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Capitalism and Socialism: Crash Course World History #33
Capitalism and Socialism: Crash Course World History #33
In this video, John Green describes how capitalism and socialism came into being, and the principles that are important to each system.
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- Download English Transcript
- Download Spanish Transcript
Key Ideas
As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.
Think about the following questions as you watch the video
- How did industrial capitalism change how goods were made and how people worked?
- What are some cultural values or beliefs that support capitalism?
- What were some major problems with industrial capitalism in the 1800s?
- Where did socialism first take place as a set of ideas? What was socialism reacting to?
- What were Karl Marx’s ideas about capitalism and how to change it?
: Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History,
: and today we're going to talk about capitalism.
: Yeah, Mr. Green,
: capitalism just turns men into wolves.
: Your purportedly free markets only make slaves of us all.
: Oh, God, Stan, it's Me from College.
: Me from the Past has become Me from College.
: This is a disaster!
: The reason he's so unbearable, Stan,
: is that he refuses to recognize
: the legitimacy of other people's narratives.
: And that means that he will never ever be able to have
: a productive conversation
: with another human in his entire life.
: So listen, Me from the Past:
: I'm going to disappoint you by being too capitalist.
: And I'm going to disappoint a lot of other people
: by not being capitalist enough.
: And I'm going to disappoint the historians
: by not using enough jargon.
: But what can I do? We only have 12 minutes!
: Fortunately, capitalism is all about efficiency.
: So let's do this, Me from College.
: Randy Riggs becomes a best-selling author,
: Josh Radnor stars in a great sitcom,
: it is not going to work out with Emily,
: and do not go to Alaska with a girl you've known for ten days.
: Okay, let's talk capitalism.
: (music playing)
: So capitalism is an economic system,
: but it's also a cultural system.
: It's characterized by innovation
: and investment to increase wealth.
: But today, we're going to focus on production
: and how industrial capitalism changed it.
: Stan, I can't wear these emblems of the bourgeoisie
: while Karl Marx himself is looking at me, it's ridiculous.
: I'm changing!
: Very hard to take off a shirt dramatically.
: So let's say it's 1200 C.E. and you're a rug merchant.
: Just like merchants today,
: you sometimes need to borrow money
: in order to buy the rugs you want to resell at a profit,
: and then you pay that money back, often with interest,
: once you've resold the rugs.
: This is called mercantile capitalism,
: and it was a global phenomenon, from the Chinese
: to the Indian Ocean trade network
: to Muslim merchants who would sponsor
: trade caravans across the Sahara.
: But by the 17th century,
: merchants in the Netherlands and in Britain
: had expanded upon this idea to create joint-stock companies.
: Those companies could finance bigger trade missions
: and also spread the risk of international trade.
: But the thing about international trade is,
: sometimes boats sink or they get taken by pirates,
: and while that's bad if you're a sailor,
: because, you know, you lose your life,
: it's really bad if you're a mercantile capitalist
: because you lost all your money.
: But if you own one-tenth of ten boats,
: your risk is much better managed.
: That kind of investment definitely increased wealth,
: but it only affected a sliver of the population,
: and it didn't create a culture of capitalism.
: Industrial capitalism was something altogether different,
: both in scale and in practice.
: Let's use Joyce Appleby's definition
: of industrial capitalism:
: "An economic system that relies on investment of capital
: "in machines and technology
: that are used to increase production of marketable goods."
: So imagine that someone made a Stan machine.
: By the way, Stan, this is a remarkable likeness.
: And that Stan machine could produce and direct
: ten times more episodes of Crash Course than a human Stan.
: Well, of course, even if there are significant upfront costs,
: I'm going to invest in a Stan machine
: so I can start cranking out ten times the knowledge.
: Stan, are you focusing on the robot instead of me?
: (yelling): I am the star of the show!
: Stanbot, you're going behind the globe.
: So when most of us think about capitalism,
: especially when we think about its downsides--
: long hours, low wages,
: miserable working conditions, child labor,
: unemployed Stans--
: that's what we're thinking about.
: Now admittedly, this is just one definition
: of industrial capitalism among many,
: but it's the definition we're going with.
: All right, let's go to the Thought Bubble.
: Industrial capitalism developed first in Britain
: in the 19th century.
: Britain had a bunch of advantages--
: it was the dominant power on the seas,
: and it was making good money off of trade with its colonies,
: including the slave trade;
: also, the growth of capitalism
: was helped by the half-century of civil unrest that resulted
: from the 17th-century English Civil War.
: Now, I'm not advocating for civil wars or anything,
: but in this particular case,
: it was useful, because before the war,
: the British crown had put a lot of regulations on the economy:
: complicated licenses, royal monopolies, etc.
: But during the turmoil it couldn't enforce them,
: which made for freer markets.
: Another factor was a remarkable increase
: in agricultural productivity in the 16th century.
: As food prices started to rise,
: it became profitable for farmers,
: both large and small,
: to invest in agricultural technologies
: that would improve crop yields.
: Those higher prices for grain
: probably resulted from population growth,
: which in turn was encouraged
: by increased production of food crops.
: A number of these agricultural improvements
: came from the Dutch,
: who had chronic problems feeding themselves,
: and discovered that planting different kinds of crops--
: like clover, that added nitrogen to the soil
: and could be used to feed livestock at the same time--
: meant that more fields could be used at once.
: This increased productivity eventually brought down prices,
: and this encouraged further innovation
: in order to increase yield
: to make up for the drop in prices.
: Lower food prices had an added benefit:
: Since food cost less and wages in England remained high,
: workers would have more disposable income,
: which meant that if there were consumer goods available,
: they would be consumed, which incentivized people
: to make consumer goods more efficiently,
: and therefore more cheaply.
: You can see how this positive feedback loop
: leads to more food, and more stuff,
: culminating in a world where people have so much stuff
: that we must rent space to store it,
: and so much food that obesity has become
: a bigger killer than starvation.
: Thanks, Thought Bubble.
: So this increased productivity also meant
: that fewer people needed to work in agriculture
: in order to feed the population.
: To put this in perspective, in 1520,
: 80% of the English population worked the land.
: By 1800, only 36% of adult male laborers
: were working in agriculture, and by 1850,
: that percentage had dropped to 25.
: This meant that when the factories started humming,
: there were plenty of workers to hum along with them,
: especially child laborers.
: (imitates sad horn)
: So far all this sounds pretty good, right?
: I mean, except for the child labor.
: Who wouldn't want more, cheaper food?
: Yeah, well, not so fast.
: One of the ways the British achieved
: all this agricultural productivity
: was through the process of enclosure,
: whereby landlords would reclaim and privatize fields
: that for centuries had been held in common by multiple tenants.
: This increased agricultural productivity,
: but it also impoverished many tenant farmers,
: many of whom lost their livelihoods.
: Okay, for our purposes, capitalism is also
: a cultural system rooted in the need
: of private investors to turn a profit.
: So the real change needed here was a change of mind.
: People had to develop the capitalist values
: of taking risks and appreciating innovation.
: And they had to come to believe
: that making an upfront investment
: in something like a Stan machine
: could pay for itself and then some.
: One of the reasons that these values developed in Britain
: was that the people who initially held them
: were really good at publicizing them.
: Writers like Thomas Mun,
: who worked for the English East India Company,
: exposed people to the idea
: that the economy was controlled by markets.
: And other writers popularized the idea
: that it was human nature for individuals
: to participate in markets as rational actors.
: Even our language changed:
: The word "individuals" did not apply to persons
: until the 17th century.
: And in the 18th century, a "career" still referred only
: to horses' racing lives.
: Perhaps the most important idea that was popularized in England
: was that men and women were consumers as well as producers,
: and that this was actually a good thing,
: because the desire to consume manufactured goods
: could spur economic growth.
: "The main spur to trade,
: "or rather to industry and ingenuity,
: "is the exorbitant appetite of men,
: which they will take pain to gratify."
: So wrote John Cary, one of capitalism's cheerleaders,
: in 1695, and in talking about our appetites,
: he wasn't just talking about food.
: That doesn't seem radical now, but it sure did back then.
: So here in the 21st century,
: it's clear that industrial capitalism--
: at least for now,
: has won.
: Sorry, buddy, but, you know, you gave it a good run.
: You didn't know about Stalin.
: But capitalism isn't without its problems or its critics,
: and there were certainly lots of shortcomings
: to industrial capitalism in the 19th century.
: Working conditions were awful.
: Days were long, arduous, and monotonous.
: Workers lived in conditions
: that people living in the developed world today
: would associate with abject poverty.
: One way that workers responded to these conditions
: was by organizing into labor unions.
: Another response was in many cases purely theoretical:
: socialism, most famously Marxian socialism.
: I should probably point out here
: that socialism is an imperfect opposite to capitalism,
: even though the two are often juxtaposed.
: Capitalism's defenders like to point out that it's "natural,"
: meaning that if left to our own devices,
: humans would construct economic relationships
: that resemble capitalism.
: Socialism, at least in its modern incarnations,
: makes fewer pretenses
: toward being an expression of human nature--
: it's the result of human choice and human planning.
: So, socialism, as an intellectual construct,
: began in France.
: How'd I do, Stan?
: Mmm... in the border between Egypt and Libya.
: There were two branches of socialism in France,
: utopian and revolutionary.
: Utopian socialism is often associated
: with Comte de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier,
: both of whom rejected revolutionary action
: after having seen the disaster of the French Revolution.
: Both were critical of capitalism,
: and while Fourier is usually a punch line in history classes,
: because he believed that in his ideal socialist world,
: the seas would turn to lemonade,
: he was right that human beings have desires
: that go beyond basic self-interest,
: and that we aren't always economically rational actors.
: The other French socialists were the revolutionaries,
: and they saw the French Revolution,
: even its violence,
: in a much more positive light.
: The most important of these revolutionaries
: was Auguste Blanqui,
: and we associate a lot of his ideas with communism,
: which is a term that he used.
: Like the utopians, he criticized capitalism,
: but he believed that it could only be overthrown
: through violent revolution by the working classes.
: However, while Blanqui thought that the workers
: would come to dominate a communist world,
: he was an elitist.
: And he believed that workers could never on their own
: overcome their superstitions and their prejudices
: in order to throw off bourgeois oppression.
: And that brings us to Karl Marx,
: whose ideas and beard cast a shadow
: over most of the 20th century.
: Oh, it's time for the Open Letter?
: (music playing)
: An open letter to Karl Marx's beard.
: But, first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.
: Oh, robots.
: Stanbots!
: Two Stanbots, one of them female!
: Now I own all the means of production.
: You're officially useless to me, Stan.
: Now, turn the camera off.
: Turn the...
: I'm going to have to get up and turn the camera off?
: Stanbot, go turn the camera off.
: Hey there, Karl Marx's beard.
: Wow, you are intense.
: Karl Marx, these days there are a lot of young men
: who think beards are cool-- beard lovers, if you will.
: Those aren't beards, they're glorified milk mustaches.
: I mean, I haven't shaved for a couple of weeks, Karl Marx,
: but I'm not claiming a beard.
: You don't get a beard by being lazy,
: you get a beard by being a committed revolutionary.
: That's why hard-core Marxists are literally known
: as "Bearded Marxists."
: These days that's an insult, but you know what, Karl Marx?
: when I look back at history,
: I prefer the bearded communists.
: Let's talk about some communists who didn't have beards:
: Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il,
: Joseph freakin' Stalin with his face caterpillar.
: So, yeah, Karl Marx's beard, it's my great regret
: to inform you that there are some paltry beards
: trying to take up the class struggle these days.
: Best wishes, John Green.
: Although he's often considered the father of communism,
: because he co-wrote "The Communist Manifesto,"
: Marx was above all a philosopher and a historian.
: It's just that, unlike most philosophers and historians,
: he advocated for revolution.
: His greatest work, "Das Kapital,"
: sets out to explain the world of the 19th century
: in historical and philosophical terms.
: Marx's thinking is deep and dense
: and we're low on time, but I want to introduce
: one of his ideas, that of class struggle.
: So, for Marx, the focus isn't on the class,
: it's on the struggle.
: Basically, Marx believed that classes
: don't only struggle to make history,
: but that the struggle is what makes classes into themselves.
: The idea is that through conflict,
: classes develop a sense of themselves,
: and without conflict,
: there is no such thing as class consciousness.
: So, Marx was writing in 19th-century England,
: and there were two classes that mattered:
: the workers and the capitalists.
: The capitalists owned most of the factors of production--
: in this case, land and the capital to invest in factories.
: The workers just had their labor.
: So, the class struggle here is between capitalists,
: who want labor at the lowest possible price,
: and the workers, who want to be paid
: as much as possible for their work.
: There are two key ideas that underlie
: this theory of class struggle.
: First, Marx believed that production, or work,
: was the thing that gave life material meaning.
: Second is that we are by nature social animals.
: We work together, we collaborate,
: we are more efficient when we share resources.
: Marx's criticism of capitalism is that capitalism replaces
: this egalitarian collaboration
: with conflict.
: And that means that it isn't a natural system after all.
: And by arguing that capitalism
: actually isn't consistent with human nature,
: Marx sought to empower the workers.
: That's a lot more attractive
: than Blanqui's elitist socialism,
: and while purportedly Marxist states like the USSR
: usually abandoned worker empowerment pretty quickly,
: the idea of protecting our collective interest
: remains powerful.
: That's where we'll leave it for now,
: lest I start reading from "The Communist Manifesto."
: But ultimately, socialism has not succeeded
: in supplanting capitalism,
: as its proponents had hoped.
: In the United States, at least,
: "socialism" has become something of a dirty word.
: So, industrial capitalism certainly seems to have won out,
: and in terms of material well-being
: and access to goods and services for people around the world,
: that's probably a good thing.
: (grunts): You keep falling over-- you're a great bit,
: but a very flimsy one.
: Actually, come to think of it, you're more of an eight-bit.
: But how and to what extent we use socialist principles
: to regulate free markets remains an open question,
: and one that is answered very differently
: in, say, Sweden than in the United States.
: And this, I would argue, is where Marx still matters.
: Is capitalist competition natural and good,
: or should there be systems in place to check it
: for the sake of our collective well-being?
: Should we band together to provide healthcare
: for the sick, or pensions for the old?
: Should governments run businesses,
: and if so, which ones?
: The mail delivery business?
: The airport security business?
: The education business?
: Those are the places
: where industrial capitalism and socialism
: are still competing.
: And in that sense, at least, the struggle continues.
: Thanks for watching, I'll see you next week.
: Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller.
: Our script supervisor is Danica Johnson.
: The show is written by my high school history teacher,
: Raoul Meyer, and myself.
: We're ably interned by Meredith Danko.
: And our graphics team is Thought Bubble.
: Last week's Phrase of the Week was the TARDIS,
: so you can stop suggesting that now!
: If you'd like to suggest future Phrases of the Week
: or guess at this week's, you can do so in comments,
: where you can also ask questions about today's video
: that will be answered by our team of historians.
: Thanks for watching Crash Course,
: and as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome.
: All right, Stan, bring the movie magic.
: Yes!
: and today we're going to talk about capitalism.
: Yeah, Mr. Green,
: capitalism just turns men into wolves.
: Your purportedly free markets only make slaves of us all.
: Oh, God, Stan, it's Me from College.
: Me from the Past has become Me from College.
: This is a disaster!
: The reason he's so unbearable, Stan,
: is that he refuses to recognize
: the legitimacy of other people's narratives.
: And that means that he will never ever be able to have
: a productive conversation
: with another human in his entire life.
: So listen, Me from the Past:
: I'm going to disappoint you by being too capitalist.
: And I'm going to disappoint a lot of other people
: by not being capitalist enough.
: And I'm going to disappoint the historians
: by not using enough jargon.
: But what can I do? We only have 12 minutes!
: Fortunately, capitalism is all about efficiency.
: So let's do this, Me from College.
: Randy Riggs becomes a best-selling author,
: Josh Radnor stars in a great sitcom,
: it is not going to work out with Emily,
: and do not go to Alaska with a girl you've known for ten days.
: Okay, let's talk capitalism.
: (music playing)
: So capitalism is an economic system,
: but it's also a cultural system.
: It's characterized by innovation
: and investment to increase wealth.
: But today, we're going to focus on production
: and how industrial capitalism changed it.
: Stan, I can't wear these emblems of the bourgeoisie
: while Karl Marx himself is looking at me, it's ridiculous.
: I'm changing!
: Very hard to take off a shirt dramatically.
: So let's say it's 1200 C.E. and you're a rug merchant.
: Just like merchants today,
: you sometimes need to borrow money
: in order to buy the rugs you want to resell at a profit,
: and then you pay that money back, often with interest,
: once you've resold the rugs.
: This is called mercantile capitalism,
: and it was a global phenomenon, from the Chinese
: to the Indian Ocean trade network
: to Muslim merchants who would sponsor
: trade caravans across the Sahara.
: But by the 17th century,
: merchants in the Netherlands and in Britain
: had expanded upon this idea to create joint-stock companies.
: Those companies could finance bigger trade missions
: and also spread the risk of international trade.
: But the thing about international trade is,
: sometimes boats sink or they get taken by pirates,
: and while that's bad if you're a sailor,
: because, you know, you lose your life,
: it's really bad if you're a mercantile capitalist
: because you lost all your money.
: But if you own one-tenth of ten boats,
: your risk is much better managed.
: That kind of investment definitely increased wealth,
: but it only affected a sliver of the population,
: and it didn't create a culture of capitalism.
: Industrial capitalism was something altogether different,
: both in scale and in practice.
: Let's use Joyce Appleby's definition
: of industrial capitalism:
: "An economic system that relies on investment of capital
: "in machines and technology
: that are used to increase production of marketable goods."
: So imagine that someone made a Stan machine.
: By the way, Stan, this is a remarkable likeness.
: And that Stan machine could produce and direct
: ten times more episodes of Crash Course than a human Stan.
: Well, of course, even if there are significant upfront costs,
: I'm going to invest in a Stan machine
: so I can start cranking out ten times the knowledge.
: Stan, are you focusing on the robot instead of me?
: (yelling): I am the star of the show!
: Stanbot, you're going behind the globe.
: So when most of us think about capitalism,
: especially when we think about its downsides--
: long hours, low wages,
: miserable working conditions, child labor,
: unemployed Stans--
: that's what we're thinking about.
: Now admittedly, this is just one definition
: of industrial capitalism among many,
: but it's the definition we're going with.
: All right, let's go to the Thought Bubble.
: Industrial capitalism developed first in Britain
: in the 19th century.
: Britain had a bunch of advantages--
: it was the dominant power on the seas,
: and it was making good money off of trade with its colonies,
: including the slave trade;
: also, the growth of capitalism
: was helped by the half-century of civil unrest that resulted
: from the 17th-century English Civil War.
: Now, I'm not advocating for civil wars or anything,
: but in this particular case,
: it was useful, because before the war,
: the British crown had put a lot of regulations on the economy:
: complicated licenses, royal monopolies, etc.
: But during the turmoil it couldn't enforce them,
: which made for freer markets.
: Another factor was a remarkable increase
: in agricultural productivity in the 16th century.
: As food prices started to rise,
: it became profitable for farmers,
: both large and small,
: to invest in agricultural technologies
: that would improve crop yields.
: Those higher prices for grain
: probably resulted from population growth,
: which in turn was encouraged
: by increased production of food crops.
: A number of these agricultural improvements
: came from the Dutch,
: who had chronic problems feeding themselves,
: and discovered that planting different kinds of crops--
: like clover, that added nitrogen to the soil
: and could be used to feed livestock at the same time--
: meant that more fields could be used at once.
: This increased productivity eventually brought down prices,
: and this encouraged further innovation
: in order to increase yield
: to make up for the drop in prices.
: Lower food prices had an added benefit:
: Since food cost less and wages in England remained high,
: workers would have more disposable income,
: which meant that if there were consumer goods available,
: they would be consumed, which incentivized people
: to make consumer goods more efficiently,
: and therefore more cheaply.
: You can see how this positive feedback loop
: leads to more food, and more stuff,
: culminating in a world where people have so much stuff
: that we must rent space to store it,
: and so much food that obesity has become
: a bigger killer than starvation.
: Thanks, Thought Bubble.
: So this increased productivity also meant
: that fewer people needed to work in agriculture
: in order to feed the population.
: To put this in perspective, in 1520,
: 80% of the English population worked the land.
: By 1800, only 36% of adult male laborers
: were working in agriculture, and by 1850,
: that percentage had dropped to 25.
: This meant that when the factories started humming,
: there were plenty of workers to hum along with them,
: especially child laborers.
: (imitates sad horn)
: So far all this sounds pretty good, right?
: I mean, except for the child labor.
: Who wouldn't want more, cheaper food?
: Yeah, well, not so fast.
: One of the ways the British achieved
: all this agricultural productivity
: was through the process of enclosure,
: whereby landlords would reclaim and privatize fields
: that for centuries had been held in common by multiple tenants.
: This increased agricultural productivity,
: but it also impoverished many tenant farmers,
: many of whom lost their livelihoods.
: Okay, for our purposes, capitalism is also
: a cultural system rooted in the need
: of private investors to turn a profit.
: So the real change needed here was a change of mind.
: People had to develop the capitalist values
: of taking risks and appreciating innovation.
: And they had to come to believe
: that making an upfront investment
: in something like a Stan machine
: could pay for itself and then some.
: One of the reasons that these values developed in Britain
: was that the people who initially held them
: were really good at publicizing them.
: Writers like Thomas Mun,
: who worked for the English East India Company,
: exposed people to the idea
: that the economy was controlled by markets.
: And other writers popularized the idea
: that it was human nature for individuals
: to participate in markets as rational actors.
: Even our language changed:
: The word "individuals" did not apply to persons
: until the 17th century.
: And in the 18th century, a "career" still referred only
: to horses' racing lives.
: Perhaps the most important idea that was popularized in England
: was that men and women were consumers as well as producers,
: and that this was actually a good thing,
: because the desire to consume manufactured goods
: could spur economic growth.
: "The main spur to trade,
: "or rather to industry and ingenuity,
: "is the exorbitant appetite of men,
: which they will take pain to gratify."
: So wrote John Cary, one of capitalism's cheerleaders,
: in 1695, and in talking about our appetites,
: he wasn't just talking about food.
: That doesn't seem radical now, but it sure did back then.
: So here in the 21st century,
: it's clear that industrial capitalism--
: at least for now,
: has won.
: Sorry, buddy, but, you know, you gave it a good run.
: You didn't know about Stalin.
: But capitalism isn't without its problems or its critics,
: and there were certainly lots of shortcomings
: to industrial capitalism in the 19th century.
: Working conditions were awful.
: Days were long, arduous, and monotonous.
: Workers lived in conditions
: that people living in the developed world today
: would associate with abject poverty.
: One way that workers responded to these conditions
: was by organizing into labor unions.
: Another response was in many cases purely theoretical:
: socialism, most famously Marxian socialism.
: I should probably point out here
: that socialism is an imperfect opposite to capitalism,
: even though the two are often juxtaposed.
: Capitalism's defenders like to point out that it's "natural,"
: meaning that if left to our own devices,
: humans would construct economic relationships
: that resemble capitalism.
: Socialism, at least in its modern incarnations,
: makes fewer pretenses
: toward being an expression of human nature--
: it's the result of human choice and human planning.
: So, socialism, as an intellectual construct,
: began in France.
: How'd I do, Stan?
: Mmm... in the border between Egypt and Libya.
: There were two branches of socialism in France,
: utopian and revolutionary.
: Utopian socialism is often associated
: with Comte de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier,
: both of whom rejected revolutionary action
: after having seen the disaster of the French Revolution.
: Both were critical of capitalism,
: and while Fourier is usually a punch line in history classes,
: because he believed that in his ideal socialist world,
: the seas would turn to lemonade,
: he was right that human beings have desires
: that go beyond basic self-interest,
: and that we aren't always economically rational actors.
: The other French socialists were the revolutionaries,
: and they saw the French Revolution,
: even its violence,
: in a much more positive light.
: The most important of these revolutionaries
: was Auguste Blanqui,
: and we associate a lot of his ideas with communism,
: which is a term that he used.
: Like the utopians, he criticized capitalism,
: but he believed that it could only be overthrown
: through violent revolution by the working classes.
: However, while Blanqui thought that the workers
: would come to dominate a communist world,
: he was an elitist.
: And he believed that workers could never on their own
: overcome their superstitions and their prejudices
: in order to throw off bourgeois oppression.
: And that brings us to Karl Marx,
: whose ideas and beard cast a shadow
: over most of the 20th century.
: Oh, it's time for the Open Letter?
: (music playing)
: An open letter to Karl Marx's beard.
: But, first, let's see what's in the secret compartment today.
: Oh, robots.
: Stanbots!
: Two Stanbots, one of them female!
: Now I own all the means of production.
: You're officially useless to me, Stan.
: Now, turn the camera off.
: Turn the...
: I'm going to have to get up and turn the camera off?
: Stanbot, go turn the camera off.
: Hey there, Karl Marx's beard.
: Wow, you are intense.
: Karl Marx, these days there are a lot of young men
: who think beards are cool-- beard lovers, if you will.
: Those aren't beards, they're glorified milk mustaches.
: I mean, I haven't shaved for a couple of weeks, Karl Marx,
: but I'm not claiming a beard.
: You don't get a beard by being lazy,
: you get a beard by being a committed revolutionary.
: That's why hard-core Marxists are literally known
: as "Bearded Marxists."
: These days that's an insult, but you know what, Karl Marx?
: when I look back at history,
: I prefer the bearded communists.
: Let's talk about some communists who didn't have beards:
: Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il,
: Joseph freakin' Stalin with his face caterpillar.
: So, yeah, Karl Marx's beard, it's my great regret
: to inform you that there are some paltry beards
: trying to take up the class struggle these days.
: Best wishes, John Green.
: Although he's often considered the father of communism,
: because he co-wrote "The Communist Manifesto,"
: Marx was above all a philosopher and a historian.
: It's just that, unlike most philosophers and historians,
: he advocated for revolution.
: His greatest work, "Das Kapital,"
: sets out to explain the world of the 19th century
: in historical and philosophical terms.
: Marx's thinking is deep and dense
: and we're low on time, but I want to introduce
: one of his ideas, that of class struggle.
: So, for Marx, the focus isn't on the class,
: it's on the struggle.
: Basically, Marx believed that classes
: don't only struggle to make history,
: but that the struggle is what makes classes into themselves.
: The idea is that through conflict,
: classes develop a sense of themselves,
: and without conflict,
: there is no such thing as class consciousness.
: So, Marx was writing in 19th-century England,
: and there were two classes that mattered:
: the workers and the capitalists.
: The capitalists owned most of the factors of production--
: in this case, land and the capital to invest in factories.
: The workers just had their labor.
: So, the class struggle here is between capitalists,
: who want labor at the lowest possible price,
: and the workers, who want to be paid
: as much as possible for their work.
: There are two key ideas that underlie
: this theory of class struggle.
: First, Marx believed that production, or work,
: was the thing that gave life material meaning.
: Second is that we are by nature social animals.
: We work together, we collaborate,
: we are more efficient when we share resources.
: Marx's criticism of capitalism is that capitalism replaces
: this egalitarian collaboration
: with conflict.
: And that means that it isn't a natural system after all.
: And by arguing that capitalism
: actually isn't consistent with human nature,
: Marx sought to empower the workers.
: That's a lot more attractive
: than Blanqui's elitist socialism,
: and while purportedly Marxist states like the USSR
: usually abandoned worker empowerment pretty quickly,
: the idea of protecting our collective interest
: remains powerful.
: That's where we'll leave it for now,
: lest I start reading from "The Communist Manifesto."
: But ultimately, socialism has not succeeded
: in supplanting capitalism,
: as its proponents had hoped.
: In the United States, at least,
: "socialism" has become something of a dirty word.
: So, industrial capitalism certainly seems to have won out,
: and in terms of material well-being
: and access to goods and services for people around the world,
: that's probably a good thing.
: (grunts): You keep falling over-- you're a great bit,
: but a very flimsy one.
: Actually, come to think of it, you're more of an eight-bit.
: But how and to what extent we use socialist principles
: to regulate free markets remains an open question,
: and one that is answered very differently
: in, say, Sweden than in the United States.
: And this, I would argue, is where Marx still matters.
: Is capitalist competition natural and good,
: or should there be systems in place to check it
: for the sake of our collective well-being?
: Should we band together to provide healthcare
: for the sick, or pensions for the old?
: Should governments run businesses,
: and if so, which ones?
: The mail delivery business?
: The airport security business?
: The education business?
: Those are the places
: where industrial capitalism and socialism
: are still competing.
: And in that sense, at least, the struggle continues.
: Thanks for watching, I'll see you next week.
: Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller.
: Our script supervisor is Danica Johnson.
: The show is written by my high school history teacher,
: Raoul Meyer, and myself.
: We're ably interned by Meredith Danko.
: And our graphics team is Thought Bubble.
: Last week's Phrase of the Week was the TARDIS,
: so you can stop suggesting that now!
: If you'd like to suggest future Phrases of the Week
: or guess at this week's, you can do so in comments,
: where you can also ask questions about today's video
: that will be answered by our team of historians.
: Thanks for watching Crash Course,
: and as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome.
: All right, Stan, bring the movie magic.
: Yes!