Ep 20: What IS Socialism?

So I'm TripLoy and I would like to give you something to think about here on the TripLoy podcast. So one of the things I am frequently saying on this podcast is that we're all still living with the aftershocks of the massive colonial and capitalist earthquake that happened 500 years ago. This concept that colonialism and capitalism was the most destabilizing thing that ever happened in the history of humanity is a core belief of mine and one of the things that really influences pretty much everything you hear on these podcasts. I talk about it a lot and you probably already know what I'm talking about but the quick refresher for those who don't is I genuinely believe that when colonialism and capitalism began 500 years ago I think everything we see in the world today is a direct consequence of colonialism and capitalism including the creation of the first and the third worlds including both world wars the industrial scale slavery the massive wealth inequality all of the issues we see in the world today including the climate apocalypse every single crisis in the world today is a direct consequence is a direct aftershock of that massive colonial earthquake that happened 500 years ago. The other part of that that I'm always talking about is what we're seeing today is end stage capitalism this is the end of that era it started 500 years ago but it's rapidly coming to a close now because when it started it was about competing empires and there are a lot of empires when colonialism and capitalism both started now we're down to just one the United States and it is in its thermal decline now and the world we are entering into is full of fascism and repression because fascism's job is to save capitalism as best as it can and every time capitalism goes through a massive crisis you always see fascism pop up to strong arm its way to saving capitalism but that can only work for so long and we're hitting the point now where a lot of Western countries are devolving into fascism in a desperate attempt to save capitalism but we're at the point beyond which I generally believe it can be saved and that's why I think that this is the terminal decline of the United States that we're seeing now but a frequent question I get I'm sure a lot of us get when we are talking about the end of capitalism is what comes after and how do we actually transition this essentially apocalyptic situation into something new and again this is only the end of an era this is not the end of the world a lot of people feel like this is the end of the world because we're so conditioned to believe that capitalism is like the final form of like human human social evolution but this is a very predatory system that was never supposed to last this long anyway it was always itself a form of just of just temporary exploitation and it's amazing it lasted 500 years but when the United States does collapse as I firmly believe it will soon by the way what happens at the end of this era and what does the new era look like and of course there are many schools of thought on this as a popular saying going around especially on social media which says barbarism or socialism because that's what awaits us when capitalism and fascism collapse I firmly believe that socialism is going to be the next era of humanity the next era of the whole planet and hopefully it lasts a very long time but for all the talk of you know socialism is coming and we believe in socialism we've actually spent remarkably little time actually talking about what socialism really is what are its principles what is the point where is it going and why and so that's what this episode today is about we're going to go over the principles of socialism and when you go over it as though it's an absolute beginner class so this is socialism 101 basically right back to the basics that all history is really class history that's the story being told in every history you read especially in the west it's always a story of power changing it is the story of a ruling class replacing another ruling class you know this king took out this king or this system took out this system but ultimately it's always a story of the ruling class replacing itself but socialism and communism as belief systems are very different to every other system in that their objective is not about replacing a ruling class with a novel ruling class the whole point of communism is to destroy the ruling class and to destroy it forever to get rid of classes that's what we mean we're saying a classless society there are no rich people and there are no poor people there are just people living in cooperation and of course that is pretty much unimaginable when you look at the world today especially after decades of the strongest capitalist propaganda any of us have ever been exposed to there's another popular saying I've heard where it's easier for people to imagine the end of the world and to imagine the end of capitalism and the reason for that is we are massively conditioned to believe that capitalism is the only way forward and without that we're literally nothing and that's intentional that's something that capitalism billionaires and aboujouazi have been doing very very long time to make us stop believing in any other future and indeed it is impossible to imagine us going from this hyper individualistic selfish greed based you know nothing but profit matters society to the idea of living in a society that is based entirely on community and cooperation that is very hard even for me to believe and I'm someone who firmly believes in socialism and communism all of this has been very well thought out by some of the biggest communist thinkers most prominently of course being Karl Marx you're looking here people say like Karl Marx is outdated doesn't work in the modern world and I think the only people say that are people who haven't actually read Marx because he really does think of just about everything the entire world we're living in today this late stage capitalism is very well documented and predicted in duskapa tal and this problem this corporal how do you go from a really selfish individualistic based capitalist society to a communal based cooperative communist society and there is a distinct plan to get there it's not just wishful thinking and that's called socialism socialism is the transition phase where it is the evolution of capitalism into the next stage and then it is setting the groundwork to create a communist society where people actually can live together and cooperate and be communal based so there is a plan here it is not just wishful thinking another thing that I think a lot of people misunderstand about socialism is socialism isn't here to destroy capitalism socialism is intended to be the evolution of it just like capitalism is the evolution of feudalism socialism is the evolution of capitalism but it's the final evolution because once socialism is is firmly set up into power it sets the stage and it sets the conditions where the classes and the state itself aren't needed because it gets the it gets society running so efficiently that all of those power structures and those hierarchies are no longer needed a transition stage from the traditional capitalist oligarchy rule and class to the workers themselves becoming the ruling class that's the dictatorship of the proletariat and that's the core of socialism and then from that position creating the social and economic conditions that the classes themselves become completely irrelevant and then from their shifting into a classless society which is the final form which is communism and no one in history has reached this stage yet because capitalism has spent all of its time since socialism appeared trying to destroy socialism and trying to destroy communism and it is impossible for communism to exist on this world at the same time as capitalism because capitalism will always spend all its time and energy bombing the shit out of any country attempting to create communism because capitalism knows that if communism takes power it's all over and capitalism can never come back so the two literally cannot coexist socialism is the system that is standing against capitalism and they've been fighting nonstop since that really started but no one has ever seen communism and no one will see communism until capitalism is defeated and throughout history economic systems have evolved through revolutionary change and revolutionary transformations and throughout history every economic system has evolved as a direct result of the revolutionary conditions created by internal contradictions and the contradictions are really important to socialist theory you'll often hear people talking about the contradictions with the term dialectical materialism which is the study of those contradictions and looking at how one extreme can only be caused by one other extreme, and the fact that these two extremes are fighting against each other is unsustainable, and eventually one of them gives away, and that's what creates revolutionary change. And when you have this lens of looking at the contradictions, looking at that dialectical materialism, you can start applying it to everything in history, and a lot of the events that happen start to make a lot more sense. When you hear it through traditional kind of Western histories, it's always like person-based. And your Churchill did this, or the King's so-and-so did this, and it rarely looks at the material conditions of that society that created all of those, all of the upheaval and all of the revolutionary change, and that's what dialectical materialism really looks into. So today we're gonna look at the core principles of socialism, and I'm gonna do it by referencing a few books that were very influential for me, especially black shirts and reds in honor of Michael Prenti, who passed away today, and I'm a little bit sad about that. I know he was very old, but nonetheless, he was a very influential person. For me, he influenced a lot of my outlook on life. So it's a book that's going to feature prominently in this podcast, and I've actually read written so on a podcast just to put a bit more Prenti in it in honor of him. And I'm dedicating this episode to Michael Prenti, and I thank him for everything he taught me. And hopefully he's teaching you a lot too. And when you finish this podcast, go and get that fantastic book, "Black Shirts and Reds" by Michael Prenti. It was so influential in my life, and I really cannot recommend it enough. But there are four other books I really want to reference in this podcast, and it also books, I'm gonna recommend you go read when you get the chance. One of them is obviously the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. There's also "What is to be Done" by Vladimir Lenin, "Quotations from Chairman Mao" by Mao Zedong, "The ABCs of Socialism" by Bashkar Sunkara, and finally, "Socialism Seriously" by Danny Katch. These are all books that influence me, and I learned a lot from them, and they set me down the right track. And I hope they do the same for you. And we're gonna be referencing them all pretty extensively throughout this podcast. And in prepping for this episode, I actually really struggled with structure, which is one of the reasons why this took so long, and I do really apologize for the delay in this episode. Among other things, there's just been a lot of very busyness in my life now, including the holiday season, oh, and I had my baby daughter be born, which I don't think I've mentioned to anyone here yet, but she's here now as well. So I'm very, very busy, and I'm very, very exhausted. But nonetheless, I suffer for my fans, right? I love you guys, and I really wanna get this out as soon as possible. So that's why this one took a while, and again, I apologize. But yes, I'd really struggled with getting the structure for this one, because it's not like the other episodes. The other ones are usually a historical narrative, and I usually tell it in chronological order, which makes structuring a story really easy. But because this episode, we're basically talking about the key points of socialism and socialist principles, it has a very different structure. And in the end, I settled on 32 socialist principles, and that's socialism broken down about as simply as I can make it, and I tried to make it flow as much into a historical narrative or a story as I could, but it just doesn't quite work here. So this is going to be more of a, and I'm using my air quotes, this is more of a lecture, this one is like, have you gone to union? You're getting a sociology lecture from a professor, not that I am a professor, but that's more what the structures like here. So it's probably not gonna be as entertaining this episode as a lot of the other ones. But nonetheless, I think it's really worth doing because if you're new to socialist or communist theory, I think you're gonna get a lot out of this, and I think you're gonna learn a lot. And it'll be a great intro for you, and if you're an old salty comrade like myself, well, maybe it'll be a good refresher as well. So with all the housekeeping now out of the way, let's jump into the socialist principles as laid out by Trip Lawy and basically extrapolated from all the books I just mentioned. And our first topic is, what are the economic principles of socialism? Number one, workers must own and control the means of production. So you've probably heard that term thrown around or like, sees the means of production, but what does that actually mean? So when we're talking about the means of production, what we're talking about is basically owning all of the tools and the factories and the lands and the resources, and everything society uses to create goods and services. Basically, all the things that run society, that produce everything in society, are the means of production. Now under capitalism, all of that is owned by a small group of wealthy owners, who we call the bourgeoisie. At the moment in the world, that's like 12 billionaires are basically own everything and a handful of corporations that have their tentacles across every single industry and own everything. And the result of this is literally just a handful of guys, very rich billionaires, that own everything in the world. And under this system, the workers of the world, which are the proletariat, all we can do is sell our labor to survive. We don't own any of those means of production. We have to rent ourselves to the people at owner and hope that we can get enough of a wage to survive. Socialism believes that we need to get rid of the bourgeoisie, get rid of those billionaires, get rid of the wealthy owners and transfer the ownership of all those factories, all the land, all the resources, all the tools, over to the workers themselves, so that they can collectively decide what to produce, how much of it to produce, what happens to the profits. And most importantly, it eliminates that exploitation where a handful of capitalists can just extract all of our labor for their profits. All of that disappears if the workers directly own their workplaces, because what that does is it democratizes the workplaces. You can actually see this in action in China and Cuba and socialist countries today. In China, every workplace has a democratic council where the workers actually get to have a say in how things are run. And it's funny what we consider here to be capitalist democracy. We don't actually have any real democracy under capitalism. I don't know where you work, but I'm willing to bet you don't have a say in how anything is done there. If you wanna see the reality of democracy in capitalism, you just have to go to any workplace and notice that the workers don't get a say, the boss and the owner gets to decide absolutely everything. And if that's the ground level of your society, your day-to-day life is dictated by a capitalist, by some bourgeoisie person who controls and makes every single decision. So there is no actual democracy in that system. There's the semblance of democracy, or we get to go vote for which party will take a seat of power. But even those politicians answer to the bourgeoisie and only what the bourgeoisie, only what the billionaires want to happen is what's gonna happen in that society. So capitalism is literally not compatible with democracy, but socialism is, socialism is literally the democratization of our communities and our workplaces. So when we say we're going to seize the means of production, that's what we're talking about. And the Communist Manifesto has a very famous line, of course, which basically summarizes this. And it's this quote, "The theory of the Communist may be summed up in a single sentence, abolition of private property, though core point being to get rid of capitalist and stop their ability to exploit workers." So that's number one. Number two, production must serve human needs rather than profit. Because capitalism produces things only if they are profitable, even if people desperately need something, capitalism doesn't care. Capitalism only cares about profits. And this creates really absurd situations where we have things like heaps of empty houses while there are a lot of homeless people, or food being destroyed while people starve to create, to maintain that artificial scarcity to keep the prices high. Socialism thinks that this is absolutely absurd and there's gotta be a much better way to organize production in a society. By letting society democratically decide what to produce based on what people actually need. Like how much food do we need to produce to feed everyone? How many houses do we need to house everyone? How much medical supplies do we need to create to give everyone health care? How many teachers and how many schools do we need to build to make sure everyone's educated? All of it is based on need rather than on profit. Because the other problem with letting capitalist run everything is it's not just they overproduced stuff, it's that they're producing all the wrong stuff. Tons of commercial bullshit, we overproduced tons and tons of clothes that end up just being wasted on a Garnie and Beach. Once they are disposed of, it's fast fashion. It is the depletion of the world's resources just to maximize consumerism, to maximize profits for a handful of people. It is a massively inefficient way to run an economy and a society. Socialism simply just looks at that whole whole economic situation goes, this is nonsense. Let's run it efficiently. Let's figure out what we need and then just produce that and once that's produced Everyone can just go home for the day. You don't have to be worked to the bone to make profit We're here to work to make sure everyone has what they need a common rub battle towards is from capitalists Is people say what your socialism doesn't work? And now's a great time to quote Michael Parenty from black shirts and reds and he had this great quote to say To say that socialism doesn't work is to overlook the fact that it did in Eastern Europe Russia China Mongolia North Korea and Cuba Revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence They had endured under feudal laws military bosses foreign colonizers and Western capitalists in quote once Socialism started to take root in all of these countries Everyone who had been formally living under a fascist dictatorship or a Zaris regime or Capitalist warlords the the standard of living for hundreds of millions of people skyrocketed under socialism when it took power The living standards for the very rich people drop dramatically of course, but for most of the people in those societies They all experience massive upward mobility and in all of human history There's never been anything else quite like at that level of the betterment of so many lives over such a short amount of time has never happened Anywhere else in human history and all of it is thanks to socialism. Okay number three Implement a planned economy instead of chaotic market forces and these headings are all just my terms by the way And they're not like official titles or anything. That's just me summarizing it Capitalism's I'm using air quarts here free market creates boom and bust cycles It's one of the best ways to maximize profits But the result of that means there are periods of massive unemployment and waste because individual capitalists compete without any form of coordination all they care about is maximizing their own Personal profits and it doesn't matter who they hurt to do that But in a socialist planned economy all production society is organized rationally Socialism spends a lot of time collecting information about what society actually needs and allocates resources efficiently Based on where they need to go and it's core objective is very different to whereas capitalism just cares about Increasing and individuals Personal profits Socialism's main driving force is ensuring that everyone's needs are met and it's about preventing the chaos that Capitalists always unleash across societies that leads to millions of people suffering From no fault of their own just because some capitalists just figured out a shortcut to make millions more for themselves at expense of everyone else And this is explained in the ABCs of socialism Quote Democratic planning would involve ordinary people making decisions about what gets produced How it gets produced and how the products are distributed? This is fundamentally different from capitalism where these decisions are made by a small number of wealthy owners and executives Re-devated by profit end quote. So yes ending the chaos of capitalist Quotes free market is a fundamental principle of socialism. Okay Number four workers must receive the full value of their labor There's a novel term you're frequently here thrown around which comes from dusk up a tall which is a surplus value of labor And what that basically means is under capitalism workers create value But capitalist take most of it as profit for example if a worker produces a hundred dollars worth of goods But receives only twenty dollars in wages the capitalist keeps the remaining eighty dollars as surplus value and This is for all intents and purposes exploitation because the capitalist isn't doing any of the work here the workers doing a hundred percent of the work But the capitalist is taking the vast majority of the value that he is creating Socialism believes workers must receive the full value that they create one of socialism's key points is ensuring that workers receive the full value They create with surpluses being invested back into society collectively rather than enriching owners who contribute nothing to production And this is a really important point to understand by the way because once you understand The concept of surplus value and how that is exploitation You'll you'll never go back to work looking at it quite the same way again And it's one of the fundamental Requirements for gaining class consciousness which we'll talk about a bit later the communist manifesto puts it this way quote The average price of wage labor is the minimum wage i.e The quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labor in bear existence as a laborer What therefore the wage labor appropriates by means of his labor merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bear existence End quote so what that's basically saying is a capitalist to figure out what is the absolute minimum amount of money We can give a worker to keep them alive and keep them working and Maximizing the amount of value they create that we can take for ourselves and this is a Core point of capitalism like capitalism is always looking for ways of maximizing profits And that almost always comes from exploitation of workers and stealing of resources and The biggest expense for every capitalist is having to pay their workers This is something that capillaries are always trying to find a way to cut. It's why the minimum wage never moves And this is also what we mentioned before about contradictions and dialectical materialism This is one of those great contradictions that is really easy to see Because if the whole point of capitalism is to maximize Profits of the bourgeoisie well then that also means the exact opposite of that the contradiction is that the workers have to be as poor as possible You can only have extreme well if you've also got extreme poverty and That is a contradiction and is one of the contradictions that keeps getting longer and longer and longer The more capitalism hits its end stage. We see it all around us now I don't think anyone can dispute that massive wealth inequality and the huge social Consequences that is having for all of us. I mean we're at the point. It's like 12 billionaires Have more money than half the fucking planet and that is a huge contradiction and it's a contradiction that will eventually break one way or the other Okay, number five a bullish private property Now this doesn't mean eliminating personal possessions You know it's everything this isn't your true brush. It's not your clothes. It's not your home It means ending the private ownership of factories and corporations and large scale farms the productive resources that employ many workers These need to be collectively owned by the workers themselves and at no point should these productive resources be owned By a handful of people which would allow them to exploit everyone who works under it and the communist manifesto Specifically says this quote communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society All that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriations End quote and what that basically means is Socialism and communism have absolutely no problem with you making as much money as you can off your own labor If you're an artisan and you make you know the greatest Thavaget eggs in the world and you can sell them for a thousand bucks each and All of the work that goes into create them is your labor. That's absolutely fine You are more than welcome to make as much money as you can off your labor But what you're not gonna do is exploit other people's labor to make yourself richer So long as you're not exploiting anyone Socialism's got no problem with how much money you're making if you're attempting to exploit or subjugate other people Then we have a big problem and one of the ways of making sure that this dynamic never happens to make sure no one has power Over anyone else is to abolish that private property anything that is needed For society to run cannot be owned by a single person or a handful of people It must be collectively owned by the people that actually work in that field or in that factory and so on So on so those are the main economic principles of socialism And I hope I've made that not as clear as I can But let's move on to a different theme now. What are the social principles of socialism? So principle number six Guarantee universal health care as a human right Socialism believes everyone must be able to access doctors medicine surgery mental health treatment and everything you need to stay healthy without having to worry about the cost Health care should be paid for collectively through society's resources and its focus is on keeping the society and the people in it Healthy rather than trying to make profits from sick people It's a core belief that no one should avoid medical care because they can't avoid it And no one should profit from other people's illnesses and this is something that really in your the main culprit for this is the United States now it is one of the few countries that has massively privatized health care with the intention of maximizing profits It's not actually about helping anyone. It's about making the people that own the means of reduction in terms of health care as rich as they can And a lot of capitalist countries have already figured out the halfway measure to fixing this which is universal health care even in Australia We have that you know, I suppose percentage of everyone's taxes just goes into the big medical pile and everyone's health care is paid out of that as required. That's a pretty efficient system and that is absolutely a socialist idea. And in black shirts and reds, Michael Prenti explains what that was like in the Communist countries. Quote, "In the Communist countries people had free medical care and free education through university level and they enjoyed rent subsidies and food subsidies that kept basic necessities affordable. Such social wages, as they call them, constituted a substantial portion of people's actual income." That's basically saying that the taxes and the resources that we produce in society and that we pay to the state should be used to make everyone's lives better. And this is of course a core point of socialism. Compare that to say what we have under capitalism now, where we pay huge amounts of taxes and very little of it actually comes back to us. A lot of it ends up being sent to fucking Israel or funding war or funding imperialism. And all of that is still benefiting a handful of capitalists that make money from those endeavors. None of it actually comes back to help the people in society. And this is a fundamental difference between capitalism and socialism. Capitalism believes that to make people rich, the people in the state are just another commodity there to make capitalist richer, where a socialist believe the entire government structure is there to serve the people and all the resources that the state accumulates should be used to help the people in turn, especially in regard to healthcare. Number seven, provide free universal education at all levels. It's funny, in capitalist countries education is always just seen as something you need to get ahead in life. Like I need to be educated so I can get a good job so I can make money so that I can find my way if not out of the rat race, at least to the top of it. And that's how we kind of view education in capitalist countries. Socialism has a very different view of education and the whole point of it because socialism believes that education is the absolute bedrock of society itself. The more educated, the more trained the people are in your society, the more capable that society is to face the challenges that it's going to come up against. Having a really educated people and a really educated society, socialism believes that's one of the biggest safety nets you can have to having a sustainable and strong and happy future. Under socialism education develops people's talents and capabilities to benefit all of society. After all, if the entire economy is being reconfigured to serve society, then all the education should be as well. And as a result, because education is so important to keeping that society running, it needs to be free from early childhood all the way through to university, completely free, completely state funded. And it needs to be accessible to everyone regardless of their circumstances regardless of their personal wealth, regardless of where they live or how they're brought up, everyone needs access to that universal education. And of an important tenant of socialism is that education should teach critical thinking and genuine understanding of how society and politics works. Again, in capitalist countries, that's not something that's really emphasized. In fact, it's in capitalism's interests that people don't understand how politics work, that they don't understand how sociology works, because the more ignorant people are, the easier they are to control and the easier they are to blind with propaganda. The reason out so many people can't imagine a world beyond capitalism is because they've never had education in anything but the hierarchy of capitalism. And for a lot of people, that is the entire world. Socialism believes that it is really important that people have that critical thinking and have that political knowledge so that when you say, everyone in society is here to serve society and society is here to serve everyone, you can look at that with your education and understand why that's the most efficient way to run a society. If you're in a capitalist country and a country that is obsessed of individualism, it is very hard to convince someone who has that belief that what's in their best interest is actually helping the most amount of people because more healthy that society is, the easier it is for everyone in it. So, training that critical thinking and that understanding of sociology and politics is fundamental in socialist education. And Mao Zedong had a very good quote on this, he was of course very, very pro-education. So, in the quotations from Chao Man Mao, he said this, "Our educational policy must enable everyone who receives an education to develop morally, intellectually, and physically and become a worker with both socialist consciousness and culture." End quote. Mao of course saw education as every socialist does as being bedrock of society. It is what you're going to build the rest of societal structures on and it needs to be strong. So education is really important, especially understanding how societies work, understanding critical thinking, and understanding the politics that influence everything in society. Okay, number eight, guaranteed housing for all. Housing is a fundamental human right and it is a need. There literally no one can survive very long without some form of housing. And so it is fundamentally important that it is treated as a right, not a commodity for profit, which is what every Western capitalist country is now done. Our entire housing market is a commodity, is only about maximizing profits. I can buy a house for this much, sell it for double in a few years, and that is the sole motivation for everyone in it. And we've forgotten that housing is a necessity for a functional society. Everyone needs to be housed because that is the base level of your stability in society. And if everyone doesn't have that, then your society is not stable. It is not safe. And it is very hard for everything else on this list to work if people don't have safe, stable housing. It is very hard to study an education if you're houseless. It is very hard to get good health care if you're houseless. It's hard to stay healthy if you don't have a home. So limiting homelessness is one of the most important parts of socialism. And it is always one of the first problems every socialist government undertakes. Reason you see all those massive grey, brutalist apartment blocks throughout the Soviet Union is they were the solution. They knocked up and built these massive housing complexes as quick as they could to make sure that literally every single person in society had a safe home they could go to. It's also why Mao Zedong went around and basically killed all the landlords and confiscated property. It was not just to seize enough houses for everyone. It was to eliminate the capitalists that were using housing as a predatory wealth extraction process. The landlords are very predatory in China when Mao took over and getting rid of them and redistributing the housing was a very very big important point of view. So guaranteeing housing to everyone is very very important to a healthy, stable socialist society. Alright, principle number nine. Ensure food security for everyone. No one should go hungry. There is more than enough food in this world to feed everyone, to feed the whole planet many times over. And there is no reason anyone should go hungry while there is enough food to feed everyone. A socialist society looks to guarantee everyone's access to nutritious food regardless of their employment status or income. Again, capitalism doesn't leave this at all. Capitalism needs artificial scarcity to maximize profits. That's why you'll often see whenever there's surplus food that a place can't sell like a supermarket can't sell that'll often destroy it. A little anecdote on this one I used to have a friend a long time ago who used to go dumpster diving in Melbourne and she told me once and showed me photos once of when they were opening up this this bin outside of it was either calls or Woolworths and it was just full of buns and they poured bleach over all of it so that homeless people or anyone is desperate enough couldn't go in and take that food and eat it. Capitalism firmly believes in the idea of supply and demand and if you have too much supply then you can't maximize the price of it. The more you have of something the less you can charge people to buy it so capitalism goes out of its way to destroy everything it can't sell in order to keep the prices high. Socialism thinks that this is ridiculous of course and that if we have a huge surplus of food then that means that we can produce less food next time rather than need to destroy a lot of it just to keep prices high. This is also a fundamental point of having a healthy stable society along with making sure that everyone is educated and everyone has a house making sure everyone has access to nutritious food is really important for a stable society and it is one of the things that every socialist and government has always focused on pretty much directly after the housing you'll always hear about the agricultural revolutions especially in the Soviet Union and in communist China. That's not to say that the plans always work great both of those agricultural revolutions when they initially started were disastrous and killed a lot of people just due to short-sightedness in what would happen when they disrupted the food supplies initially but it's also important to remember that every socialist country ends up producing far more food than it needs. The Soviet Union and communist China never had a famine ever again once they finished the agricultural revolution and they have so much surplus food that they are frequently giving it to other socialist countries or using it as surplus trade. So that's really important to a stable society, make sure everyone has access to that good nutritious food. Principle #10 Eliminate unemployment through guaranteed work. Another benefit of having a planned economy rather than a free market is that you can assure everyone who wants to work has a job. Because production is organized to meet society's needs rather than to generate profit, you don't have things like market volatility are creating job insecurity and you don't have worker exploitation from corporations looking to maximize profits. You also don't have the threat of unemployment which capitalism uses to disciplines workers. When you've got a planned economy, we just have a list of jobs need to be done. We get people to do them and everyone goes back and has a nice hot cocoa at the end of the day. So that means that society isn't based around you just having to work endlessly. Society is based around doing what needs to be done and that dramatically changes the entire fabric of that society. Probably the most famous quote that exemplifies this is a quote from Marx himself when he said "From each according to his ability to each according to his needs." And this very famous Marxist principle means that in a communist society people would contribute what they're capable of contributing with their labour and skills and in return they would receive what they need to live and thrive. This is a society not based on how much they produce or their market value but simply based on their needs as human beings. And one of the most common criticisms you hear of communism from capitalist is "Why should I do all the work while other people kind of lays about and don't do anything?" Which is what they imagine communism is. Which is ironically actually what capitalism is because it's all the bourgeoisie that don't do anything and they leech off all the work of the proletariat. Us workers do everything in a capitalist society but the capitalist get to lounge around and enjoy their hedonistic lifestyles that we work very hard to provide them. But socialism and communism again they just see the list of jobs that needs to be done society and then everyone goes out and does those jobs and then everyone equally gets to enjoy everything that's produced. In a socialist society everyone gets to enjoy everyone's labour so yes you're going to work hard in your particular field and people are going to enjoy the fruits of what you produce but you also get to enjoy the fruits of what everyone else produces. This is a very fair society and it's equitable and that's really important to remember. Ok so our next little subgenre are "What are the political principles of socialism?" So principle 11 "established the dictatorship of the proletariat" So this is one of the biggest ones of course you've almost certainly heard that term before. And often people hear the word "dictatorship" and that's pretty much all they heard in that sentence but it is very important to understand that when we talk about the dictatorship of the proletariat we're literally setting up an anti-dictatorship. So what it really means is not having one person ruling as a dictator it means the working class as a whole as in the vast majority of people must hold political power and use the state to suppress the former ruling classes attempts to restore capitalism. So just as capitalism is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or a dictatorship of capital where the wealthy control society, socialism must flip that on its head and become a dictatorship of the proletariat where workers control all of society. And what this actually does is create a more democratic society than capitalism because it serves the majority rather than a tiny minority of billionaires. The Communist Manifesto explains it this way. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to rest by degree or capital from the bourgeoisie to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e. of the proletariat organized as the ruling class. So number 12, Freedom of Debate Unity of Action. This principle combines democracy in discussion and decision making with unity in action of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It means that people are free to debate and vote on policies but once a decision is made democratically, everyone implements it together. The point of this is to prevent the paralysis of endless debate while maintaining democratic participation and it's especially important for a revolutionary movement when it is facing powerful opposition and is facing the threat of counter revolutionaries. Alright, principle 13, the state will eventually wither away. So in this context, we're talking about the state, we're talking about the government itself or even the idea of a government withering away. The state exists mainly to help one class control another. And Lenin was probably the best rider on the whole idea of the state and the withering away of the state. And he particularly likes to point out that the whole point of the state is to allow one class to control another. But once socialism eliminates class divisions and everyone is equal, there won't be a need for a state to enforce this control. As class distinctions themselves completely disappear, the state will gradually become less and less important and eventually wither away. And this in turn will create the conditions of communism, the classless stateless society that comes after socialism. However, this is only possible and could only happen after the threat of capitalism itself is completely eliminated. In the communist manifesto, that was explained this way. Quote, "When in the course of development class distinctions have disappeared and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character." Number 14, "Build a Vanguard Party." The revolution doesn't just happen by itself. Workers need organized revolutionary leadership, a disciplined party of the most class conscious workers and intellectuals who understand socialist theory and can guide the revolutionary struggle. So the purpose of the Vanguard Party is to educate workers, organize resistance and lead the seizure of power from the capitalist class. Because without that organization, the spontaneous uprisings and little revolutions that pop up around the place spontaneously by worker movements can be easily defeated by the coordinated capitalist forces. Or just as easily can be co-opted and turned into something else by the political parties of the day, which is exactly what the democrats do in America whenever there's any kind of uprisings. The reason things like Occupy Wall Street and the Black Lives Matter movement dissipated into nothing is because the democrats infiltrated it, co-opted it and turned it into a very soft, and dissipated its power so that it was no longer a threat to the ruling class. And Vladimir Lenin was a big fan of Vanguard parties, as you can imagine, that's what the Bolsheviks were. And in his very influential book, and one of my favorites, "What is to be done?" Lenin said this, "We must train people who will dedicate to the revolution, not a free evening, but the whole of their lives. We must build up an organization large enough to permit the introduction of a strict division of labour in the various forms of our work." End quote. What Lenin is basically saying, "This is a whole job. Being part of the Vanguard party is your whole work. That is what you're committing yourself to, basically being a professional revolutionary. And without this little group of people without the Vanguard party, the revolution itself is impossible." Alright, principle 15, "Hey, we're almost halfway, folks." Revolution is necessary. Reform is insufficient. It is important to understand that the capitalist class, the billionaires, will never voluntarily give up their power and wealth. There is no strongly worded letter or vote you can do that will make them just go, "Oh, okay, no worries. He's all the means of production. He's the power in society. Let me redistribute my wealth. They will never do it voluntarily ever." And that's why the billionaires put so much money and effort into controlling the military, the police, the media, the government, and why they'll use violence to maintain their position, which is something we're seeing a lot of in, for example, America right now. The Minneapolis uprising is happening as I'm recording this. And that is a great demonstration of the class struggle because that is ice and everything happening there is the billionaire class using fascism to control the people to implement that class structure. And the uprising is a threat to that class structure because if they can prove that they can kick ice out of the city, if they prove that they can disrupt the plans of billionaires, that is a very dangerous precedent in terms of a class struggle, that makes billionaires sweat. So that's why they are going all out with their repression in Minneapolis and why it is turned into a battleground now. Anyway, the billionaires are going to control all of those instruments of power in society. Therefore workers must organize revolutionary struggle to seize state power and fundamentally transform that society away from bourgeoisie control. And it's why reforms are completely ineffectual long term. Gradual reforms within capitalism can improve conditions temporarily, but they don't eliminate the exploitation that is the bedrock of it all. And more importantly, any condition that is reformed can be easily reversed by the people in power. Only a revolution can give that power to the people, to the dictatorship of the proletariat and establish socialism as the core state function. Michael Prenty has a great note on this when he said quote, "left anti-communist remains studiously ignoring the fact that every revolution is decisive precisely because it overthrows the old system and creates a new one. Alright, principle 16. Build international solidarity and cooperation. Capitalism's tentacles stretch across the entire globe and every worker, no matter where they are on that capitalist pyramid in terms of their exploitation, everyone is still being exploited. Therefore, every worker in the world has common ground in which they can build solidarity in. And capitalism thrives on division. That's why there are so many divisions in all of our societies and all of them are artificial, things like nationalism and racism and ethnic lines and patriarchy. All of it is there to create purposeful divisions between the workers so they don't get solidarity and turn that culture war into a class war. All of those divisions are to vent us from uniting against the ruling class, which is why socialism really believes in internationalism. It believes in building that solidarity and that cooperation with workers not just within your country but across the world. And that of course gives rise to one of the most famous socialist chance in a world which is of course workers of the world unite. The biggest strength of socialism is its numbers, it's the fact that we are all united and working together. The mass numbers are what give us our strength and that's why that solidarity, especially internationally, is so important. Okay, principle 17, support anti-imperialist and national liberation struggles everywhere. Lending himself coined the phrase "imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism." So therefore being anti-imperialist would also make you anti-capitalist. And capitalism is made up of two things. It is the exploitation of workers and the stealing of resources. And this is, I mean that we talk about a lot in this podcast in case you haven't noticed. That's why I'm always doing the country profiles on countries in the global south because they are great examples of that second half of how colonialism is used to extract resources. Because exploiting workers and extracting resources is the ultimate goal of capitalism because that's eliminating the two biggest expenses that allow you to maximize profits. Exploitation means you don't have to pay your workers and extracting resources through things like war means you don't have to pay for resources. So if you get basically free labor and free resources, there's no limit to how much your profits can skyrocket. And that's why exploitation and resource extraction are the foundations of capitalism. So therefore being anti-imperialist also makes you anti-capitalist and being anti-imperialist is a really important principle to have as a socialist. All right, number 18, oppose all forms of colonialism and neocolonialism. Again, this is something we talk about a lot in this podcast. So I'm not going to go on about it too much in this particular episode. You can pick pretty much any episode here. My thoughts on all of that. But you know, historically colonialism is just the military conquest and political control of a region to extract its resources. Neocolonialism is doing the same thing, but using different weapons. It's basically using debt traps and sitting up client states and controlling elections. It doesn't necessarily need to use direct violence to control a country. But both of them have the same objective. Both colonialism and neocolonialism are about extracting those resources and exploiting those workers. You know, I'm always saying that colonialism and capitalism are BFFs. They are the two sides of the same coin and both need each other in order to work. So being anti-colonial, looking to dismantle colonial power structures is an important part of anti-capillism and a core principle of socialism. So that's the politics side of socialism covered amazingly quickly actually. So another subgenre I want to talk about is the social justice side of socialism because that's what it's all about. And its core socialism is about justice because justice is what creates harmony, how many what creates peace, and pieces what creates long-term stability. So having that justice at its center is a really important part of socialism. So that brings us to principle 19. Eliminate all forms of oppression. Because again, capitalism looks for every single way it can to divide workers. That's why it uses things like racism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia and abilism, ageism, name it whatever, right? It's all about creating a division that will make us fight each other in a culture war so that we're not fighting a class war. And oppression is about dividing workers sort of one side of that division can be super exploited for super profits. So socialism understands that freeing everyone from oppression is about creating that justice and creating that equality and that is an important part of building that solidarity. They have it all ties together. And it also recognizes that no one is truly free until everyone is free. And so it's just as important to end all forms of oppression in order to build that class consciousness and end the exploitation. It's one of the reasons you'll often hear capitalist decry this as identity politics. That is also a way of turning this into a culture war because capitalist understand that if we understand how this oppression works, if we understand how they are trying to divide us along these lines like a long racism, a long sexism, if we can identify that that's a really strong step towards our class consciousness. So drumming up that culture wherever they can and calling this identity politics and things like that is absolutely a strategy being used by a capitalist to derail conversations like the ones we're having right now. So principle 20, ensure gender equality and women's liberation. Things like patriarchy and women's oppression obviously predates capitalism by many thousands of years. But capitalism understood early on how important it would be to incorporate the oppression of women into its structures. It's one of the most important dividing lines that it has created and reinforced forever. We did a whole podcast on this a few episodes back if you want to dig into it in more detail. But again, it's all about exploiting people's labor and no people probably have their labor more exploited than the unpaid domestic labor women traditionally doing the home while the men are out earning the money. The men wouldn't be able to do that without the women doing the work at home and the women are never paid for that work. Even though it is very much essential work like any other society would break down without that unpaid domestic labor of women and capitalism knows this. So now it is as socialism recognizes this contradiction right here. It goes out of its way to guarantee equal rights for women and making sure that women are paid and supported in any of these roles. And even the idea of just making sure that domestic labor isn't just seen as women's work, that it also needs to be broken down and socialized. This is everyone's work and making sure that the structures are in place to support everyone in that domestic labor is a really important part of socialism. Making sure that everyone is supported and financially independent regardless of where they work is a really important and fundamental way to destroy patriarchy once and for all. This is also something that Mao Zedong was very passionate about. He has a very famous quote on this when he said "women hold up half the sky". Thomas and Kara also paraphrase that "who's one of my favourite revolutionaries by the way". That recognising that women's liberation is essential to liberating society and ushering in a socialist government. At principle 21, respect indigenous sovereignty and knowledge. Long before even socialism existed indigenous people had been fighting against capitalism. When colonialism came to their shores, they were doing it for centuries. It's also worth noting as we have in many other podcasts that a lot of indigenous societies are always based on, essentially, communism as it were. They are communal based societies that are about cooperation and resource sharing. That's long before either capitalism or socialism was invented. Understanding and recognising and respecting indigenous self-determination and respecting traditional knowledge and learning from indigenous practices, especially around collective ownership and environmental stewardship is a really important part of socialism and it's one that is often overlooked, especially by Western socialists. But this is a really essential part, especially of decolonisation, which, as we mentioned, is a really important part of anti-capitalism. Alright, principle 22, establish a sustainable relationship with the environment. There's another famous quote apparently attributed to Adam Haisey, which sums it up perfectly when it says, "When you understand that under capitalism a forest has no value until it's cut down, you begin to understand the root of our ecological crises." And capitalism has a very bad relationship with the environment because again, it sees the destruction of the environment and extraction of resources as being essential to profit maximisation. But equally disastrous, capitalism destroys the environment because protecting it costs money and reduces profits. So companies pollute extract resources unsustainably. They contribute to climate change because they're driven entirely by short-term profit. It's just about the next quarterly profits. There's no long-term vision. or care for sustainability because that isn't in the profit model. This isn't just, you know, horrible and in injustice. It's also basically suicidal. If we keep destroying the planet and keep draining our resources, you know, we can't have infinite profit growth on a finite resource planet. Eventually, it will collapse. And this is a problem that socialism identifies and centers as being very important. We must have a sustainable relationship with the environment, which again, every indigenous community has managed to do for a hundred thousand years. We know it's possible. And that's why, you know, part of having a planned economy is basing our production on what we need, not just on producing as much stuff as we can. And part of that model means you can have long-term planning and factor in the health of the planet into those plans. So protecting forests, reducing pollution and using renewable energy are things that socialism and society can collectively decide is something very important to our economic model. And therefore is something that we are always going to center. The ABCs of socialism has a great little quote, which is this quote, "Capitalism is incapable of dealing with climate change because it requires immediate action that threatens profitability. Only democratic planning can subordinate production to ecological sustainability." Principal 23, "Implement ecological planning. Further to having a planned economy to coordinate production and minimize environmental damage, it's also important that we implement an ecological plan into that economy building as well. So not only are we just minimizing the impacts of that economy we're also looking for ways to repair the climate as we're going along." It's not just enough to stop the climate crises. We need to reverse them. Implementing a long-term ecological plan is a really important part of a socialist government. Because this is the only way we can use our resources sustainably and address climate change effectively. So that's our justice principles. Let's move on to cultural principles. So number 24, "Developed Socialist Consciousness and Education." We talked earlier about the importance of education as the bedrock of a socialist society. It's worth repeating here because it's essential that people understand why capitalism is so bad and why it is doing so much damage. It's important that they understand how capitalism exploits things and how socialism is the actual solution to that dynamic. And in order to do that, there has to be ongoing education in things like Marxist theory and working-class history and the critical analysis and looking at things like dialectical materialism and looking at that historical materialism to understand why the world is the way it is and what we're going to do to fix it. If you don't have that class analysis built into the education, then you can just look at all the crises and not see any link between them. You're just like, "Oh, it's bad that we've got a housing crisis. Oh, it's bad. We've got an environmental crisis. Oh, it's bad that we just have this endless war. G.I. wish all these bad things would stop happening. When you have that class analysis, when you have that dialectical materialism as your lens are looking through the world, you can see all the contradictions and you can see how it all comes together. And only then can you see what needs to be done about it. So it's not just enough to give people an education. It's important that you give them that consciousness as well and give them that political education to understand why things are happening around them. And this is something that Lenin talks about a lot in what is to be done, by the way. Okay. Principle 25. Practice criticism and self-criticism. Revolutionary movements must constantly evaluate their work. You're going to make a lot of mistakes. That is something that the Soviet Union especially learnt very early on. They made a lot of mistakes already mentioned the issues with the agricultural revolution. But yeah, you're going to make mistakes. But one of the great things about having a planned economy, for example, is you can learn from mistakes. You can identify mistakes and then correct them. But in order to do that, members need to be able to criticise the problems that they observe. And you need to be able to acknowledge your own errors. And in every bit of Socialist and Communist theory, this is something that is really prominently emphasised, especially by Mao who said this. Conscientious practice of self-criticism is still another hallmark distinguishing our party from all other political parties. As we say, dust will accumulate if a room is not cleaned regularly. Our faces will get dirty if they are not washed regularly. Our comrades' minds and our party's work may also collect dust and also need sweeping and washing. End quote. Principle 26. Serve the people. Socialism must be organised around genuinely serving working people's needs and interests. Like the absolute foundation of all of this. And the reason we're doing all of this. And this means listening to the people's concerns. There has to be that level of democracy and a lot of that comes from just listening to communities and listening to workplaces. What are their grievances? What are their issues? What do they need to succeed? Listening to the people is a really important part of a functional and stable Socialist government. And so that same Socialist structure must provide practical support to the people and constantly demonstrate through action that Socialism is there to improve their lives. Any revolutionary movement that becomes disconnected from the ordinary people's struggle will always fail. Principle 27. Unite theory and practice. Theory without practice is empty intellectualism. And practice where our theory is directionless and hopeless. Both theory and practice are very important for any Socialist government to work. Socialist must study theory to understand society and develop that strategy and then apply this understanding in practical organizing. And this is a continuous learning cycle as well because the more experience from practice you get should help you refine the theory, creating an ongoing cycle of learning and action. Again, this is something that Mao talks about a lot when he said this quote, "If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality. If you want to know the taste of a pair, you must change the pair by eating it yourself." End quote. Principle 28. Identify and unite with the working class and oppressed. So the working class, which is everyone who must sell their labor to survive, that's pretty much all of us right, wear the revolutionary force because we have both the interest and the potential power to overthrow capitalism, whether you're the only thing that actually can. Because workers are the people who actually run and make the whole world work. We have all the actual power, we design it over to the capitalist. But identifying and uniting the working class is essential to creating a socialist world. But it means uniting people from very different walks of life, even just among workers themselves, there's a big difference between industrial workers and service workers and agricultural workers and everyone else is exploited by capitalism. Identifying that struggle between us and uniting them in solidarity is a very big task and it is the basis and the whole point of class consciousness. Which is when you finally become aware of where you are in the system and you can see the system as the exploiting force that it is. Because once you have that moment, it's that light bulb moment, we are never able to look at the system any other way ever again. But it is essential for socialism to build the broadest possible alliance of exploited and oppressed people and unite them under that working class leadership. And this is a core point in the communist manifesto when Marx and Engel said this quote, "Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry. The proletariat is its special and essential product." In quote, "The workers run the world and once we are united, we're unstoppable." Principle 29, "Identify and oppose the bourgeoisie and reactionaries. Understanding exactly who the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class actually are and their allies is essential for organizing any revolutionary action." The people we constitute as being part of the bourgeoisie are people like landlords, the reactionary politicians that serve the billionaires, fascists of course, that are there to be the brutal armed guard of capitalism that are there to smash any socialist revolutionary activity that fascisms whole point. And of course, all the billionaires that control all the money and pull all the strings. Understanding who the enemies are and how they operate is essential for effective struggle. Because if you don't understand what their intentions are, you're not able to organize any effective revolutionary action against them." This is one of the reasons why the bourgeoisie created what they call the middle class or the petty bourgeoisie, which are essentially working class people, but they might operate small businesses and therefore have workers that they exploit to various degrees themselves. And they think that their interests lie with the other capitalist rather than the workers. But the capitalists are just using them as kind of a buffer between the angry mob of the proletariat and the ultra-rich capitalist. And this is things like, especially in like Australia today, the people who collect real estate as passive income. They think that their interests align with the billionaires and with the capitalist, but they would gain a lot more by siding with the socialist than they would lose because yes they might lose that extra passive income but they would also gain all of the amazing things we've talked about earlier, the free education, the free health care and the general improvement of the standard living of the vast majority of people. But it's always in the interest of the capitalist to turn the middle class against the rest of the proletariat, which is what the vast majority of propaganda and corporate media is aimed towards. Alright, principle 30, we're almost there folks, how are we doing? We're hanging in there? I know it's a lot, I know it's a lot and that's why at the end I'm just going to really recommend going to read these books, there's of course going to be the reading list in the description of this episode. This is just to introduce you to all these concepts and I know it's a lot and thank you for hanging in there, you're doing great. But it'll all start to click soon, I promise. Alright, so principle 30, be willing to struggle and sacrifice. It is about giving up that convenience in exchange for creating a better world and in exchange for recreating that community that was the basis of society for most of history. We lost that to the individualism culture and consumerist culture of capitalism. The only thing that capitalism gave us back was that convenience, you know, I can just go to the store and get anything I want. But the cost of that, not just in terms of the environmental damage, the exploitation of workers in the other side of the world and the unsustainability of that business model means that it isn't sustainable, it is going to collapse and that convenience that we enjoy is fleeting. But community is forever. So you need to understand that yes, we are going to have to sacrifice, we are going to face inconvenience, but what we gain in exchange is more than worth it. And it's also important to know that that sacrifice is necessary. The ruling class, the bourgeoisie, they're not going to surrender power peacefully and fighting for socialism, main vault, personal risk and sacrifice. That doesn't mean we should be reckless with our actions or careless, but it does mean recognizing that if we want a better world, we do have to fight for it. It won't just be handed to us. We're not just able to go up to cast a vote one day and just have a utopia after. It doesn't work that way. Power doesn't work that way. Power is never given. It is always taken. And that is why one needs to be a peace with what the cost of a better world truly is. Principal 31. Maintain Revolutionary Vigilance. Even after revolution, threats remain. Former ruling classes will attempt to restore capitalism through sabotage, violent or infiltration. That's what America basically spends all its time doing. That's what the whole role of the CIA is to do. It's to overthrow socialist governments. It is to perform coups. It is to intrap and intimidate governments into complying with the wishes of US corporations and capitalist interests. And anytime there is a revolution, there is always a counter revolution. The success of the revolution depends on the revolutionary vigilance and the organization of that revolutionary force. And it's funny. This is one of the things we can actually see in real time. We have seen what the US is doing to places like Cuba and Venezuela and now that's what all the sanctions are about. That is capitalism using economic pressure and military threats and covert operations to undermine socialism and attempt to break those societies, not just so that that socialist government will fail, but also that everyone can look at that and go, "Oh look, socialism doesn't work." See how it collapsed? And that is the point of why America works so hard to break every socialist government they can. So, any revolutionary movement must remain vigilant against these threats and understand that they're going to happen. And it's also a great example of why communism is impossible and till capitalism is gone, because as long as capitalism exists, it is always going to use every weapon it can to destroy any socialist government. Therefore, any transition to communism is impossible if there's already a state trying to destroy it. So, the only way communism happens is once the whole world becomes socialist. And that might seem insane and impossible, right? But I would like to remind you that the last capitalist empire is already on its knees. And the world we may live in five to ten years from now, I think will be dramatically different from the world we live in now. And finally, we're at principle 32, the final one. And it's enough to get its own subgenre. Because the ultimate goal of all of this socialism is the implementation of communism. And that is what principle 32 is about. Work towards a classless, stateless society. As you mentioned, socialism is a transitional stage toward communism. It is about dismantling the exploitation of capitalism and laying the groundwork for a cooperative, communal, classless society that is communism that no longer needs a state because there is no ruling class interests that need to be upheld. The state becomes irrelevant once the exploitation is gone. And so that's the final goal here, where class distinctions have been completely eliminated. The state has withered away and society operates on the principle of from each according to their ability to each according to their needs. In a communist society, people work together cooperatively because they understand it benefits everyone. If we've implemented all the steps before this, especially that political education, if everyone understands the assignment, which is that we are all here working to help each other, we understand that people work together cooperatively because they understand it benefits everyone. Not because they're being forced to or because they're being paid to. It's about understanding that the resources are distributed based on need, not wealth or power. And in this communist society, people are free to develop their talents and abilities fully without exploitation or oppression. And this is the ultimate liberation that all socialist struggles are working towards. And the communist manifesto envisions this final stage, where it says this quote, "In place of the old bourgeoisie society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." And this is not about utopianism, no socialist or communist thinks that any of this will be easy or that any of it will be perfect, but it's about getting rid of that exploitation and laying the groundwork for a society that is sustainable for the foreseeable future. But it's a lot of work, as you can tell, we've got 32 principles here and we've been barely touching on most of them. You know, I've just been introducing you to these concepts. This is a long struggle. This is not something that I'm likely to see in my lifetime. As we my children won't even see this in their lifetime, it's a long struggle. And working towards communism is really the ultimate goal of humanity because if we are at the point in our civilisation or growth, in the point of our enlightenment, it has to be more than just petty swapping out which ruling class is in charge of what, for however amount of time, we have to be working towards something greater. And we are absolutely capable of doing that. We have everything we need. All of the crises, all of the horrors in the world, is the capitalist desperately fighting off their own collapse. This is capitalism into K and it is ugly and it is chaotic and it is mean and it is all the horrors we see everywhere. It is the endless hate in the media. It's the platforming of all the Nazis and the white supremacists on social media. It's the endless genocides in Gaza and Sudan and Congo. It is the exploitation. It is the fascist in the street. All of this is capitalism into K, desperately trying to hold on, but it is collapsing. And so that's why it's so important to have this framework of understanding what's going to come after. White understanding, why socialism works and understanding why we want to work towards communism and why that's in everyone's best interests. Why that is the best way forward to creating a just world and a sustainable world and one that lets us all experience liberation and freedom that lets all of our kids have a bright future. And it's something that actually is within reach it, but we still have to fight for it, you know. And so that's why I came up with these little principles, these 32 principles and I drew them basically from just these five books which again I'm putting into the reading list at the end. And I hope this has given you a list of introduction to the theory and to the framework of understanding capitalism's failures and understanding how liberation can really only be achieved by socialism and then communism. I know this has been a bit of a lecture episode and I know it hasn't been as fun as our usual episodes and we'll be back to the usual, you know, normally scheduled programming after this. I've already decided what it is by the way, we're going to do island next. So that's going to be the next episode and it'll be back to our usual fun episodes. But I nonetheless hope that it has at least been useful and I hope that this has given you an introduction to socialist theory and if you're a socialist already I hope this has been a nice little helpful refresher for you. You know, I'm very keen to get some feedback in this episode so please feel free to send me messages or leave comments. I don't know if we want more of these kinds of episodes or if we just want to go back to the usual historical narratives which personally that's what I'm best at I think and what I enjoy the most. So I want to go back to that. But if you got a lot out of this. this episode. If you found this useful, let me know and we can work towards doing more things like this. So I hope you have enjoyed this breakdown of the key socialist principles. And again, I'm sorry for the delay in this episode. It has been very chaotic lately. Still getting used to the new house and it is the middle of summer. It's like 40 degrees Celsius in this recording room today. I am sweating like a pig, but you know, I love you guys. And of course, the other thing is I recently had a baby and I haven't talked about it much. I generally don't talk about my private life much, especially on social media, but we're a little bit closer here on the podcast aren't we? We're friends here. So I want to let you guys know that I do have a new born baby daughter and she's taking a lot of my time and that's one of the reasons why this episode took a bit longer than normal and probably why the next episode will take a bit more time as well. But please bear with me. It's for a good reason, but she's an absolute blessing and I am happy in life right now and I'm very excited to dive into these podcasts. This is the first one of 2026 by the way. And I hope to make this our best year yet. I've got a lot of good ideas for what we're going to do this year. I'm very excited to share them all with you. And I hope you're going to come on this journey with me and enjoy it as much as I do. But anyway, if you did enjoy this episode and you would like to support this show, there are of course two things you can do to help. The first is if you know someone who you think would benefit from hearing this episode, then please go tell them about it. Please go recommend this show to a friend. Word about this by far the most effective way to grow an audience with a podcast and I'm no exception to that. So if you know someone in your life who you think would benefit from hearing any of these episodes, please go share it with them. The other thing you can do is go become a free member at my patreon patreon.com/triploy. Just signing up for the free membership means you get the notifications for these episodes. Becoming a free member just really helps me build that on is and it helps me know who's engaged and who's listening and I appreciate it every time you do that. So thank you very much for listening. I hope you've enjoyed listening to this episode as much as I've enjoyed making it. Please stay safe out there. I know it's chaotic at the moment and it's a bit scary but no matter how bad it gets over the next few years, I am positive. A bright future is ahead of us once we get through the short term horrors. So stay strong, do the best you can out there and hopefully this is given you something to think about. [Music]