Studio "Think for yourself / Think now" Hello in case you forgot my name is Thomas Miller if you are here that means you're still interested in my popular history show if you're looking for my academic lectures to prepare for final exams in history then use this link there you will find my lectures included in the list of textbooks recommended by the world education council in 2222 here I'm conducting a much less formal conversation about history allowing myself a few more subjective assessments and lyrical digressions with a little more psychology I call it my creative laboratory Today, as I promised we're going to talk about the socioeconomic crisis of the first quarter of the 21st century in case you get tired of seeing my face, you can switch to the movie mode then you will see the illustration material and not me well let's begin my friends The beginning of the 21st century occupies an important place in world history. Humanity was going through a remarkable time then. Although, probably, many people saw the times they lived in as extraordinary and the most progressive.
And yet… Let's forget for a while about the high level of civilization in the 23rd century, and put ourselves in the place of the people who lived two centuries ago. They saw tremendous progress, literally in a few decades! So much was invented at this time to make human life better and easier! The tools and machines became very precise! Just take a look at what 3D printers were capable of! And how much medical technology had advanced! Computers became more and more powerful! Just look at the Internet! Isn't that magical? Now people were able to transfer gigabytes of data in seconds! Any information could be obtained in 2-3 clicks. And not only information. Everything! The common man acquired powers that not even the wealthiest kings of the past could dream of. A few decades ago, all those advances in science and technology seemed like pipe dreams or fantasies.
And now they had become commonplace, a familiar daily reality. It seemed that the people of the Earth were connected as never before in their history. First of all, economically.
Think of all these multinational corporations. They were everywhere! The whole world seemed to have become one large factory, divided into many workshops. The economic system was tied by millions of threads. People in different countries listened to the same popular music, played the same video games, empathized with the same characters of the world's best-selling literary books, watched the same films and TV, and wore clothes of the same brands.
And how many international organizations were responsible for the common good of mankind Well, at least that's what was written in their statutes and numerous declarations. United Nations, World Health Organization, UNESCO, Greenpeace, and other human rights organizations. People shared all kinds of activities. They organized international festivals, sports competitions, tournaments and championships, conferences, and symposia.
There was a feeling that state borders were just a formality. Well, at least until this story began. It seemed that people on Earth lived as one big happy family. And it seemed that everyone in this large family would eagerly rush to help another at the first call.
What a surprise! But, perhaps, this is just an exception, a rare, unfortunate misunderstanding, and solidarity and mutual assistance still rule on Earth? Surely the head of the United Nations was aware, let's listen to him! Antonio Guterres: «COVID-19 has been likened to an X-ray, revealing fractures in the fragile skeleton of the societies we have built. It is exposing fallacies and falsehoods everywhere: The lie that free markets can deliver healthcare for all; The fiction that unpaid care work is not work; The delusion that we live in a post-racist world; The myth that we are all in the same boat. Because while we are all floating on the same sea, it’s clear that some of us are in superyachts while others are clinging to the floating debris. Dear friends, inequality defines our time. More than 70 per cent of the world’s people are living with rising income and wealth inequality. The 26 richest people in the world hold as much wealth as half the global population.»
in the same speech Antonio Auterres stated that humanity is facing the deepest global recession since WWII that another 100 million people could be plunged into extreme poverty and that our ancestors were threatened by a famine of historical proportions But maybe people at least achieved peace on Earth? Alas ... Here is a list of military conflicts unleashed only at the end of the 20th and in the first 20 years of the 21st century ... What about non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries? Hilary Clinton: «We came, we saw, he died!» Nothing is comforting here either. The powerful states intervened in the affairs of less developed countries.
And even those didn't get along with each other. Human rights, peace, sustainable development, food or environmental security - whatever important issue you would think of, everywhere the situation was critical or catastrophic. How so? Why were the numerous international organizations powerless or ineffective? Why were the promises of political leaders not fulfilled, and why did their declared good intentions not lead to a positive result? Why, with all the technological progress, with all the achievements in science and technology, with the most powerful productive forces, people were still unable to put such phenomena as hunger and poverty, unemployment and homelessness, wars and violence into the past? Why did the golden age of humanity not arrive? The short answer to this question fits into one 10 letter word. CAPITALISM The world we lived in. Episode 1 Let's take a look at what humanity looked like in economic and social terms.
Back in 2016, according to the OXFAM organization, the wealth of the richest 1% of people on the planet exceeded the wealth of the remaining 99%. 72 million people owned a fortune of $125 trillion. In 2021, there were 2,755 billionaires in the world.
At the same time, in 2018, almost half of the world's population- -3.4 billion people-lived on less than 5 and a half dollars a day. In 2019, 736 million people were languishing in the tight grip of extreme poverty – -on less than $ 1.90 a day. 2 billion 200 million people on the planet did not have access to clean drinking water, more than 4 billion people suffered from unsanitary conditions, and 3 billion did not have soap to wash their hands with. 100 million people were homeless. An additional 1 billion 600 million people worldwide had inadequate housing conditions.
About 15 million people were forcibly evicted every year. Natural resources were distributed extremely unevenly. The states of the so-called “first world” consumed most of the planet's energy and raw materials.
The only cause of this ever-increasing inequality was the capitalist mode of production, And the mainline dividing humanity was private ownership of the means of production. Private ownership of the means of production divided society into two main classes – -the class of the owners of capital, banks, factories, natural resources, and land. And the class of people that had no other opportunity to earn a living other than to get hired. Most of the material goods by the labor of hired workers. in 2020 about 55 percent of the working age population was part of the labor force most of these people were hired workers The means of production alone could not produce any profit without the labor of people.
The end value of the products created by the workers was always higher than the cost of production, including the cost of worker’s wages, and the cost of updating and replacing machinery and equipment. The rest of the profit, which is called surplus value, is pocketed by the entrepreneur. All the capital that existed on the planet was the accumulated, unpaid labor of the working class.
If there was no profit, then the owner of the capital would go broke and no longer be counted as a capitalist. But these kinds of individual cases could not change the system. Some entrepreneurs could go broke. Some proletarians or more educated interlayers of the proletariat, occasionally, miraculously, were able to break into the capitalist class.
One thing was always the same: the class that owns the means of production benefits from the appropriation of the surplus value created by the labor of hired workers. Such an organization of production and distribution of material goods determined the life of mankind on the scale of the entire planet. The existing order of things was maintained and protected by the state. The state was an instrument of coercion and violence in the hands of the ruling class.
Back in those days, people believed that they had power over the ruling class by voting in the elections. But many, back then, understood that a class that owns the media and can spend a lot of money on election campaigns will always have the power to elect those politicians who will protect their interests. The state machine worked in the interests of the rich. Laws that were passed in parliaments, government decisions, the work of the courts and the police - everything was aimed at protecting the interests of the ruling class. Politicians and officials, who supposedly ruled the country independently, in fact always acted within the framework of these interests.
Society was divided into two main classes, but there were other social interlayers. There were groups of people, like top managers, hired directors of companies and enterprises, highly paid lawyers, etc., who weren't in the ruling class, as they didn’t own any means of production, but whose interests, status, and income were much closer to the ruling elite. Other groups also had pretty comfortable positions as they were successful in selling their skills to the capitalists. These are highly paid engineers, programmers, architects, some scientists, and doctors.
There was another group of people like famous artists of different genres, writers, actors, singers, comedians, and other show business stars, including popular bloggers who came along with the invention of the internet, as well as eminent professional athletes. They performed several social functions at once. First, they distracted the working majority from daily hardships and concerns, inviting them into the world of illusions, fantasies, and entertainment. Second, they were a kind of buffer between the richest elite and the rest of the society. These people were always in sight, in the spotlight, they talked a lot about themselves, and created the illusion, that they were at the top of the social pyramid. Which was very convenient for the super-rich minority, most of whom did not want such fame and preferred to remain in the shadows.
And finally, the same layer of people, by using their works, transmitted those kinds of ideas that were necessary and useful for the ruling class. The so-called "rulers of thoughts", who influenced public opinion, supported certain parties in the elections, created the attitude necessary for the ruling class towards certain phenomena in the minds of whole countries and nations. It was presented as an “uncensored creativity” But the majority of the "creative interlayer" could not go against the interests of the big business because they depended on the cash flows that were coming from it - it could be advertising contracts, proposals from publishers and producers, or grants. They also depended on the capital-owned media outlets that could end the popularity of anyone, simply by denying them airtime or denigrating them in the media space. Not a single well-known show business person or entertainment professional could go against the power of capital without consequences.
Another very important group – were those who defended the rich from any infringement on their property. These are the police, the special forces, and the army. Of course, in any country in the world back then, they used the same justification that sounded like: the police ensure the rule of law and order in the interests of every citizen, the special forces are guarding our common security, and the army, armed to the teeth, protects our Homeland. But in fact, the police primarily protected the property and security of the rich, the special forces fought against any infringement on the domination of capital, and protection of the Homeland most often meant the protection of business interests of the oligarchy, sometimes thousands of miles from home. And many realized this back then.
And we're here to say to all those serving in the Army and the Marines, and the Air Force, and the Navy, that you have the absolute right to refuse to take part in these criminal wars and that's the right that all of you should exercise. You have no reason to go put your life on the line and kill and die for profit. We've been to Iraq we've been to Afghanistan, and we know what these wars are really about. And we join the military for many reasons because we need a college education because we need a job because we need health care and then we join the military and they tell us that our enemies are poor people in caves in Afghanistan or poor people in deserts of Iraq.
But we`ve been in those countries and we know that our enemies are not other poor people abroad it`s the people that laid us off from our jobs, that denied us health care that make it impossible to get an education our enemies are not in the poorest countries on the planet but right here in the richest one! There were other groups in the society – less stable than the big bourgeoisie. There was, for example, medium-size capital, which also lived on the exploitation of someone else's labor, but did not reach the heights of the big business. Even lower in the socio-economic hierarchy was the petty bourgeoisie the small business owners who worked by themselves or who hired a small number of workers.
People of this social group on rare occasions rose higher and became rich, but more often they went broke and joined the ranks of wage workers. And finally, one more social layer - the lumpen-proletariat. These are the economically declassed group of the population (homeless, beggars, and criminals). They often had neither property nor profession, and lived on random income, often earning their livelihoods by criminal means. One can go deeper into the description of these groups, but we will not do this.
I will emphasize again. The main division of humanity took place along the line of private ownership of the means of production. The very tiny minority who owned capital – banks, enterprises, land, and natural resources, lived in luxury, exploiting the labor of wage workers. And the vast majority could not make a living other than being hired by a capitalist or serving the capitalist state. What would have happened to a healthy adult who would suddenly stop working, back then? The majority of ordinary people did not have any significant savings, therefore, anyone who did not receive help from his or her relatives or friends would be in an inevitable crisis. Very soon this person would be threatened by poverty, homelessness, and even hunger.
In the 21st century, one of the most popular comments under videos about the homeless was: "We are all one paycheck away from homelessness." Yes, formally people were free. There were no slave owners or guards to force them to work. The armed feudal lord did not force them to plow the field. But there was a much more subtle way of making the proletarian work.
All enterprises and most of the money supply were in the hands of the capitalists. Therefore, the overwhelming majority of the people of our planet, had only one choice, to sell their labor force or ability to work in return for a possibility to survive. People's lives, their ability to work became a commodity. Moreover, the people themselves had no control over what they were selling. The demand for this commodity was determined by the spontaneity of emerging market conditions and by the interests of the employer. Under capitalism, one cannot be guaranteed employment, whether you are a worker or a holder of a university diploma.
So it turns out that most of the proletarians depended solely on the needs of a capitalist at any particular moment. For example, if relocation of an enterprise to a country with a cheaper labor force promises the owner more profits? Then it will be done. It does not matter if all of the workers will be fired. Let them look for another job if they can find it.
No one would care about their high qualifications Those problems don’t bother a capitalist, as soon as the workers begin to perform their duties, the mechanics of a capitalist labor discipline began to operate, forcing the employees to meekly and obediently fulfill the will of their master. The threat of losing your job, and the fear of losing your livelihood were the main motives to work, even if the working conditions were poor. And the more the crisis in the economy grew, the more the capitalists took advantage of this fear.
They reduced the salary of their e mployee, they forced the workers to work harder, they would penalize the workers without a reason – -they knew the workers would tolerate this because many unemployed people were waiting to get a job outside the factory gates. In 2015, 75% of all workers in the world had practically no social guarantees. They worked based on temporary contracts or without contracts at all.
And in 2020, 470 million people in the world were completely jobless. Contrary to the ideas of many people living in the 21st century. The state did not serve the interest of society as a whole. It served the interests of the ruling class, the class of owners of large private property. The ordinary state employees and private employees were treated more or less in the same way. Furthermore, most of the people were in debt bondage.
The constant need to pay their debt to the bankers-percenters forced them to put up with harsher exploitation. Wage-workers felt that their work didn’t belong to them. The main goal of any capitalist enterprise was the enrichment of its owner. This meant that workers were alienated from the fruits of their labor, it was appropriated by the capitalist.
Therefore people were alienated from the process of labor as well. There was no motivation for good conscientious labor because the fruits of human labor did not belong to the person performing the labor. A person turned into a mercenary, doing everything formally, uninspiring, without exerting creative forces.
His work had to be controlled and observed. As a result, a person was alienated from his creative essence. Finally, the people became alienated from each other. Individualistic interests were always a priority.
This gave rise to a certain system of relations where people often saw each other as a source of profit or as a competitor that one had to beat. Individualism and ignorance were cultivated as social norms. The richer and more powerful often despised the poor. The prestige of labor, especially productive labor, was falling because the main measure of success was money. Labor was for fools and losers who were not able to make money quickly.
Such an attitude towards work nullified all its value. The main values were unrestrained consumption and the ability not to work at all, to live in idleness. Very rarely did anyone enjoy their work and did it creatively.
Capitalism does not exist without labor. But let's remember how the so-called "free" market and “free” quote-on-quote labor began. It's ridiculous, but even in the 21st century, the ordinary people were imagining it in a pretty idealistic way: where smart and dexterous entrepreneurs would hire workersto produce goods that are in demand.
And where workers would get paid appropriately, of course! But how did this market economy, so beloved by many at the time, get started? There are two things required for capitalist production to emerge. First, we need gold and silver that will be used to create enterprises and not just accumulate in someone’s treasure chest. Secondly, there must be a large number of poor people who are legally free but have no means to make a living. To survive, they will be forced to work for business owners.
Capitalism is impossible without available money and unoccupied labor. Both appeared in Western Europe, in the process of the initial accumulation of capital. It took place from the late fifteenth to the 18th century, and in some countries, it dragged on until the end of the 19th century. Colonial plunder became one of the main sources of wealth at the dawn of capitalism. From the mines opened in America, tons of gold and silver were transported to Europe. European conquerors mercilessly exterminated the natives of the New World and forced them to work.
In Africa, the slave trade flourished, the continent turned into a hunting ground for live goods. In the 16th century, black slaves were brought to South and North America, where their labor in mines and plantations was mercilessly exploited. As one thinker aptly remarked, "Newborn Capital exudes blood and dirt from all his pores, from head to toe." One couldn't have said it better.
In the same way, a new exploited class, the class of hired workers,the proletariat, was forged through the most ruthless violence. Let's remember how this process began and take England as an example. In the 16th century, the demand for English wool grew both abroad (it was exported to the Netherlands) and in England itself (it had its woolen industry).
More and more sheep pastures were needed. Therefore, landowners that were in the business of sheep breeding and textile production actively seized communal lands, which were jointly owned by peasants and feudal lords. Soon, the landlords and gentry began to crowd out the peasants who did not own any land by raising the rent.
Unable to pay the increased rent, peasants were forced to leave their plots. The excavated land was fenced in and usually used as new pasture. That’s where the name of this practice came from - fencing.
Deprived of land, the peasants began to look for ways to feed themselves. At best, they turned in to agricultural or manufacturing wage workers. Many people lost their homes along with their portion of the land. That caused a lot of misery, people became nomads, beggars-paupers. Merciless laws were issued against them. According to the law "On the fight against vagrancy" paupers were not only beaten with whips, branded, handcuffed in stocks and shackles, but also put to death.
During the reign of Henry the VIII, over 70,000 so-called "stubborn beggars", including women and children,were hanged in just 15 years. The blame for being poor was entirely placed on the impoverished themselves. The prototypes of the first workhouses appeared in England in the second half of the 16th century (for example, London Bridewell Prison). In such establishments, homeless and unemployed Britons worked in hard labor conditions for the most meager food and a roof over their heads. Often they were humiliated and abused.
This hell for the poor lasted until the 1940s. In 2013, a documentary was released on the history of UK workhouses. Famous people whose ancestors ended up in these institutions took part in the filming.
With deep anguish, they spoke of the suffering of their relatives. They were outraged by the cruelty with which their relatives were treated. They were surprised by the indifference of society to the poor and disadvantaged. At the end of the film, the authors concluded that the system in the 21st century has become much more humane concerning the poor. But has the situation changed in the 21st century since the earlier times? This homeless Englishman was fined £ 80 for begging. And this American woman was arrested because she was sleeping in her car.
She could have slept on the sidewalk next to her parked car, but she was not allowed to sleep in her car. The people without shelter were fined, the police mercilessly demolished their tent camps, and destroyed their belongings. The area of Skid Row became infamous in Los Angeles, where thousands of homeless people were constantly living. France ... Germany ... Italy ...
In the 21st century in any country of the so-called first world, you could meet people without a roof over their heads. Sure, they were not hanged for vagrancy, as at the time of the Tudors, but can we call the conditions of their existing humane? Some homeless people even worked. Homeless workers. There were even families forced to live with their children in cars.
Capitalism was born with these genetic ulcers – poverty, unemployment, and homelessness. And over the centuries of its existence, it did not get rid of them. And it couldn't get rid of it. Why? Because then it would stop being capitalism.
Poverty, unemployment, and homelessness were not just inevitable, but the ruling class needed them as a constant threat for the proletarians. Don't want to work hard? Then you will find yourself at the bottom. Therefore, be afraid to lose your job, do not argue with your boss. Capitalism accumulated thousands of contradictions, which simply could not be resolved within the present framework. The appropriation of the surplus-value, created by the working class, was the main thing in the capitalist mode of production. Therefore, capitalism remained a parasitic and exploitative economic system the whole time it existed.
All the benefits produced by the workers primarily went to the enrichment and luxurious existence of the bourgeoisie class and its servants. The working people received the benefits from their labor only on a leftover basis, usually in low amounts. No reforms, financial handouts, or temporary relaxation of exploitation could fundamentally change anything.
If one day the capitalist made concessions, the next day he would take them back and demand even more. Even in the western states that served as an example for their social policies, social spending was constantly cut. From 1990 to 2020 the salaries of the ordinary workers in the United States not only did not grow, but fell, and that is without taking into account inflation. Meanwhile, the salaries and bonuses of the top managers and the incomes of the richest business owners soared. Property stratification, poverty, and misery have always accompanied the market economy.
That means that bad neighborhoods, slums, favelas, and the social bottom were inevitable in a capitalist society. Crime was also inevitable. Disadvantaged people, deprived of means for a decent livelihood and work, more easily embarked on a criminal path, beginning to steal, rob, and kill. And it is foolish to demand to be kind, gentle, and law-abiding from those who were brought up at the bottom, in an atmosphere of cruelty and indifference.
If a person does not receive warmth and care from his or her childhood as his or her parents were also in a desperate situation, if quality education is not available, if there are no prospects, other than working for pennies or the street jungle of the criminal world, then most likely the person will follow the path of life that society and conditions dictated to him. You can say whatever you want about personal responsibility, freedom of choice, and willpower, but“it is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary, their social that determines their consciousness”. It was not only the poor and the disadvantaged who were inclined towards criminal activity. People also resorted to fraud, theft, and prostitution in various forms, because honest work for the capitalist could not guarantee wellbeing and growth. Such a life led to massive suffering from mental illness and psychological disorders. The world was drowned in alcohol and other narcotic substances.
Mass culture also continuously supported intellectual and moral degradation in society. What kind of values did it propagate? The worship of money, the cult of consumption, sex, parasitism, and violence. All the best that mankind created and accumulated in its entire history, real masterpieces, had been in the shadows of low-grade consumer goods that were always in sight which flowed through the consciousness of people practically from their very birth. Accustomed to the most primitive art forms, the younger generation could not understand and appreciate real art, their aesthetic preferences had already been formed. In addition to this, there was an education crisis in capitalist countries. People hardly became any more intelligent, or well-read, or cultured.
In such conditions, both were degrading, the oppressors and the oppressed. The majority of the working class tried to make ends meet. They had no money for a good education, and there was practically no energy or time left for self-education. The exploiting class was degrading by living in a carefree luxury environment. For more and more people life became less and less creative and constructive. For the owners of the means of production, it became an ongoing competition in the appropriation of other people's labor.
But in this game, the employees had to manage to survive. For both, life was losing all of its human meaning. For some, because they were parasites, for others - because they were slaves.
Ultimately, both of them were slaves of capital. A huge portion of human labor was wasted on satisfying the rich in their irrepressible thirst for luxury. Human energy and forces were not directed to intellectual development, not to solving urgent problems, they were thrown into the creation of luxury goods, into feasts and parties of the rich, into their expensive entertainment. Humanity did not live and work for the comprehensive development and satisfaction of everyone’s needs, as it does now. When the main goal of the economic system is to make a profit, then everything else becomes secondary or even tertiary: the education and health of workers, their living conditions, rights, freedoms, security, and even peace were constantly trampled on for the sake of enrichment of a handful of already rich capitalists. The lives of hundreds of millions were crushed, senselessly burned out in the forced labor to satisfy the rich.
There was another important problem - the way scientific and technological achievements were used. The question is, how many useful inventions were never released because they were not beneficial to the capitalist? Our modern scientists have found thousands of cases where corporations, businesses, and governments in capitalist states deliberately held back progress The technologies that mankind already invented back then, would have been enough to radically improve the lives of most of the people on Earth. The only obstacle to this - was the market economy. Everything that was produced on the planet was, first of all, a commodity for sale and only secondly, a product for satisfying human needs. Let's take medicine as an example. It was difficult to obtain highly qualified medical care, only wealthy people could afford it without any restrictions.
The technological development was not the reason that prevented the majority of people from accessing healthcare, but the economic system in which medical services were provided on a commercial basis. In 2019, on the GoFundMe website, a third of all donations received, went to cover medical expenses. The citizens of The US often avoided calling an ambulance in an emergency, because of high costs and went to the hospital by taxi instead. In the medical business, as in any other, the main goal was profit.
Therefore, not everyone could get the help they needed, and in many cases, commercial doctors prescribed unnecessary procedures, surgeries, and medications to make a profit, instead of treating the patient. It is not difficult to understand what this led to. A similar thing was happening with a large number of goods and services. The main thing was to sell, to make money, and no one cared what would happen after. That is why the sales manager became one of the most important professions at that time, the ability to sell anything even useless or low-quality things was very appreciated. Capitalism was also incredibly wasteful.
In an unpredictable market economy, when something was overproduced, then it was more profitable for the capitalist to destroy overproduced goods than to give them to someone who needs them for free. After all, this would dramatically decrease the prices for a certain product. Therefore, it led to the disposal of high-quality food, with which the millions of hungry could have been fed, cemeteries of new cars, which no one had ever driven, and dumps of second-hand clothes.
Vladimir Putin: "Sometimes the economic point of view it is better to destroy something then just to give it away. " Vladimir Putin: "It sound strange but this would preserve jobs. It would maintain a certain level of profitability of production pricing policy and so on" In 2019, about one billion three hundred million tons of food was thrown away and destroyed.
Then the scientists calculated that if the products were saved and reasonably distributed among all the people on the planet, then hunger on Earth would be eliminated. That means that hunger was more a problem of distribution than production. The same goes for homelessness. In all developed countries, as a rule, there were several times more vacant housing than people without a roof over their heads. This was the absurdity, unreasonableness, and perversity of capitalism. The same logic of profit pushed the businessman to fraud, falsification, and if the profit was large enough, even to murder.
This phenomenon was best described by the British trade unionist of the 19th century Thomas Dunning: Capital is said by this reviewer to fly turbulence and strife which is very true; but this is very incompletely stating the question. Capital eschews no profit, or very small profit, just as Nature was formerly said to abhor a vacuum. With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent., positive audacity;
100 per cent. will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. Smuggling and the slave-trade have amply proved all that is here stated… Save money on fire safety, so that you spend less and put more in your pocket? No problem! Operate worn-out equipment, despite the risk of environmental disaster- -yes, please! Child labor? In 2021, 160 million children were working, often in difficult and dangerous conditions. And even though most of these children worked in underdeveloped countries, the fruits of their labor were often used by the most famous companies and corporations.
Apple, Google, and Tesla were not squeamish about cobalt mined by children in the Congo. And a child who worked in a textile factory somewhere in Bangladesh helped companies who would make a profit by selling the clothes that he made in more developed countries. Back in the 20th century, with the help of debt bondage and puppet regimes, colonialism was replaced by neo-colonialism. Resources were exported from underdeveloped countries to the countries of the first world. Even in the 21st century, slavery was still present.
The United Nations reported that in 2017 there were 40 million slaves on the planet. Greed for profit infected the entire society from top to bottom, society was atomized, and even the proletariat became egocentric and indifferent to everything except personal gain. "Mind your own business! Do not think about others, these are not your problems! ” - this was the psychological attitude that capitalist ideology inculcated in people.
The system in which the main goal and the main condition of survival is money would reproduce these kinds of people on the mass scale: "You need to take care of yourself, at most, your family, and don't care about others!" It was impossible to escape from the world’s problems. It might have seemed achievable during periods of relatively quiet life in developed countries. But where and when, under capitalism, did society live without crises and wars? Today you are a highly skilled worker with a good salary, but tomorrow the owner of the plant you work at decides to take the business to a country where labor is cheaper and costs are lower. And all your perfectly arranged prosperous life immediately goes down the drain. And if you are no longer young, then the chances of finding a new job in your field are close to zero. The catastrophes of capitalism were inevitable, natural, and predetermined, like the ocean tide, sunrises, and sunsets.
Their nature was explained back in the 19th century. The so-called crises of commodity overproduction were inevitable for a simple reason. More and more money was concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie, which appropriated an ever-higher share of the value produced, while workers could buy less and less with their wages.
A situation, absurd from the point of view of common sense, arose: the goods were produced, but the workers had nothing to buy them with, there was not enough money. It would seem that consumer loans could alleviate the situation. But this temporary solution only postponed the catastrophe.
The real incomes of those who fell into debt bondage not only did not increase but decreased because they had to pay an exorbitant interest to the bank. A significant part of the working people sooner or later stopped paying their debts or loans. In addition to this, various stock speculators were causing the burst of financial bubbles. the inevitable imbalance of industries in a spontaneous market economy All this led to crises. As a result, the situation became a paradox. The people's needs had to be satisfied, and there were raw materials, and there were workers– –but a significant part of the production was closed.
The goods already produced did not go to those who needed them, but rotted in warehouses or were destroyed. It was no longer enough for the growing capital to exploit wage labor, by squeezing as much profit as it could, out of the working class. The moment had come when the imperialists had no other choice but to enter into an armed struggle for resources and markets with other such predators. Twice in the 20th century, mankind went through a global slaughter, killing millions of people and destroying factories, schools, cultural and architectural heritage ... For 31 years, from the beginning of the First World War to the end of the second, capitalism showed the monstrosity it was capable of. From 1914 to 1945, the planet learned a bitter lesson of what a chemical attack was, concentration camps with horrific conditions for prisoners, gas chambers, the genocide of civilians when entire cities and villages were sometimes destroyed along with their inhabitants with the use of atomic weapons.
For the sake of profit and power, the capitalists turned their population into inhuman thugs that had no mercy for even children, old people, and women. And when the war ended, it was possible to shift all the blame on the dreadful mustachioed leader, depicting him as a demon, an evil genius, or a maniac and let alone the political interests of the bourgeoisie. The Nuremberg Tribunal condemned the leaders of the 3rd Reich.
But those who brought the Nazis to power, their sponsors, bankers and industrialists, the owners of corporations who enriched themselves in the war, who used the slave labor of the Ostarbeiter, （a German term for slave workers taken from Central and Eastern Europe and concentration camp prisoners） got off easily or completely escaped retribution. Very convenient. Capital has always found a way to avoid responsibility for its crimes. Who bore the consequences of the wars unleashed by the capitalists? Who became cannon fodder on the front lines? The ordinary worker. Who suffered the most from Germany’s defeat in the First World War? The German worker. Who suffered the most during the Great Depression? The American worker.
Yes, the bourgeois imperialists could sometimes toss a piece of the action to the workers of their country. But it was always at someone's expense. For example, by lowering wages of the workers in some third world countries, by plundering their resources.
The economic boom in the United States after World War II was largely based on the fact that the industries in Europe were lying in ruins. Later the destruction of the socialist bloc and the exploitation of its material, natural and human resources provided fresh blood for world capitalism. Let's take another quick look at the most successful and powerful capitalist power on the planet in the 20th and 21st centuries. A real roller coaster.
The periods of the crisis were followed by economic recovery in the United States. The rampant prosperity of the Roaring 20s was followed by the decline of the Great Depression. Almost every decade of the 20th century was marked by a major crisis or recession.
In the 1920s, the greatest capitalist empire on Earth experienced a deep crisis, with tens of millions of citizens living below the poverty line, with rising unemployment and falling production. Question: if capitalism worked like this in the richest country in the world, which concentrated more resources than any other state on the planet, then how could it work for the rest? What could the weaker and more backward countries hope for then? Any sustainable progressive development was impossible in this economic system. Capitalism could offer nothing but the constant impoverishment of the working majority, cuts in social spending, and the turbulence of crises and wars. The very existence of HomoSapiens was constantly under threat, one press of a button separated us from the complete elimination of our species.
Enormous funds were spent on the military: almost 2 trillion dollars in 2020 alone! This money could have been spent on peaceful development but instead was spent on weapons and murder. The capitalist mode of production also posed a huge environmental danger to humanity by polluting and destroying the biosphere. It was impossible to ensure environmental safety as long as the main motive of economic activity was the satisfaction of selfish private property interests. A prosperous future was not guaranteed either to any individual or to society at large. Each new day the means of production remained in private hands as an inevitable catastrophe was getting closer and closer.
Many people back then predicted this catastrophe and even pointed the way out. After all, the way out was simple. Production should have a goal of satisfying the urgent needs of mankind and not the constant enrichment of a handful of wealthy business owners. Instead of an unpredictable market, where only profit was planned at all costs, mankind needed scientifically planned economic activity, which would consider the needs of all workers, balance the interests of all industries and agriculture, and take into account the issues of environmental safety. And for this to happen, all means of production, land, and natural resources had to become publicly owned.
The private owners, as a class that owned everything on Earth, could not solve the accumulated problems of mankind. But why did this transition to a new social and economic order never take place at the beginning of the 21st century? After all, the class of wage workers was much more numerous than its oppressors. Capitalism became a dead end, an economic, social, environmental, cultural, moral, and even biological dead-end if you will. Once it was an important step for the development of human civilization, a big step forward in comparison with slavery and feudalism.
Capitalism freed people from the oppression of the feudal estates, eased the pressure of religious prejudices, and dramatically moved forward scientific and technological progress. In the pursuit of profit, the bourgeoisie invested in the development of industries and science. The productive forces of society grew significantly. And even though from its inception this economic system was exploitative, unjust, and bloody, it gave the world a lot. Humanity could sincerely thank capitalism for everything, for all its achievements, and even for the cruel lessons that it taught us.
After all, whether people wanted it or not, they also changed along with capitalism. They made discoveries, accumulated knowledge, and experience. And one could probably say: “Thank you, Mr. Capital, you have done a great job!
More precisely, you forced the proletarians to work properly. But you've been pulling us down for a long time! To live happily, we people must switch to a different mode of production, and all the prerequisites for this transition are already in place. You created them. You have created production chains that connect countries and peoples. Thanks to you, we realized we became one entity and incredibly dependent on each other. Sorry, but for humanity to move on, it's time to let you go, because you are outdated.
Instead, we saw the Great Depression, horrific fascist regimes everywhere, including in the countries of the first world, tightening control over people, trampling on even the few rights and freedoms that remained for ordinary workers. The population of the planet had divided into a super-rich parasitic minority and an impoverished working majority, with practically no intermediate conditions: only lords, their guards, and the downtrodden working class. An order based on the most modern technologies at the time was mobilized to maintain this segregation. We will definitely return to this topic. And in our next meeting, we will remember how mankind came to the capitalist mode of production. And later we are going to have a conversation about why proletarian revolutions, such as those that took place in the first half of the 20th century, did not occur in the 21st century.
Then we will discuss issues related to the Soviet Union and the social bloc. This is our plan for the near future. See you later! Dedicated to the memory of our comrade Nikolai Gorbunov (1973 – 2021) Director Svyatoslav Varnashov The author of the script Dr. E. Film Artist Vladislav Ivanov Development of HUD interfaces Konstantin Pevtsov 2D graphics and animation of interfaces: Svyatoslav Varnashov, Dmitry Zubarev, Alexander Kuzmin, Vladislav Ivanov, Yaroslav Varnashov Isometric animation: Mikhail Shetko, Vladislav Ivanov, Alexander Kuzmin, Dmitry Zubarev 3D character animation Svyatoslav Varnashov 3D Motion Design: Artur Kiselyov, Anastasia Shatova, Alexander Zhigulev, Victor Zuev creating Professor Miller's location Federico Lynch 3D modelers: Artur Kiselyov, Bogdan Kuznetsov, Anastasia Shatova, Alexander Zhigulev Concept development Vladislav Ivanov 3D Costumes : TimNik Composer and sound engineer Denis Tarasov The actors The Last Pioneer (the role of Professor Miller in Russian) Sam (the role of Professor Miller in English) Nikolay Dyakov (quotes from the film in Russian) Announcers Chris (quotes from the film in English) The film was narrated by Dmitry Kuzmin and translated to English by Alexander Bondarev (the project "Gorkie Usi") Big thanks to our comrades from China: Hongsongshi Studio and personally its head Tang Zhaoyang, for adapting the film for Chinese viewers. popular support our special thanks Studio "Think for yourself / Think now" 2022
2022-08-14