I’ll never understand “communists” that start private capitalist companies. Seriously, why not put their money where their mouth is and start a coop? It makes no sense to me for JT to do everything he does just to end up a capitalist lmao
Not sure how he’s organized the operations between Hakim and Yugo and their production staffs, but a coop would still have employees, need to pay taxes on revenues/profits, work within the tax system of the country of operations, etc.
So effectively, there would be no difference financially. Coop organization needs to have a minimum number of people to reach quorum, annual meetings, a board of directors right? It might not be feasible for JT, Hakim, Yugopnik and their respective production staff to organize as a coop as they are all in three different countries.
The difference is a coop doesn’t exploit the labor of the workers, and there are no owners profiting off of them. Why are you all clawing at technicalities to dismiss this as an issue? It’s like if Coca Cola had a campaign saying Che was based and socialism is actually cool, you’d all be saying “fuck yeah coke is true praxis! Critical support for coke!”
Coops still exploit the labor of the workers, just not for the salary of the owner. It still exists within the capitalist paradigm, so it still exploits to stay competitive.
idk if this guy is a grifter or not, but syndicates aren’t going to topple capitalism
Coops aren’t necessarily bastions of workers’ rights you know. Coops exist within the same framework of capitalism and are guided by the same rules, they’re also businesses, they just have distributed ownership (or don’t, in the case of the one coop I worked with).
JT’s not a party leader or a revolutionary, he runs a youtube channel where he wants to make videos. I guess that best works as a private business in his situation. Running a business as a communist sounds normal to me honestly, especially if they’re in a capitalist country already.
if you wanna get into theory then I’ve always been down with Mao’s prescription of how domestic, regional bourgeoisie do not necessarily have an antagonistic relationship with the proletariat in every situation
I don’t think Mao meant that communists should become capitalists… he meant it makes sense to align with nationalist bourgeoisie to fight off a common enemy, like international and imperialist capital.
I wholeheartedly disagree that the best way to run anything under this system to be a private company. Unless “the best way” means the most profitable. Sure exploiting the labor of others is always gonna be more profitable. Even if you pay your workers well and give them nice benefits. But you’re still exploiting them, for profit.
I don’t understand how you can’t see how antithetical to what being a communist is. Unless you accept JT is just selling the product of communism and anti-capitalism, that he is just the expression of capitalism commodifying everything including the fight and resistance against itself… and like it? I don’t understand how this is fine and acceptable.
Shouldn’t we hold ourselves to higher standards…? It’s a thing being born into privilege and using that to help the communist cause. It’s another to climb the ladders of capitalist exploitation using the mantle of revolutionary thought.
If he’s managing to provide a living for 4 people and those people are in a situation where they don’t feel exploited, I don’t really see how what he’s doing is why different than say Pravda pre-revolution, or any number of other communist newspapers/periodicals over the years that until the revolution had to support their workers through wages and sales of a product.
I mean, Marx was only able to write Capital because Engles had money from profiting off the labor of others. How is this any worse than that?
If he has no shareholders and no outside sources of debt funding (loans) to repay, his “business” never needs to make a profit though.
Gonna be completely honest, I don’t put this much thought into how a person runs a YouTube channel because it doesn’t seem that consequential to me. It’s entertainment and a product. If JT were also a landlord or running exploitative farm labor you’d have more of a point, but if he’s making internet videos in an office I just can’t really muster the emotional capacity to say he’s betraying the working class or whatever. He’s an internet content creator, not a revolutionary with an AK.
Yes, you’re right. JT is selling a commodity. It just is what it is. You’re not going to find the fight against capitalism in YouTube videos and podcasts. They’re all commodities being sold to you. Maybe I’m cynical.
I think more important than co-op organizational structure would be a question of work place democracy. Are the workers given say over how their work is undertaken, do they have power over decisions? Ultimately under capitalism we are limited by the need to make enough profit to reproduce the business. The form that business takes when given those constraints can only be on some level exploitative.
The best you can do as an owner or part owner in the case of coops is to listen to your employees needs and compensate them as much as possible given the constraints of the budget.
The problem, as always, with capitalism is that exploitation goes into overdrive when the goal is to make a profit above the cost of production (including labour inputs) and this there is pressure to keep wages down and force longer hours.
If we had an unbiased look at his employees perspective and the finances, we could judge if he is engaging in profit making, or just earning enough to keep the lights on and to keep product moving. We can only take him at his word at this point.
Are there issues with this format, probably, but in the final analysis, will another pro communism propagandist be beneficial for the cause?
As long as proletarian interests are being upheld and pushed forward - we’re fine with it. JT’s channel is useful for the movement, and this is something I can attest to myself - I, for instance, got radicalized at least partly because I stumbled upon his content. We need more comrades, we need more cadres, we really need the movement to grow - thus, we can critically support JT’s work.
In a nutshell, JT is a petite-bourgeoisie, huh, so this is what bourgeois class traitors look like, neato.
bourgeois class traitors
Do you mean a member of the bourgeoisie who betrays theirs own class, aligning with the Proletariat?
Or a member of the Proletariat who aligns with the bourgeoisie, betraying their own class?
The bourgeois backstabbing their own class, kinda like Marx’s sugar daddy Engles.
ITT: a thread I’m not gonna read
Ah, so JT is petit-bourgeois? While I was reading that I couldn’t help but have the idea for one of those TikTok style videos where an AI JT voice reads that message while the Soviet Union anthem grows louder and louder. Maybe it could feature a happy picture of him in front of a drab concrete wall which shakes more and more intensely as the audio goes on and the image is slowly eclipsed by the USSR flag.
[tone indicator: this is a joke]
Lotta western leftists seem to learn class analysis 101 without deconstructing their liberal moralism
Anyone worried about this: read any historic class analysis; read about past revolutionary movements and the diverse material interests that comprised them. Also stop obsessing about the moral purity of entertainers, there’s so many more important things to do.
To add to your point, I think of Mao’s fantastic essay On Contradiction: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm
In particular, this part:
For instance, in the period of its first cooperation with the Communist Party, the Kuomintang stood in contradiction to foreign imperialism and was therefore anti-imperialist; on the other hand, it stood in contradiction to the great masses of the people within the country–although in words it promised many benefits to the working people, in fact it gave them little or nothing. In the period when it carried on the anti-Communist war, the Kuomintang collaborated with imperialism and feudalism against the great masses of the people and wiped out all the gains they had won in the revolution, and thereby intensified its contradictions with them. In the present period of the anti-Japanese war, the Kuomintang stands in contradiction to Japanese imperialism and wants co-operation with the Communist Party, without however relaxing its struggle against the Communist Party and the people or its oppression of them. As for the Communist Party, it has always, in every period, stood with the great masses of the people against imperialism and feudalism, but in the present period of the anti-Japanese war, it has adopted a moderate policy towards the Kuomintang and the domestic feudal forces because the Kuomintang has pressed itself in favour of resisting Japan. The above circumstances have resulted now in alliance between the two parties and now in struggle between them, and even during the periods of alliance there has been a complicated state of simultaneous alliance and struggle. If we do not study the particular features of both aspects of the contradiction, we shall fail to understand not only the relations of each party with the other forces, but also the relations between the two parties.
The relevant point being that someone’s, or some entity’s, relation to the cause is not always as simple as “for” or “against”, “helping” or “not helping”, “corrupted” or “pure.” There are times that interests intersect, but are not identical. I’m not sure if it can be generalized adequately how to deal with that fact, but it is something we have to contend with.
Thanks for sharing!
Honestly diving deeper into mao and Chinese history has been an incredibly enlightening experience.
Guerilla History is halfway through a four-part series (plus a precursor episode on GH or revleft) on China which is a great resource for anyone curious.
