of a critique against the

hyper idealist rationalism that

of the european enlightenment which is a

criticism shared by marx the

german idealism was fundamentally

conservative in nature in relation to uh

european rationalism and the

enlightenment and that is marx's

background that's where marx emerged

from marx was himself fundamentally

conservative in relation to the

universalism of the bourgeois state marx

pointed out how the bourgeois state

attempts to um impose an ideal of

humanity upon the real and material

humanity it doesn't acknowledge that

there's this this antecedent of our

material being that is not always

already consolidated in the rational

bourgeois and abstract state so marx was

also a conservative in a fundamental

sense conservatism doesn't mean you

don't you hate gay people and you want

to criminalize homosexuality and you

know you're necessarily against abortion

conservatism merely is a assertion that

there is a fundamental material object

and material being

human material being that exists

independently and and in a way that is

antecedent to our individual arbitrary

wants wills and elevated sense of

rationalism in relation to the world

conservatism basically means you

recognize there are things about our

humanity about our culture about our

nations and about our heritage which

cannot be liquidated now can they change

yes they do change but they change at a

scale that is different than the

impassioned crusader-like mentality of

these leftists

fanatical individuals who want to of the

counterculture who want to overturn all

culture and and overthrow the systems of

hierarchy and patriarchy and oppression

implicitly in culture the communist

attitude to culture is not

that of the american counterculture and

the new left the communist attitude

toward culture is recognizing a material

fundamental material reality underlying

culture um culture is a kind of

superstructure to the fundamental base

of for example the relations of

production not only the relations of the

production of

economic objects but also our humanity

their reproduction of human beings in

the form of the family now engels does

talk about how the family is not

something immutable he talks about how

yeah the bourgeois family has not

existed for all eternity but engels

wasn't saying that therefore that means

families aren't real and that we can

just go about voluntarily experimenting

with new forms of the family to no there

is an organic almost natural evolution

of families that happens at a scale very

different from the individual

intellectual rational insight into the

fact that they're not immutable

just because you're saying this form of

the family hasn't always existed and may

very well change in the future doesn't

actually mean that um you could go about

treating it as though it's not real it's

still real even if just because it's not

eternal doesn't mean it's not real

doesn't mean it's not a specific and

determinate reconciliation of

contradictions as they exist today so

it's this is why i talk about heidegger

and stress that kind of stuff all it

means basically is that there are

unconscious material realities that

exist independently and prior to the

rational and conscious articulation of

them that's all i've ever said and it's

pretty much the same thing marx said

it's just that marxist seem in the west

seem to have forgotten that especially

with lukakusian notions of

self-consciousness and so on which you

know i don't want to bore you to death

upon and and waste too much time talking

about but um

we have to face this fundamental

question right

is it that the

cultural changes that have occurred

since the counterculture and since the

new left is this a result of some kind

of objective historical progress

or

is it the result of a complete bourgeois

psychosis and degeneration resulting

from the material breakdown of the

capitalist mode of production my view is

the communist line which is that it's

the latter the soviet union

fundamentally the communist states as a

whole whether they were considered

revisionist or not whether you're

talking about albania or china or the

eastern bloc all of these communist

states had a vehemently

opposed view to the american

counterculture and the so-called

cultural revolution of the united states

they were not only were they extremely

wary and skeptical of it they sought to

purge their societies of all of its

influences just because they were modern

societies that had a modern and by the

way modern doesn't mean contemporary

modernity is referring basically to um

uh this kind of process of the emergence

of the capitalist mode of production and

bourgeois democracy which had occurred a

few centuries ago or three maybe four

centuries ago they were modern states

they embraced the objective and material

significance of modernity so they were

not trying to roll back the wheels of

time when it came to those things but

that doesn't mean

that this was because of some like some

kind of linear objective historical

progress that culminates in bestiality

and and furries on twitter and

pedophilia and and turning everyone into

grey goo where nothing is real anymore

and

everything is just in it oh polly

everywhere and we're always

yeah that's not

that's not um that is not a marxist or

materialist view whatsoever okay so

today um to be a communi so what what

does this have to do with communism

let's get right down to business about

as far as what communism is about and

what communism is concerned with now

communism is this marks the sense of the

word the marxist leninist and so on

sense of the word shares in common with

all the other socialisms and communism

in that it was attempting to address and

give explanation to give form to give

meaning to uh this common social object

right marx distinguished himself from

the reactionary and conservative

socialist of his time by recognizing

that you cannot reverse or somehow dodge

the impact of capitalist modernity you

have to go through it there is an

objective real historical significance

of capitalist modernity that we have to

endure we have to face and we have to

survive through it's a challenge and

test of our humanity and marx said this

by elevating the proletariat as the

privileged revolutionary class and

subject of communism because the

proletariat was a class completely

stripped of its traditional roots and

its background and to put it in marx's

own fucking words it is a class that has

been completely stripped of humanity and

therefore represents the complete

re-winning of humanity back marx was

elevating the proletariat as the

privileged subject because he was

basically telling the conservatives and

reactionaries of his time guys look upon

the proletariat look upon this class

that has been so thoroughly stripped of

its humanity can you survive this class

can you address this class can you make

sense of this class marx was basically

saying we need to have faith in this

class because if we don't have faith in

this proletarian class we cannot have

faith in reacquiring our sense of

humanity after this process of

capitalist modernity now the soviet

union and the communist states did

reconcile themselves with capitalist

modernity by pursuing an alternative

form of modernity and a different path

of modernity a form of modernity which

while being destructive and apocalyptic

in a sense didn't lead to the wholesale

liquidation and destruction of the

humanity culture civilization and re

national realities of its constituent um

of the peoples that were victim to it

victim to this modernity it was

reconciling this modernity it sublated

this modernity into a new type and new

kind of civilization okay