I'm on mobile so I can't link but Daily Bald is my must watch channel atm. I've always really enjoyed travel channels but he does a great job of including little history lessons into his videos and visits a lot of eastern European places that I'm not super familiar with.

Lol @ the destiny vs richard wolff debate

Don't like either one of them

But it's pretty funny that a spergy twitch debate bro took on the great marxist professor who is worshipped by the elphs of this world.

C'mon elph don't dodge this. Come defend your boy richard

I don't even think destiny destroyed him or did that well... I just thought they came across as pretty evenly matched which is funny considering the disparity in their supposed credentials

The dividends point was just semantics and not at all interesting or compelling. And the feudalism meme was definitely childish.

But wolff is a charlatan as well who hides behind an amorphous and intentionally vague definition of what he means by socialism where on the one hand he holds up more benign forms of social democracy or co-ops like mondragon while in the next breath he cheers on the "rapid growth" under soviet rule as a triumph of central planning. Completely brushing over the millions who were intentionally starved to make that growth happen. He's no chomsky that's for damn sure.

um I don't think it's true that all developed nations used central planning to get rich.... The soviets did yes and the central planning they used was to steal food out of the mouths of peasants to buy and import industrial machinery from western europe. That's hardly some sort of impressive economic innovation... It's about as innovative as robbing a bank.

The fact that he continues to point to this as a counter point to the idea that "socialism hasn't worked" while also not mentioning the genocidal nature of these policies is clearly intellectual dishonesty and snake oil salesman tactics. The fact that he throws in a disclaimer that he "doesn't support" the soviet model doesn't at all resolve the clearly dishonest nature of this talking point.

actually you can't. Destiny failed to properly address this and it just went unnoticed. Many people will vaguely mention the holodomor without any understanding of the actual history or how it ties directly to the industrialization efforts.

So people like Destiny will say things like "sure they grew quick but they could've grown even quicker under capitalism" which is patently absurd. You don't industrialize a massive agrarian country like russia in 5 years through ordinary capitalism. You do it by stealing food from peasants and genociding your own population so you can sell the food stocks on the global capitalist market so you can buy industrial machinery from said capitalist countries. In that way central planning is"efficient" in the same way slavery is efficient. Yes you can raise a lot of money through theft and brutality. What an amazing economic innovation.


that's simply whatabotism

The entire point of arguing for socialism is to create a system that addresses the abuses and evils of capitalism. Pointing to a model that was even more efficient at brutalizing and oppressing their own population as a success story for central planning is once again dishonest if you don't acknowledge said brutality and if you do acknowledge it then it's just not a good argument. You're supposed to be proposing something better than capitalism and instead you're pointing to something that was just as if not more brutal and exploitative but they just did it quicker and with a higher death toll in a shorter amount of time. Sorry but that's not a compelling point lol.

This isn't really a whataboutism since I'm not defending the Soviets but the British caused a famine in India by doing much the same thing just without the goal of industrializing India and millions died. So don't underestimate capitalism.

It is whatabotism because saying capitalism bad as a response to the critique that the supposed successes of central planning are just theft and genocide is a deflection. It's irrelevant that britain starved people in india. You're just getting into the pissing match of who killed more which is once again a distraction from the actual point.

When you are trying to propose an alternative to an abusive system you really need to do better than "well you genocide too!" In doing so you've completely ceded the moral high ground you were using to attack the existing system in the first place.

It's not a whataboutism because, again, I'm not defending or arguing for the USSR. I'm pointing out that capitalism can kill millions in a short period of time the same as socialism, which you had stated wasn't the case. We can throw the Belgian Congo in as well.

It's at best fixing your statement and at worst trivia.

I didn't say anything about capitalism not being able to cause famines that kill a lot of people in a short period of time. I said that the central planning richard wolff refers to has killed millions of people every single time it was tried so the only innovation here is that you speed up industrialization via genocide. The fact that other genocides/famines have happened without said industrialization in other parts of the world is once again irrelevant. The point is he's pointing to the ussr as a success story of central planning so whether you claim to be defending the ussr or not, by responding to my criticism of his ussr example with a talking point about British colonial exploitation of india is once again whatabotism and just a distraction from the actual point. The bottom line is either you think rapid industrialization is worth killing off millions of peasants via starvation or I don't. If you don't then pointing to the rapid growth of the ussr is a moot point.