Would Marx Have traded Dogecoin? Interview with 1Dime
For this week's episode, I spoke with 1Dime (@TheRapNerd7), a youtuber who focuses on videos about politics, critical theory, and pop culture.
During the interview we talk about his latest video which was a Marxist analysis of the stock market, how Karl Marx would probably be a dogecoin trader, and why many of the left's criticisms of crypto tend to hinge on a liberal moralism rather than a materialist one.
More on 1Dime
Check out 1Dime's channel here
The Socialism of Warren Buffet
How Democrats Save Billionaires
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Transcript
Hello again. You're listening to The Blockchain Socialist. And for today's interview, I have a special guest. His name is 1Dime. He is a YouTuber who makes videos focused on politics with a particular focus on critical theory and pop culture. So, hey, 1Dime. How you doing? What's up? Yeah. I'm 1Dime. I'm a, leftist YouTuber.
I make videos on, politics, various issues where I kind of bridge, critical theory as well as pop culture. So I like to add a lot of theoretical analysis using various thinkers and critical theory and philosophy, but also make them very accessible so anyone can kind of watch, like, also just be really entertaining. And, yeah, I'm happy to be on the Blockchain Socialists as, when I was looking for various YouTube channels or podcasts of leftists who are who are into crypto, I couldn't find many and, this podcast was one of the few ones and it's, it's really good. That's why it's called The Blockchain Socialists because there aren't that many others
so far. We're making more. But, yes, I think I came across you, I think, over Twitter, and I had taken a look at some of your videos, and they were pretty well made, and they were very, I don't know. You just you have you have, like, a very good analysis and, like, a very good flow as you go through, your videos. And your most recent one was about the stock markets with a focus on particularly Warren Buffett. So I thought that was pretty interesting, but we can, we'll get to that in a little bit. But maybe to start off, to get to know you a little bit more, maybe you can explain what got you started on making YouTube videos on, left wing politics, and what did you think was missing already on the landscape of of Left Tube or Bread Tube, however you wanna call it.
Yeah. Well, I've been wanting to really make YouTube video essays for a very long time, but, well, for one, I was in school a lot, and also busy working, so maybe perhaps that was just an excuse, but it does limit time, but also I wanted to really feel like I knew what I was talking about before getting into this fear, because, I mean, I've been reading critical theory for over two years now, and philosophy a lot before that. But, I wanted to really know what I was talking about, at least a decent bit, so I spent a long time just really reading for a long time, and, then COVID hit, and there was a lot of free time, and I had a ton of video ideas, and I said, let's give this a shot. I had my first my first video essay. I also have a friend who's a YouTuber, so he kinda helps, shout me out a little bit. And, I had my first YouTube video, which was, the late capitalism of Jake Paul, kinda dissecting how people like the Pauls, people like these influencers, it's kind of meaningless to critique them as individuals and more so that they're products of the capitalist system, both in terms of the culture of late capitalism, but also the literal economic incentives. And, that that video, if you see that, that's kind of my opinion, poorly edited. And then I started seeing other videos and I thought my analysis is better than a lot of theirs, but I just wanna get my editing better. So I spent like two months just learning after effects and Premiere. And, yeah, and, you can kind of see the improvement if you watch them. If I would say what was lacking to answer that question, what is lacking on the left tube front? So I think, okay, there's kinda two camps. So there's, like, the BreadTube Entertainment. You can find people, like, I won't even name names because, like, I don't wanna seem like they're not good or anything, but there's a lot of, like, BreadTubers who are just kind of entertainment, who are decent, and then there's a whole theory sphere, which is, like, Theory Tube, especially theory podcasts, which they're really, really good analysis, but it's almost just a bunch of nerds, like, having a circle jerk. And what I mean by that is that it's people talking about theory to other academic theory people, and they're not actually getting across these ideas, which are often very important, to, you know, like most people, like, especially, like, leftists, they're really important. And, and, like, that's why I like YouTubers like Kak Philosophy. I think he does a really good job of getting across important ideas to, like, a broad audience. And see, that's what I would say, like, people like him are important. I wish there was more channels like that, because what I think lacks is there's a lot of bread too with really shallow analysis of, of issues, and it's often moralistic arguments. And then on the other end, you have a lot of good philosophy that literally makes no effort to make itself accessible or reachable to, you know,
the average viewer. So you're trying to reach this sort of middle ground between,
between the two? Yeah, more or less. I'm trying to kind of, sort of cross over a little bit into the film or media video essay and commentary world, but with like a sort of critical theory lens, because I incorporate a lot of Marxist economics, as well as even postmodern theory in some of my videos. And I I feel like all that adds that's really important, to have, like, a deep good analysis, but still make it entertaining.
So then maybe, you know, you don't have to think about this too much, but, like, one of the things that I've been wondering is whether, like the same maybe type of criticism that you have for like the Jake Pauls, and those type of influencers maybe contributes to the type of I guess what leads to the things that are lacking on the left tube front where I it seems to me that a lot of not I mean not just some of them like they I guess feel the pressure or they need to like produce content very often in order to like, keep their YouTube views and, like, to keep their audience engaged and, like, that's how, like, the platform works. So then they end up yeah. I I guess with kind of shallow analysis, you know, because there's just no way you can take the amount of time that you probably need to do all the amounts of research to give, like, anything that is, like, truly, insightful beyond, like, maybe, like, a day's worth of, like, your research on your own. But, yeah, it's it's sort of like a it's just now it's it becomes a super, like, meta critique of leftist now becoming,
victims to the exact same system that they're criticizing on YouTube and, yeah, gets messy. Yeah. The incentives don't make it easy. That's that's for certain. And it's even worse if, like, the people making videos didn't even have a strong background in the knowledge that they're talking about before starting YouTube, because what you often get is limited time, so you have people using Wikipedia for most of their sources, and often having really shallow presentations of different thinkers, theories, or just analysis in general. So, like, I don't know, it's not even exclusive to LeftTube, but I would say it's like the whole philosophy community. There's a ton of channels that literally just get all their information from Wikipedia or the stanford.edu pages. And sometimes it's like, it's a bad bastardization of a summary that they're summarizing. And you got, I'll say, like, one name I'll say is, the school of life is, like, the definition of, like, the worst That's the easy one. The worst the worst philosophy ever. Like, I mean, it completely bastardizes things. And, yeah, the incentives with uploading often don't help, but I do think one can at least make the effort to kind of, I don't know, learn about the stuff more, and if, what I would prefer is just people, like, don't take themselves all that too seriously, if they're not trying to do the research, like, if it's just pure comedy, like, present it as such, you know? And when that line is blurry, it is a little bit annoying, but, I will say there's a bigger problem to the left sphere than just the incentives, and that's the echo chambers, because naturally, of course, echo the algorithms, you you know, get feed content to people who already want it, and, are already in that sphere, so if you watch a couple of videos from this YouTuber, you'll get recommended videos exactly like that. And that's one thing, but what it really does to creators is they often become their audience. They kind of just become like products, producers, that produce a product, which is the videos, or you could call it just ideology, for the consumers who are the viewers. And it's less about trying to I mean, it can start off and some videos can radicalize a lot of people. There are people who get radicalized off YouTube. But you also have a lot of YouTubers who end up just appealing to their audience. And they don't make any effort to reach to new audiences or new people or to make a persuasive case. And I'll say people can probably guess already, like, which channels do this, but I'll name channels that I think are good and try to go across different audiences and ones like I think Second Thought is really excellent. Like Second Thought is a channel that makes a real deliberative, a real deliberate effort to actually, you know, spread ideas to different people. You can tell, like, his aim is to radicalize people. And I think left channels need to understand that, okay, it's, and one thing you can say it's entertainment, and it's like a hobby, but I think, spreading ideas is important. You need the deliberate goal sometimes of changing people's minds, because that's the right's goal, and it works. Like, the left can never establish anything. If we can't even get in Bernie Sanders in The United States, or Jeremy Corbyn in The UK, you are not gonna have a socialist revolution. You know, so at the very least, you need to have some people you need to have a lot of people support your ideas, and how do you do that? One way is kind of, you know, spreading information.
I think a lot of those criticisms, I want to bring them back later in the conversation, because we'll be talking about a couple of the, some of the recent, reactions to some of the developments in blockchain and crypto world from these left tubers, that are quite big. But what is the origin of your name actually?
Oh, yeah. So One nine. Yeah, so, so, okay, there's a couple reasons for this, but, I let people kind of interpret it differently, so, you can interpret it differently, but I'll say just the way I came up with it is I was reading the book One Dimensional Man by, Herbert Marcuse, and that's probably one of my favorite books that there is, I mean, critical theory books, because it encompasses so much of what is wrong with society, and the way discourse is, and how limited, and just how ideology is formed, how, kind of one dimensional thinking is cultivated, and, that book represents a lot of the way I, my political views, at least influenced me a lot, and, I could just say, my channel is like a leftist channel, or a Marxist channel, or whatever, but I think it's more important to counter one dimensional thought, because, okay, yeah, capitalist neoliberal thought is, in many ways, one dimensional thought, or political discourse, or Overton window, and the West is often boiled down to, are you a conservative, or are you a liberal, or are you a, you know, slightly more liberal, like a social Democrat? But it's a very limited political sphere, but I think if you also keep yourself into like sectarian niches, you can also devolve into one dimensional thought like channels that are explicitly just Marxist Leninists and only cover Lenin and Mao, and no one else and that's all they analyze from I think that's one dimensional too. So, yeah, I did wanna kind of make my channel have some flexibility to cover a lot of different things and not be bogged down to one thing. Because I don't just wanna have an audience of Marxists that watched my video and that's it. I wanted to kind of have a broad audience, like anarchists can watch myself too, social libs, even libertarians, like, I wanted to appeal to a lot of people, as well as also, you can say 1 dime, I guess you could say working class politics. That's also a way it can be interpreted. But, yeah. Yeah. It's also just a catchy name.
Yeah. I I I can identify with that. I mean, naturally, I think just, like, the name that I chose was mostly out of, like, lack of creativity. I just knew what I wanted to talk about, and they were two things that are not usually related to each other. So I sort of, I think, naturally attract, a diverse audience, I guess, in terms of crypto people who are maybe interested in left politics or vice versa. And there's also no there's no blockchain,
socialist, just, channel platforms out there. There's, like, there's no none on YouTube, I mean, and there's, like No big ones. I mean, there's there's really just your podcast, and then there's some people who are know, blockchain socialist, but they don't really run platforms from what I know. Yeah. I mean, there's there's the Interdependence
podcast with, Holly Herndon and Matt Dreherst, which was, I think, originally meant to be a podcast mostly about art and, like, music because they're musicians. But then it's ended up becoming mostly a crypto podcast but it's pretty good. But so maybe they're they're probably one of the other people that I really know that are really taking it on. And then, like, a couple other I feel like new models is another one that I've heard of. I haven't taken too much time but it's growing, like, because there's I think a need for it and, yeah, whenever I was sort of thinking about making it I was like eventually someone's going to have to like the left is going to have to learn about this at some point. So might as well help them and do their homework. We can't let
everything interesting be co opted by the right. I mean, so much is co opted like, what annoys me too is just, social media is something heavily co opted by the right. Like, the amount of, you know, liberal academics, even left wing academics, who I see complaining about how the alt right has taken over YouTube and taken over Facebook, and they're saying, you know, we need to get platforms to moderate these people, they need to, you know, prevent racism and whatnot, and it's like, hey, you're really gonna leave, fighting racism and fascism to Mark Zuckerberg? And like, these big tech CEOs? It's crazy to me, I mean, just make better stuff, make better propaganda, like the left needs to kind of do its own propaganda, I think there's this kind of, and I say propaganda in the traditional sense, which is not good or bad, propaganda is just what makes it different is that you're deliberately trying to persuade people, And that's historically how all social movements try to do that. I just think that, left wingers sometimes are a little bit deluded to thinking that they will win just by virtue of their ideas being morally superior, which I think is kind of a delusion because people's minds don't work like that. Morality is super relative for people sometimes. And, I think, you know, you have to, the left has to try to if they see trends, they should analyze and see whether it can benefit the left because I mean, if the right just co ops everything, you're just not gonna win the ideological war. It's that simple. And I think crypto, it's not only should you let the right co op that but there's ways that, you know, blockchain can, benefit the left, which, you know, you've talked about a lot in your podcast, of course. May maybe the question is whether or not the left can co opt blockchain.
Yeah. Exactly. I mean, how do we co opt stuff back? It's a battle, you know?
You just gotta treat it as such. We gotta use the Internet to our advantage, because, I mean, back in the day, what did we do before the Internet? You had people knocking on doors, you had people, you kinda organize in working class communities, very locally. And you can there's some I know a lot of more radical left wing groups in the Marxist fronts who do that. They're so attached to that, but that's increasingly less effective. I mean, everybody gets their information online. I'm not saying not to do local politics, but you can't rely on that. You have to reach broad audiences, you just have to be on the internet, you have to reach new people. And, I wish, you know, the left just needs to simply adapt. It's a message I say a lot.
Yeah. For me, it's like it's just use every weapon you have in your inventory. Like, why why do we have to always think of it as, like, either or? Like, either you go see each other in peep in person and talk to people in person only, or you only interact over the Internet. It's like I think there's clearly a need for using all these different approaches, and if you're, you know, in any sort of normal type of situation where you're trying to, I don't know, convince people of something of, just, un politically related, you want to have, like, different avenues for doing that. I'll give you a perfect example real quick.
Is that, okay, I remember there was some articles, like from Huffington Post that attacked, they said they attacked Bitcoin by saying Richard Spencer uses and his white supremacist organization used Bitcoin to fund his organizations and it's like attacking Bitcoins like, you idiots, we could also do that to fund left wing organizations. It's like, you know, why don't we do that? I mean, it's one of the biggest problems with the left is funding always. Because, and it's like, okay, you can decentralize, you can run decentralized platforms and have groups function on blockchain, you can use this a lot in a lot of ways, like just because the right wing do it, that that's just them adapting, it's not an indictment of the technology, the technology is neutral, the technology doesn't care, right? So it's it's up to us really how we view it, and do it what we do with it. But so
maybe maybe getting back to, to this question I actually wanted to ask because I think it's sort of related to this crypto question. But your most recent article or video was a Marxist analysis of the stock market. And so I'm curious to hear what was it like making that video, since the stock market is sort of like, I mean, finance in general, money in general, is a very touchy subject on the left, and, like, talking about it in, like, in more detail than, like, the because we we can talk about it pretty easily about, like, the power structures that sort of, like, incentivize particular behaviors and, like, wealth accumulation, all that. But then when you talk about, like, specifically the stock market and how, I mean it's it's quite a complex thing, or it's it's perceived as, like, a very complex thing, and it's something that the left, I mean, just sort of, I feel like doesn't really like looking at. So I'm curious what was it like making that video?
Oh, yeah. So, yeah. The video is called the socialism of Warren Buffett. And, I mean, it's sort of a clickbait title, but the reason why why I chose that title is because Warren Buffett's own words, by his own admission, the capitalist system is dysfunctional. And what I like about Warren Buffett, he's a card carrying capitalist, no doubt. But what I like about Warren Buffett is that he's so upfront and honest about just how brutal the capitalist system can be, and how he he himself debunks the idea that billionaires are billionaires because they work harder, or just mentally superior. I mean, they just have a real big interest in money and know how to use the capitalist system, which exponentially increases wealth inequality. And I think it it is crazy to me that the stock market isn't in analyzed by the left enough, because the stock market is one of the biggest, focal points as to how capitalism functions, like, it's the locus of capital in many ways. It's one of the primary drivers of inequality, because rich people, of course, the richer you are, the more money you have, the more shares you can buy, and the more shares you can buy, the more exponentially you can grow your wealth, and the more dividends you can also get, by its very nature, increases inequality, and do so with very little labor whatsoever. And not only that, but, like taxes on capital gains are very small compared to income, so that's why, like, raising income taxes do not affect the billionaire class. Whenever you have people like Obama or Joe Biden say, we're gonna raise income taxes, and people are like, yay, progress. That that's not gonna do anything. Absolutely nothing. That'll affect doctors and, surgeons and people like that. It won't affect, you know, billionaire class who make their money primarily from, you know, stocks, real estate and ownership in their companies, which is, you know, through the stock market. Like, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, he has all this wealth in his Facebook stock, but he doesn't really get that wealth unless he sells his shares. And if he sells those shares, he's taxed at a lower rate as if he made that money in a salary form. That's something people forget. So I think a lot of people because they don't understand the stock market, they don't understand solutions. So So when you understand the stock market from a leftist point of view, a Marxist point of view, you can see pretty quick how things like taxes won't actually solve anything. I mean, you can theoretically implement, high capital gains taxes, but they're not gonna do that because the way the tax system is structured is to help the capitalists. Like, that's another thing that Marxist analysis and, you know, the anarchists get this as well, is that the state is inherently capitalist in capitalist societies. It's not something which, exists outside of capitalism, in which there's this idea with libertarians that the state is against capital, and that, you know, the big government versus the private interests like this Iron Rand fantasy, but in reality, the capital estate works precisely to, reproduce capital. So in both forms, whether it be, you know, keeping, business friendly policies, but in some cases when it does things that are not business friendly, like, have increased minimum wage or regulations, that is also to continue the capitalist system, I explained that in my video called How Democrats Save Billionaires and, essentially to prevent any kind of revolts or the destruction of private property, which often happens in really militant protests or better yet revolutions, this is bad for capital and social democracy or just light even less than that light reformism can really prevent that, and it protects that. So this is part of my content is heavily targeted at social democrats and liberals too, because I think there's this disconnect. You know, let's have be in the middle, let's just have capitalism, but like, you know, regulate a more friendly capitalism. I think it's highly delusional, and it's impossible also on a structural level for it's not sustainable. So, okay, another example, I was I was listening what made me really wanna make this video particularly, so I was listening to Democracy Now, which is, you know, a pretty good news channel, but it's heavily it's social democratic at the end of the day. And they were saying, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos have a combined something trillion dollars in their bank accounts. Well, no, they don't. It's not in their bank accounts. The fact that they said that it shows that they don't understand capitalism, they have that much in assets. It's not in their bank accounts, literally, like they don't have that cash at their disposal. So you can't just like take that so easily like it's a matter of capital and you can say oh we could tax capital gains but that won't that won't affect them unless they sell their shares it doesn't prevent their kids from inheriting those billions so how do you really, what is the root of the problem is ownership, that's where I bring in Marxism, it's the fact that people don't own what they produce, why, let's say I have, I don't know, let's say I have $2,000,000 I can make far more from Tesla than an employee at Tesla. Isn't that broken, right? The person who contributes value for a company is not entitled directly to a certain ownership of it. Whereas a person with a lot of money can just buy ownership and get entitled to the fruits more than the people producing it. So this is what Marxism is about. It's about analyzing ownership structure of capitalism. So that's what I wanted to do with the stock market.
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Yeah, there's well, there's, I think there's a lot of reasons. We aren't really educated on these things, if you really think about it. So we're not, we're not educated, we're certainly not educated from a leftist perspective, that's for sure, like, you know,
it depends where you're school either.
Depends where you live, but especially like where I grew up in Canada, as well as, you know, America, UK heavily cold war propaganda still floods education system. But not only that, but we're just not even educated about finance, you know, in a lot of ways, and I see this often in like, you know, crypto communities actually, where, in just kind of finance people, where they'll say, we're not educated about how to, you know, do our taxes to run our business, to run businesses. You know, how come we're not we're educated to be workers. Why is that? The education system's broken. To that, I'd say, well, it's not broken. It's doing exactly what it's intended to do. Most of us are supposed to be workers, and then a small amount of capitalists who essentially profit from the work of workers. So that's the capitalist system, I try to explain that, but, yeah, I think there is a disconnect as to how this all works. With democracy now, maybe they're saying it to simplify, but I do see, like, a lot of just, you know, outlets, or not not just outlets, but, like, the left in general tends to not understand how wealth accumulation works, because I remember when, Elon Musk became officially the richest person in the world which he is no longer I don't think but officially on paper the richest and they're like oh he got the richest tax him and it's like okay, you know he got like richer than Bezos just because Tesla went bonkers, Tesla stock went bonkers like it and it's super overvalued like you know that that's gonna come down eventually right So, it's not Theoretically, theoretically, I don't know. Well, theoretically, according to, you know, the market logic, but, yeah, it's not so simple, it's a boils down to ownership I think and I I know some people were say who say well Elon Musk has this much in profit well no he doesn't I mean I think Tesla only recently became a profitable company same with Amazon became a profitable company, I think in 2016, and, it's it's it's much more abstract than that, it's not even like old capital where it's like you own a business, and you get the profits, and, what, the surplus value goes to the owners. It's far more complex than that. I mean, ownership, you can get rich off owning a company that makes zero money, like Bumble, for example. The CEO of Bumble is a billionaire. Bumble makes no money.
Oh my god. The the amount of, like, LinkedIn posts that that I saw around this woman from Bumble was it was mind boggling. It was crazy. I think I read I think I read a Twitter or a tweet saying that, that she grew up, like, extremely wealthy. I forgot what the exact story was. Basically, she, like, owned, like, several or, like, a couple of apartments, like at the at the campus that she went and studied at. You know, it's there's always like this story behind it's always it's just it's just always like 90% of the time the people who become billionaires are already super rich. Yeah, it's like Elon Musk. In my experience. Yeah. Yeah. In my experience, you know, I mean there is this complaint about how schools don't teach you about, you know, entrepreneurship or they don't teach you how to do your taxes or, you know, teach you finance. But the people who do teach you are like your rich parents. Generally, in in my experience, I mean, it tends to be the kids who had the most privilege or like whose parents were also business owners. They learned it from their parents. So in a certain sense, like, that knowledge is are is sort of, like, naturally gatekept, to certain extents. You have to you have to do a lot you have to, you know, do a lot more in order to get that that same amount of knowledge to start a business or whatever. 100%. But one of the the really interesting thing that I found in your video about Warren Buffett in the stock market was the quote from Marx about how he was speculating on stocks. And he seemed like to me, what I like about Marx in that particular situation that he sort of acts like an anthropologist of capitalism, not solely just a philosopher, like, in, you know, he's partaking in the thing that he's criticizing and is able to get insights out of that, I think. But, yeah, that's that's maybe sort of one of my thoughts that one of the reasons I really like to see this sort of anthropological approach as opposed to maybe a purely philosophical
or purely, like, I don't know, I guess literature type of approach. Yeah. That's what I really like about Marx is Marx is, I mean, well, they call it Scientific Socialism for a reason, and you can have debates whether it's really scientific, but it's far more empirical than most political, than I would say all political philosophies, because Marxism isn't about just a bunch of abstract ideals, like, you know, Rousseau's or Locke's liberalism where Marxism is an analysis of real Or libertarianism. Yeah, oh my God, yeah. I included that bit about Marx, trading stocks and bonds because I kinda wanted to show a couple of things. So Marx's analysis, and this is obvious to anyone who's read, like, a bit of Das Kapital or the Grundrese or any of Marx's other writings aside from the communist manifest. So that is Marx's analysis is not a moral one. Karl Karl Marx is not, you know, Marxism is not about just abstract ideals like liberalism was about liberty, for egalite, fraternity, and all of that. Marxism is an analysis about real economic conditions, which are, of course, subject to change. And, you know, so, like, Marx would have a really easy way to debunk the classic libertarian argument, which is, oh, you live in capitalism, but you make money. Hypocrite? It's like, well, you live in capitalism, you don't really have a choice. Like, it's not really voluntary, voluntary participation, I mean, you have to survive, like, we're not guaranteed housing, we're not guaranteed, health care, we're not guaranteed, I mean, education, we're not guaranteed a lot of things in life, you have to, you know, get the bag, so Mark, like the fact that Mark speculated in stocks, I mean, it's funny, but it doesn't fully surprise me just knowing the type of an analyst he was. He wasn't, you know, the Marx was not just saying rich people bad, poor people are good, and because they're poor, I mean, that's a kind of like Nietzschean slave morality, that's it's not what it's based on whatsoever, I mean, Marx analyzed just the conditions of capitalism and how they objectively are. And he was not under any illusion that capitalism was worse than feudalism. I mean, it was a it was a progression, of course, and it's revolutionary in many ways, but it's also increasing, absurdly brutal. That's where it's like dialectical analysis comes in as he analyzes the contradictions of capitalism and, the things that were revolutionary about it. And also it's brutal aspects. So you kind of analyze just the way the ownership structures work, the accumulation of capital. And, yeah, it's not a moral case. You said capitalism does this, not capitalism is bad because of this abstract ideal. It's not what the analysis is. And there's some, you know, there's some libertarian illusions that, Marxism is based on ressentiment, and, it's just envy, which is absolutely absurd. Like, it's not like they're just jealous of rich people and wanted to take them down and redistribute everything. I mean, Engels owned a textile factory. He inherited a textile factory. He was he had no incentives whatsoever to, you know, be a communist. And, I mean, Marx obviously, yeah, participated in the capitalist system. And anyone who thinks this is hypocritical, okay, there's far more hypocrisy in other fields of thought, like John Locke was talking about liberty while owning slaves, right, or having an investment in the slave trade rather, not only slaves directly, but still, like, you find all it's it doesn't really, delegitimize the argument at all. So what this means is I also I also included, the Marx trading stocks for another reason. So the line between worker and capitalist is actually kind of blurry, especially now, because most people who work, full time jobs and often have especially in America, they have four zero one k plans. So so it's kind of they have indirectly ownership of capital, whether by owning the whole market in the form of mutual funds, index funds, and whatnot. And just because these people own that in their, you know, four zero one k, that doesn't make them like filthy evil capitalists. It's just the way the system is. And the reason why I include that as well is because there is some people like a kind of vulgar socialists, which don't really, you know, read the literature very much. And they do, this this, like, you know, post the guillotine memes and just wanna kill rich people. And I think that my mindset's a little bit dangerous because you can, like, we're not trying to vilify, you know, Bob who works in the office for FedEx or whatever. Like our hope like, you don't wanna vilify just, like middle class people who are, I mean, they're just living in the system. Yeah. So, and I think it's dangerous because you have had movements in the past like the cultural revolution under Mao, which was very much carried out by the people, I mean, it was kind of a mob rule, and you got a lot of innocent people dying because you had a lot of, you know, the peasantry, the proletariat were just really angry at these sort of, what are called the rich peasants, at the time, like a kind of kulaks, at least that's what they called them in Russia, and you had a lot of unnecessary deaths in that scenario. So I I showed it in that way. I think Marxism at its core is a systemic analysis. It's not just about killing the bourgeoisie. Like, I think it's ridiculous, because how do we even define that now? I mean, it's about abolishing class. It's It's not about abolishing people. I I feel it's sort of like,
I think it's in a world where you have so little ability to express, like, yourself I mean, like, express your, like, political beliefs in, like, a positive way when you're on the left that you sort of revert to these type of cathartic posting, like, online postings because
it feels good to do that. I saw a ridiculous poll once where it said, if you could get rid of one thing, which would you choose? And it said Amazon, and then it said the police, the state, racism, and people chose the the two things that were like pulling the highest were Amazon and racism. No. That just that what? And it's like, okay, if you got rid of Amazon, first of all, like, you would have another Amazon. And there are other Amazons, like there's the Amazon in China, and there's Amazon in Singapore. And you have Amazon in Latin America. I mean, you just have big CEOs get replaced by other ones, and ultimately, what I don't like is there's this mindset that rich people like Bezos, Elon Musk are bad because they're rich, that's not why they're bad, or it's the structure is bad because it doesn't reward people who work, or is it rewards people who just simply own and collect that's the system what is bad because then you get these weird views that romanticize small business a lot like you say oh big business is bad small businesses is good. And it's like small businesses exploit the workers just as much, sometimes more than big businesses. Yeah. If if you've ever worked at a small business with, like,
with, like, a tyrannical CEO or, like, you know, there's a very controlling person who who started it. I mean, it can be a whole lot worse than than working in a big company where you're just a number doing sort of hide.
Yeah. Like, we're we're working for restaurants is a perfect example, like, absolutely brutal, often, like, heavily. That's why tips even exist. Tips exist because like you know the the small capitalist can't like aren't gonna pay that and it's you you could say that they're bad but it's it's really also an incentive structure like if you pay your workers too much you often run out of business It's simple how the capitalist system is. It's like a competition isn't good. I don't like this idea that, you know, we need to get rid of big tech and just establish competitive capitalism. Actually, competitive capitalism was the most brutal era of capitalism. I'll say that, like, competitive capitalism is sort of the era of capitalism that took place before Teddy Roosevelt broke up, the big monopolies, which eventually fomented. So, like, you had competitive capitalism really in the eighteen hundreds, that was what Marx was actually mostly analyzing. Competitive capitalism was, was probably the most brutal era of capitalism to ever exist. I mean, you have a race to the bottom, then you have the formation of big monopolies, which obviously, you know, that's what happens. You get, like, a Gilded Age inequality, and then you had now we're reaching that again. And, we also kind of still are we're not in just because we're in a monopoly capitalism doesn't mean it's not competitive. We're just competing with labour in the third world. So you have kind of a race to the bottom in labour and costs and then, yeah, I know that I think a systemic analysis is always important because then you get really lofty solutions like okay, just taxing rich people or, and, yeah, I think, like, socialism is about empowering working people, it's not about just killing rich people, it's about empowering working people, and changing the structure so that you can do that. And when you change the ownership structure, you don't even have billionaires in the first place.
Yeah. That's the goal. Just no billionaires being created in the first place. Or it's not no, I mean, because billionaire could be very you could be a billionaire easily in some countries just because of the way that their money is denominated but, like, you know, having the extreme inequality.
Yeah. 100%.
Did you receive any pushback for that, video?
I did not. I didn't really. Well, I mean, I got some comments from libertarians as usual, like, which is a good sign because I I at least I'm reaching.
Means the algorithm is showing your video to them.
Yeah. And, I mean, I think there's there's there's always a couple of comments where people are like, but these CEOs, they create jobs, and if they didn't create the jobs why would there wouldn't be any jobs and it's like okay well first of all the state can create jobs in this they don't just create jobs there's this idea of that billionaires like create they create based on how much people produce so like if people are buying their stuff and they have to produce more they'll hire more people it's not like benevolence or anything, it's a really, like libertarian ideology is a really, one hell of a drug that's steeped into our collective unconscious, but, I don't, I think I would have probably get a little bit more pushback if it was bigger because I think my channel is still new and very underrated. So I if if I had more views, you'd probably see more pushback, but because my channel is is pretty small still and I have mostly like a really like a a strong like, a following that just watches my stuff regularly, but it's a really small one. I think you don't have a lot of pushback. I got like I said, most of the pushback was from, like, libertarians, but, that's to be expected. But, from the left, not really, I think, no, I mean They understand. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you just, there's nothing you can really say to the facts. Like if someone said, oh, Mark's traded stocks, and it's like, yeah, so?
And goes out with the factory. If if Marx was alive today, do you think he would be trading Dogecoin?
I wouldn't be surprised if he did, yeah. So, I honestly think Marx would find a lot of the left really cringey today. Yeah, I think, you know, he would be analyzing, I think Marx would be really interested in cryptocurrency because the type of thinker he was, he was always ahead. He always wanted to explore what reality is, like what's happening, not just stuck in ideals. And I mean, I kind of, I know, I like the visions, I like the decentralized libertarian socialism that anarchists envision a lot. Like, I usually like anarchists, and in many ways, I'm influenced by some anarchist thinkers like Murray Bookchin and myself, but, I like I always think anarchism Marxism is just a way better analysis because anarchism does have that problem where it's stuck in ideals often, where it's about the ideal of communism, a stateless, money ness, classless society. Well, first of all, we need to get there. And to even think about how to get there, you have to understand the conditions we're already in. And capitalism is not the same capitalism we were in before. So I think, you know, we would have Marx Marx would, you know, probably have a whole different, a whole different you would have Das Crypto.
I would, yeah. That's I'm taking that title for my if I ever decide to write a book.
Yeah, that would be that would be great. Yeah. That's crypto.
I also noticed that in your videos you like to use quite a lot of Spongebob scenes in your videos as well. And, as an avid watcher, as a child, I completely respect that. Yeah, I guess is there just maybe a side question, is there something that you think that show lends itself well to Left two? Because I think I I see it every once in a while and it's like, I don't know, maybe it's just like the our generation of of people of kids who grew up watching Spongebob is quite nostalgic. But also, like, I feel like the as as we get older, I think we begin to identify with Squidward more and more. Yeah.
There's the Yeah, well,
We all have a Mr. Krabs in our life that drives us insane. That show is certainly very archetypical
in many ways. Like there's a lot of archetypes going on in there. But, yeah, I mean, well, in, in, in, it is common in left tube to do to have like references to various shows. Like there's a lot of family guy here and there's Simpsons is very popular, but, sponge, like, I mean, I'm a nineties kid, a late nineties kid, and I kinda grew up, or mid mid late nineties, and I kind of, grew up on SpongeBob. So it's also in one sense, I just find some scenes in that show, like, just hilarious to like just really hilarious to plug in and also I think it's appealing to kind of the audience that I'm appealing to I mean it's something that resonates with the I guess you could say the Zoomer millennial unconscious in many ways, it's something that just resonates. And it just makes the the the content more digestible, lighthearted and funny. But also sometimes like simple archetypes that are personified in Spongebob can be a lot like there's, like, Mr. Krabs is the quintessential petite bourgeoisie,
right? Yeah, he is the dictator, he's like the small business dictator.
Exactly, and it's a perfect example of how, like, big businesses, you know small business is not always like it's not always more ethical than or better than big business. So it's like that and squid where it's like you know like the disenfranchised proletariat and SpongeBob and Patrick are like the dupe proletariat And it's like, I don't know. There's this there's this funny scenes I like to include in there. It's it's just it's just really funny. There's, like, I don't know that I think the scene I included was there there's a scene where they're they're like, who wants free money?
Yeah. Yeah. I mentioned I mentioned this exact same scene in a in a previous interview actually. It's a very good one.
Yeah. Modern Monetary Theory in a nutshell. Yeah. I mean, it's it's like sometimes you need some stuff that is absurd to kind of destabilize the, what we perceive as the laws of reality. Like, for example, so many people think that, we have an economy that acts like, like our governments act like a business and you have to make more than you spend, and that the deficit matters a lot. And, it's, I think people have a lot of misunderstanding about just how, you know, money money is literally created and money money is value is not determined just by how solely by how much it how much of it exists. It's how much it's circulated. It's a big factor. So there's the velocity of money. There's all these things that are important. And, I think people just, you know, don't get that. And it's funny, like, how you have, like, shows like Spongebob that just, have scenes that perfectly personify the, illogic of society.
So maybe we can start let's start shifting more and more into into crypto world. Maybe you could explain briefly what are some of your thoughts around crypto and blockchain and, like, how did you get started on it? Like, what was it from your, you know, your background in in philosophy and critical theory, that drew you towards it?
Yeah. So I I had two friends who were really avid crypto investors, one which made a lot of money, one which lost a lot of money. And, there are and I always kinda thought saw it as like a fringe kind of, like a really fringe just investment world for people who wanted to get rich quick, and I didn't really see much of it. It wasn't until so I started looking into Bitcoin, and then I started really looking to Ethereum, and I remember learning about just how they're different. And particularly, the aspect of smart contracts was really interesting to me with, Ethereum because I saw it, like, I I don't see I mean, Bitcoin is revolutionary in many ways, but, I I don't see a big use case or I didn't beyond really a digital gold that store value. Whereas, Ethereum, I could immediately tell, with smart contracts is when you so much of capitalism is based on a middleman, parasitic, subtraction. So it's like taking, profits from things as a mediatory. And that's so much of how capitalism works increasingly in the rentier economy. And, I could immediately see how there might be a use case for this. I wasn't sure yet. And, I still think we're crypto is in its very early stages, but at the very least, it's worth learning about and really exploring, because I don't see this technology as innately right wing or left wing. I mean, it's it's, like, the biggest, obviously, cryptos, like, you know, Bitcoin, Polkadot, Ethereum, Chainlink, they're used as, like, investments a lot now mainly, and that that's that's how it is, but, it doesn't mean that the technology people often misconstrue how it's used in a capital society versus that is just what the technology can do. And there's all kind of interesting things with these blockchains can do. And I think that's worth exploring, like, it's not something I should be seated for the to the right for just strategic reasons, but simply, I mean, we need to actually think about what a post capitalist society can look like, and what infrastructure can really support it. I think there's, and okay, there's anarchists out there who think that we can just go to a stateless, classless, moneyless society. Communism, a big part of it is moneyless. We wanna be in Star Trek, right? Okay. But I'm always skeptical as to how exactly you can transition there. And that's where I'm more of a Marxist than an anarchist. I think you need some kind of transition. Like, for Marx, he used the word socialism and communism interchangeably, but for Amos, lower phase communism comes before higher phase communism, which is when there's a stateless, classless, moneyless society. So I see crypto could have a lot to help us with like a intermediary, intermediary for a kind of post capitalism. And that that does interest me. Yeah, that's so, I I kind of just learning a bit about the technology has made me curious. And then I started looking up, I was surprised by the lack of, you know, stuff from a left wing perspective on it. And there's some people who are broadly, I suspect a bit like that Vitalik Buterin is like kind of like a socialist in some ways, because he calls himself like a collectivist and said he speaks in a lot of socialist terms, but he also like what he doesn't really express his politics much and I think there's a reason why because he doesn't wanna get all the libertarians mad. Partially, yeah. I think he's also confused to be honest. I mean Most people are confused like most people think they're like okay I'm a leftist because I like I'm like want to help people. Whereas like you know libertarians are like you know I want my profit bitch.
Yeah. I mean I think he's at the very least like probably a fairly reasonable person I get the impression as compared to a lot of other founders of crypto related projects and and companies. And so I think I think because he's nice sometimes he's perceived as maybe like kind of a socialist or because he's also talked about he's talked a bit about public goods, in the in the like Ethereum environment and how to fund public goods within, in Ethereum within the Ethereum environments whenever like, in comparison to what you're seeing with Bitcoin, like, I I think Bitcoin is just, like, the most simplistic thing ever made with a blockchain obviously because it's the first one. And you're seeing what the sort of results of that is and that they've sort of completely stagnated in terms of the new developments on the Bitcoin network. I mean, lightning network, I I mean, who fucking uses it? It's it's not it's not useful. You don't have, like, you know, a fraction of the type of functions that you have with with with Ethereum and other blockchains that have smart contracts. And they had no way of like funding the developers who are working on Bitcoin. So you know they it fit well as a libertarian from the surface, but like now you're seeing the results of what that type of idealism has sort of like what it leads to and which is, like, a stagnating project that is, like, solely really being done to speculate.
Well, I'll tell you one thing that immediately made me skeptical of Bitcoin very early on, and I noticed one glaring contradiction. And that was that all the people in r slash Bitcoin, r slash cryptocurrency, were simultaneously talking about this decentralized future and moving away from the big banks. And, you know, how the future is decentralized, and we need, you know, decentralized finance will take over. And even more, the biggest delusion was that Bitcoin will become the world reserve currency. I mean, like, that's the I might think like the ultimate delusion, right? And, yeah, so you have like these, these talking points, but at the same time, whenever, like, big banks buy Bitcoin, they're celebrating because their investments go up. So, like, simultaneously, because they're treating it as an investment, they, while they talk about this idea of post banking and, like, moving away from the big banks, and it's Crypto is destabilizing traditional finance, but at the same time, they're, like, they want the banks to be buying up Bitcoin so that their investments can do well, and that's just such a glaring contradiction. And I think this is a big I mean, I think, look, libertarian right libertarianism is like a field of contradictions in general, because they tend to always think that, you know, certain things will just happen. Like they talk solely in ideals, and like these ideals will just happen. So they'll say, okay, decentralization or like a true free market, but they have no like they don't have an analysis of power. I mean,
the the the extent of their analysis is like tax taxation is theft, really. That's their analysis of power.
Yeah. And I I honestly think, you know, the as crypto becomes more mainstream, there's there's good and bad things about that. I mean, there's all kind of other projects that people don't really know about, which aren't mainstream at all, which are a little more interesting to me. But, I think, like, Bitcoin being mainstream, that's more of an indictment of Bitcoin than anything, because the fact that you have so many countries like embracing it, it's really just a store of value for rich people, it's gonna make the rich richer, like it's not I don't see it as this challenging thing. But there's aspects of blockchain technology, which of course, Bitcoin only hits the surface. It's like, it's very early stage, compared to the other developments, you know, like even Ethereum or Cardano. Yeah, so I think people often on the left, on the others to flip the side, is people on the left react to Bitcoin as an investment, and the fact that you have people like Elon Musk owning it, that it's something bad just because, you know, Elon, they don't like Elon Musk, that he owns it, it must be bad, and it's dismissed. And also there's so that's the illogical component, and there is the the kind of logical concern, which is, the environment, the amount of electricity that mining takes. So I understand that, and, and also just, like, maintaining the networks. But, I I understand, that concern, but I think people are a little too quick to dismiss, especially on the left.
Yeah. I guess, maybe, what do you think the left usually gets wrong from a Marxist point of view? Like, what do you think is usually missing? I mean, that there's the very common belief or sentiment that is very anti crypto and anti blockchain. From a it's it's to me it seems like it's just like a what's there's I think there's like this there's this term using like a contra points video once, but it's like the, association of association of association of, like, all these different things that you already don't like.
I don't know about that, but I would say it's a it's a a lot of the time. So, I wouldn't say, like, like, most of these people who are reacting to it aren't even Marxist. Like, I'd say Marxism is still very, my fringe minority of the left. Left is very much still social democrat, and then of course there's the bread tube that are anarchists, but I don't really see a lot of people like, I mean, I see anarchists, I don't take it too seriously, because a lot of anarchists aren't really studying anarchist theory and practicing anarchist tactics. It's more just like, I'm the socialism, but not the authoritarian kind, right? Yeah. And, so, but I do think, okay, the reason why they hate, they dislike crypto often is because they view things morally, and this has been a big problem, for me with the left. I would say it's exclusive to most of the way a lot of people think politically, a lot of people think morally, both on left and the right, but it hurts the left more, in that the left sometimes is way too quick to judge things morally, not analytically, and, you end up having really poor analysis, really quick judgements. And, yeah, it's really annoying to me sometimes because you do then fall into what Friedrich Nietzsche, one of my favorite philosophers, who's not a left wing philosopher, but, Friedrich Nietzsche called slave morality. And, in which, in a sense, slave morality is less okay, so part of what maintained the feudal order of the time in which he was writing about, which is, is that, like, slaves, their position would be maintained by kind of, a kind of Christianity that would call the, the that the meek will shall inherit the earth, that the people who are poor are good because they're poor, not because of their position or what they do. They're good because they're poor, and rich are bad because they're bad. The rich are in their position don't change things, the rich will go to hell. And of course, this all changed with Calvinism and Protestantism, which was more like making money is good, and all that, so, but, I do see that the kind of morality lingers a little bit, is that something if it benefits rich people, it must be bad, and you have, and that, yeah, it's kind of a really lofty analysis in my opinion. I really wish people analyze things more like based on what is happening and not always morally, because morals are abstract and can be seen relatively, and people can twist morals to fit what they already wanna do. I think the left should think more in terms of power and economic relations. That's always more important to me. So what what is, what what is bad about Bitcoin? Well, it's not so much the technology they criticize, it's the fact that, like, people who already are in dominant positions of power, you know, have, can get more ownership of it. That's just how the capitalist system is. That's indictment of capitalism, not crypto, right? And, yeah, I think that that's how I see it is a lot of short sighted moral analysis. It's so clear that they haven't really dug in, dug into what is actually happening in crypto beyond a surface level, because I mean, what Web three point zero is trying to achieve is like a kind of more and more communist Internet. And, okay, why we can look at why is the Internet some aspects of the Internet are innately communist, like you could say, Wikipedia, all kind of things, like many things that are are kind of decentralized, not motivated by profits really. But like, why is the Internet not a communist? Why did it get ruined in many ways? Well, first of all, it started off centralized from the get go, but also it kind of became through, we went, when we went to Web two point zero to kind of distributed networks, which was, I mean, on an infrastructural level level, kind of decentralized, but not in terms of control. Control is still very much centralized, if not actually more centralized with thin, platforms. So how do we change that? Well, we can have revolution. We can collect device, but, like, what can we do right now? Okay? So like, I see web two point o and cryptocurrency, is like an infrastructure for the Internet that can kinda is is a very interesting experiment to say the least. Like, do we do we want to have the internet be a collective commons? Like, I think that that's a real discussion. How do we make that happen? And okay, another thing, which is a little bit deeper, because this is much more futuristic and, I guess beyond the scope of our society now, but, okay, let's say we wanna go to moneyless, classless society. I see no scenario in which there isn't some kind of transition, but to have a moneyless, classless society, you need to not have dependence on the state. Well, how do you have not dependence, how do you grow out of dependence on the state? Well, I think that this blockchain does offer many opportunities in many ways, and can, as it, I think, gets more advanced and we find more things to do with it, is to weigh just humans can function and own the Internet and do things without reliance on the state. We need to figure out ways to actually, I guess you could say, it sounds a little stereotypical, but, like, live the revolution. You need to get people actually feeling what, like, a more collectivist society slash system even can be like so people can envision it. We need to at least be creative, explore these things. It's a little bit premature in my opinion, just to kind of, you know, brush all this off because of, just because, you know, it happens to be co opted by rich people. I think there's this delusion that because something is co opted by capitalism, it's necessarily bad, but everything can be co opted by capitalism.
Thanks a lot for taking the time. It was really interesting to get your perspective, especially from from Marxist point of view and, you know, from a critical theory point of view. People should definitely check out your channel. So maybe to wrap it up, you can let people know where they can find that and where they can keep up with you. Yeah. My, YouTube channel is called One Dimes. So the number one and then dime all in all in one word. So just one dime. And,
you can find me on YouTube, you can also find me on Twitter. My Twitter handle is therapnerd7, and you can, yeah, you can follow me there. In terms of my videos, the ones I recommend the most are probably the recent one we are talking about, which is the socialism of Warren Buffett, kind of a Marxist analysis of the stock market. It's, I put a lot of effort into the visuals, the editing, it's kind of like, like, it's really entertaining stuff, in my opinion, anyway. And, the other video I'd recommend is how, billion how Democrats save billionaires. That's another short little documentary I made, which, is interesting about understanding the long term and short term interests of capitalism and the roles that Democrats play historically in kind of maintaining capitalism by being the other side of the coin. And, yeah. It's it's, if you kind of want a good analysis, but also very entertaining, and, maybe even some videos to radicalize your friends and family with, yeah. Feel free to check out the channel.
Yeah. Definitely. I think they're they're pretty approachable for people even who are not left wing or or socialist themselves, especially the the Democrats and the billionaires one, I think would be great for for showing, like, I don't know, your conservative uncle who who votes Republican and thinks Nike is communist or something.
Yeah. Exactly.
Right. Yeah. Thanks a lot for taking the time. And, yeah, good luck. People, check out his YouTube channel.
