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this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
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The Deprogram Podcast
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International Anti-Capitalist podcast run by an American, Slav and an Arab.
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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.
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.
You are right, I agree with your points. But then why would anyone praise and defend this? Sure it’s just slop, content, but then why put people like this on a pedestal as thought-leaders? A capitalist selling you the idea of liberation…
I tend to agree with your conclusion, but I'm gonna run with the argument. If JT is a capitalist selling the idea of liberation, does this mean his videos were somehow more proletarian or revolutionary before he employed people? He still "sold" the idea of liberation, he just didn't engage in labour exploitation to do it.
Besides, I think you're missing the point of the post. JT was explaining why it's neccesary for Second Thought to generate revenue, and like another commenter said, that would still be neccessary even if the channel was a coop.
Also, we don't have any information on how the business is structured or what the workplace's democracy looks like. After all, the only thing that really determines if it's labour exploitation or not is what happens with the surplus value the ~~company~~ workers generate. If it goes to JT, sure, he's a capitalist, but we don't have that kind of information, so I'm not willing to make that judgement (yet).
There is a collective in Brazil called Soberana. They have a lot of presence in online spaces, and they are Marxist-Leninists. They employ no one, they help each other but they each acts as an “independent” propagandist. They don’t need to make a profit as an organisation to survive. The efforts and works of each member, directed in tasks, is what keeps the collective going.
Each individual might or might not try to make a living out of producing propaganda, but it’s not a profit incentive as they are just laborers making money off their work. Their incentive is to survive.
I understand JT was explaining his reasoning, but it falls short of what he espouses. Sure his private company needs to make a profit to survive. This profit is the direct surplus value from the employees’ labor. Before he had a private company with a profit motive, his only incentive was to survive within the system as a worker. He has completely different incentives as a business owner, diametrically opposed even, no? That’s the whole basis of class, his material incentives are now different. Would he sacrifice the business he’s been growing for years because of ideology? Perhaps, but it’s more likely he’d sacrifice ideology for the business instead.
Your example is not that good. Soberana members like Ian Neves and João Carvalho still have video editors and other people that directly work with them, even if Soberana itself don't have that.
We are all living in capitalism, if that type of thing is needed for us to be able to spread class consciousness, then it needs to be done. JT is not hypocritical for doing things this way, it's the unfortunate reality if he wants to continue to be a propagandist.
The people doing that are literal children
I wouldn't put him on a pedestal, he's just some person. His videos are neat and he's seemed like a cool guy from the Q&A he did on Hexbear, but that's about as much as I'd say. I don't think his videos are disqualified because he employs people though.
Never said that. I just think it’s wild people will bend over backwards to justify it instead of criticising it.
Answering your own question, don't put breadtubers on a pedestal.
I don’t 🤷♂️
Figured as much, advice more directed toward anyone who does
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?
Quit being a lib. Those 5 people are providing the living. If he is extracting profits from them then they are exploited. Full stop.
I support secondthought i can also understand why its not perfect. This is the critical support.
Those people are providing a living for themselves, all I'm saying is that working with someone on a project where they're very involved and you're all passionate about it and you don't have to balance that with another full time job is nice.
Until the workers come out and say that they feel that JT is exploiting them or using them this whole relationship seems to be fine compared to the alternative of working for a company that directly seeks to exploit you to the maximum extent.
I'm sure cooperative ownership isn't out of the question for this project, but there isn't really much money in communist propaganda so it's amazing that they're able to support 4 salaries doing it.
But if you're doing the work, its not profit, its pay right?
it's 5 people's work, if JT receives a greater share of the surplus due to being the owner than he would if they were all equal partners then he is exploiting the other workers. It's the relationship of him as the owner and them as the employees that matters here.
Sure. Though I suppose somebody could just ask JT directly the how's and why's. Not as a "gotcha!" but as an explainer on how to set up something like this in a capitalist hellscape.
But should any of this change my opinions about JT or Second Thought or The Deprogram? Its not a big enough sin for me.
Feeling exploited is not the issue… or do you think if every worker had the same conditions of Facebook employees everything would be fine? If that’s the case you are not a communist, but a social democrat.
Also hilarious for a leftist to say an employer is PROVIDING a living to their workers. When all value is produced by the workers. JT is not giving anyone the privilege of a job, he is exploiting the labor of others. That is a technical idea within capitalism, not a moral one. Exploitation is not “evil” is just how capitalism works.
And paying salaries and selling a product are not “capitalism”. It’s the structure of the business, the owners and laborers.
And like I said, if you are born to privilege, giving it up for “the cause” is stupid. It’s better to use the privilege to forward the cause. Like Engels. But striving and fighting to BECOME part of the owner class as a communist is nonsensical, unless being a communist is just a grift for you.
If he has no shareholders and no outside sources of debt funding (loans) to repay, his "business" never needs to make a profit though.
Yes it does. How does it grow? How do you expand operations or upgrade equipment? If you’re breaking even and something breaks, how do you replace it?
Would income be profit if it were used to build the business? I wouldn't say so, necessarily.
Its all relative to time periods.
It is.
Profit is quite literally only the money left over after a business accounts for all expenses. Reinvestment is not seen as an expense, as it can only happen in the business cycle after the money was generated.
It doesn’t really matter what you define it as, profit has two distinct purposes, and the first is for reinvestment into the company that created it. The second is to pay shareholders and generate wealth. The second purpose is what socialism and sane people are opposed too, but you cannot run a profitless firm, it is not possible.
A worker can never receive 100% of the value they generate, as it would not be materially possible even without profit because of taxes. They should receive as much as possible, however a portion must be divided out for investment back into the labour.
That’s why socialism advocates for coops owned by the workers who can make those decisions themselves, and state ownership, as the state is not motivated by greed.
Yes you can. That's the whole point behind the term "break even."
What happens when an emergency occurs? Where does the company get funds to replace vital broken equipment, pay for a worker to take paid sick leave? Or a number of other emergencies?
How does the company expand operations? Where do they get the funds to hire and train additional workers? Open a new branch? Etc?
Do you take on debt? How do you pay off creditors if you’re breaking even? Do you issue bonds? Do you issue bonds? Then how do you pay the premium?
If your company is breaking even, then your company is dead. You are one small emergency from insolvency.
Okay... but that doesn't come from profits. So long as you've got the revenue you can budget for that. Those are just costs of doing business. Unplanned costs can be carried on credit cards or you try to work out a payment plan with whatever you're needing to call on to deal with an emergency.
Why would a company expand operations when they don't have revenue? If you're not making more than "break even" money... why would you need to hire new workers. If you're not planning on expanding.... Businesses don't "have" to grow bigger than what they already are. If you're just wanting to make jelly in your kitchen and sell it to your neighbors, you aren't looking to rent an industrial scale kitchen and hire on a workforce.
The same way a person deals with paying for things on debt. You juggle your cash.
Heres a funny story, my partner has been self employed for about 15 years now, doing small farm stuff. The only people who do the labor are ... us. The farm revenue makes enough to keep the farming going to make enough revenue to keep the farm going. Its a rare year that there is a "profit" by the end of the year. Do you wanna know how we pay for things? I have another job that pays me money, and that money is used to pay for things like the electric bill and the groceries that can't be grown outside and the phone bill, etc etc.
Some people, actually just want to do a thing and be able to make some sort of living off of it, even if its a small one instead of create "business" for the sole purpose of selling the business to the highest bidder. I know right? Its mind blowing.
What does "grow" mean? What if JT doesn't want to become a multimedia empire? What if he's fine with his small crew, doing the few YT channels and podcasts that he's already doing?
Profit is just the leftovers, Revenue - Costs. But its relative to a time period.
You can have negative profit in a week during a month, break even during a different week during the same month and have a profit by the end of the month but still have negative profit once you start adding in the costs of the next month.
So unless you're waiting until the end of a set fiscal period to do your business purchasing, its going to wind up being a cost of doing business.
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?