Yeah, Russell is the quintessential British liberal, hence the disdain for the working class in all his work. But he does get at the irrationality of capitalism here where the goal is simply to maximize profit with no regard for anything else. I also very much agree with your point that overwork turns people into zombies.
My view is that required work should be minimized as much as possible, and people should have the ability to choose how they spend their time.
Also agree that’s precisely how religion is being used right now, hopefully that fails.
Yeah, Russell is the quintessential British liberal, hence the disdain for the working class in all his work.
Yes, exactly, his article is steeped in contempt for work.
So much so that he considers writers and artists slackers—that sounds ridiculous to me.
Example: Jules Verne worked very intensively. His workday lasted up to 15 hours. The writer strictly adhered to the following schedule:
Start: early morning, from 4:00 AM to 5:00 AM.
Finish: late evening (around 8:00 PM). Daily output: he wrote 10 to 20 printed pages daily, which allowed him to publish several seminal novels a year.
How can you call this man a slacker, and where would he find the time to work for four hours, only to then… in his “free time” pursue creativity?
And what mark did this man leave on history?
But he does get at the irrationality of capitalism here where the goal is simply to maximize profit with no regard for anything else.
Yes, I liked his logic, at some point I even got carried away reading it.
I also very much agree with your point that overwork turns people into zombies.
I saw this with my own eyes in Moscow. People on the metro are empty-eyed, detached, and always in a hurry. Such are the conditions for survival there.
My view is that required work should be minimized as much as possible, and people should have the ability to choose how they spend their time.
I’m not sure about the 4-hour period. I doubt unemployment in more or less developed countries is 50%… it’s probably not even like that in Africa.
But 6-8 hours, depending on the complexity of the job, would be normal.
My expectation is that most people would be productive even if they didn’t have to work. People like making things, it’s in our nature. Imagine a society where you had minimal work, but you had things like community workshops, and places where you can get together with people to build whatever you want. Like even public access to labs, factories and so on. I think we’d see incredible things getting made because people would get ideas, find like minded people and work on projects together just because they find them interesting. We actually see this happen with software and the whole open source movement already. Plenty of people write large software projects just because they find it interesting, they don’t make any money off them, and the goal is purely to make something interesting. The reason it works for software is because anybody with a laptop can do it, but I think it would work exactly the same for building physical things if tools were readily available.
My expectation is that most people would be productive even if they didn’t have to work. People like making things, it’s in our nature. Imagine a society where you had minimal work, but you had things like community workshops, and places where you can get together with people to build whatever you want.
This can only be possible when AI is channeled in the right direction. AI should free people from work, not so they become unemployed, as would happen under capitalism, but so they have more time for creativity.
I think more attention should be paid to childhood education, so that children can be instilled with a passion for something sublime from an early age. How can you instill anything in a child today if all they see is profit?
The education system needs to be completely overhauled—that’s where we need to start.
By the way, Stalin personally edited the first Soviet history textbook for schoolchildren. He also placed great emphasis on educating young people.
As that liberal philosopher who fears work said, it won’t work! First education, then a creature—not the other way around. And studying is hard work, so you can’t just slack off and become Lomonosov. We need an educational foundation for that. Therefore, from early childhood, children must work; they must become accustomed to work in order to achieve real results in the future. They also need an incentive to do so, and it’s best if it’s not money, but high ideals, as was the case in the USSR, the most educated and well-read country in the world. I’ve already experienced this firsthand: the horizons of a Westerner are much narrower than those of someone raised in the USSR. In the USSR, creative people were trained from school, while in the West, they produce narrow specialists who don’t need anything beyond their specialty. They don’t need critical thinking, for whom life is a chain of simple algorithms.
Plenty of people write large software projects just because they find it interesting, they don’t make any money off them, and the goal is purely to make something interesting.
I understand everything here because I experienced it myself, with my son.
The attraction to computer programs lies in the fact that a child, as soon as they begin to understand, immediately becomes passionately fascinated with computers. There comes a time when the child gets bored with computer games and wants to get something more from the computer, but the computer still fascinates them as much as ever. If your father is a millionaire, at this point you can turn into Bill Gates or Elon Musk.
The reason it works for software is because anybody with a laptop can do it, but I think it would work exactly the same for building physical things if tools were readily available.
But I would slightly modify your concept of the new world. It’s not about people having free access to production facilities or laboratories, but about computer simulators of various processes in schools.
Every form of automation is turned against the worker under capitalism. AI will be no different here, and it might accelerate the collapse of the whole system.
And agree that education needs to change significantly at this point. A lot of education focuses on rote memorization, but what’s really important now is the ability to integrate the available information, evaluate it, and make decisions. Basically, applying dialectical thinking to the world. Also very much agree that USSR education was far better and broader. Becoming an intellectual was basically seen as the way to move up in society. In the west it’s just about making money which creates a very narrow and selfish horizon for people.
Teaching kids to experiment using computers in school is actually a really good idea. Once they develop the mindset it’s applicable everywhere, and easily transfers to working with the physical world too.
I do think we’ll need to restructure society in significant ways in the near future because technology is outpacing our existing social norms. Unfortunately these kinds of upheavals tend to be highly volatile socially.
Every form of automation is turned against the worker under capitalism.
Comrade, you know a thing or two about economics—please take a look at this video; it’s short. At the end, there are formulas he uses to prove the opposite.
That’s Comrade Semin; Semin promoted him on YouTube. He’s a socialist, too.
It’s really gratifying to see young people in Russia starting to think so progressively. And most importantly, they base their arguments on science rather than Solzhenitsyn’s tall tales or fairy tales about God.
I’m convinced that the politics of common sense and science—which Musk championed before—for some reason—going quiet—will sooner or later prevail over the politics of obscurantism or “popcorn and Coke,” both in Russia and the US.
I listened to Semin recently; he attended an international communist congress in Britain a few years back. He represented the Russian Communist Party there (not the CPRF).
And the main thing is—honestly, Comrade—he used the exact same words I’ve been using for a long time. Their concept of socialism is somewhat abstract; every speaker at the forum said something different—there’s no unified concept, no single clear idea; it’s all very unrefined.
But on the other hand, progressive youth there—not just those with socialist views—are starting to realize that capitalism has outlived its usefulness, that it’s a hollow sham. So, they’re beginning to look for an alternative. Meanwhile, in Russia, the so-called progressive youth are only just starting to soak up the joys of capitalist life, because they didn’t get a chance to enjoy it for 40 years… ))) There’s a lag and some gaps here, too.
It turns out there’s a Marx Library in London; I didn’t know that… ))))
“Marx remains relevant as long as capitalism exists.”
And agree that education needs to change significantly at this point. A lot of education focuses on rote memorization, but what’s really important now is the ability to integrate the available information, evaluate it, and make decisions. Basically, applying dialectical thinking to the world. Also very much agree that USSR education was far better and broader. Becoming an intellectual was basically seen as the way to move up in society. In the west it’s just about making money which creates a very narrow and selfish horizon for people.
A quick side note: In the USSR, children were made to grow up early and shed their illusions, not the other way around.
As for Hollywood movies—if you strip away the sex, violence, and drugs, the vast majority of them are essentially children’s films.
When I got to know American culture better, I was really surprised to learn that adults read comic books… In the USSR, the closest thing to comics was produced only for children who were just learning to read (before starting school). Personally, I was already reading Pushkin and had memorized several poems before I even started school—though I read comics, too.
Comic books, for crying out loud… )))) At age seven, I read H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. I remember staying up all night in fear after reading The Time Machine.
And I’d borrowed the book from a classmate—a friend who had highly recommended it to me…
But why am I telling you this, Comrade? You were just like that yourself once… )))) You saw it all firsthand!
Teaching kids to experiment using computers in school is actually a really good idea. Once they develop the mindset it’s applicable everywhere, and easily transfers to working with the physical world too.
I’ll join Marx and add this: as long as capitalism exists, education will be crap! Because they aren’t raising intellectuals—they’re raising docile workers for their factories. Intellectuals don’t serve their interests; intellectuals think too much and notice too much… and then they say things that are highly inconvenient for the powers that be…
I do think we’ll need to restructure society in significant ways
This is basically what Marx explains in the first volume of The Capital. It’s good to see young people still read Marx in Russia. :)
And he’s right that full automation is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism because the whole system is based around consumption. You need wage workers who produce value, and then pay the capital owner to consume goods. If you eliminate wage workers from the system there’s nobody left to consume the goods. And once you have the majority of population become useless within the system it can no longer function.
But on the other hand, progressive youth there—not just those with socialist views—are starting to realize that capitalism has outlived its usefulness, that it’s a hollow sham
Basically what happened was that the US sat out the second world war and developed its economy while the rest of the world burned. Then they used their head start to prop up their ideological bloc during the Cold War and created the whole mythology that capitalism was a superior system and the standard of living in the west wasn’t because the US had a huge head start, but because capitalism is a superior system. Now that China has caught up and capitalism has destroyed all the material benefits western public enjoyed, we’re seeing the new generation sobering up.
And I’m still shocked how nobody actually reads books here. It is absolutely incomprehensible to me. Just like you, I was reading from the young age, cause there really wasn’t much other type of entertainment. And reading really opened up your imagination, I’m incredibly grateful for growing up in USSR and having developed this habit. Reading a good book is still by far the most enjoyable experience for me.
It’s good to see young people still read Marx in Russia. :)
In Russia, Marx is inseparable from Lenin.
By the way, listen to the story of how Russian officials, together with their Chinese counterparts, are selling a massive Soviet factory to China for scrap metal. It’s a disgrace!
When Platoshkin exposed this criminal scheme, a local official simply blew up the factory to cover his tracks…
And he’s right that full automation is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism because the whole system is based around consumption. You need wage workers who produce value, and then pay the capital owner to consume goods. If you eliminate wage workers from the system there’s nobody left to consume the goods. And once you have the majority of population become useless within the system it can no longer function.
And once again, capitalism is doing harm—this time, to the advancement of progress.
Basically what happened was that the US sat out the second world war and developed its economy while the rest of the world burned. Then they used their head start to prop up their ideological bloc during the Cold War and created the whole mythology that capitalism was a superior system and the standard of living in the west wasn’t because the US had a huge head start, but because capitalism is a superior system. Now that China has caught up and capitalism has destroyed all the material benefits western public enjoyed, we’re seeing the new generation sobering up.
As I understand it, during the Iron Curtain era, the only information that reached us from the other side was propaganda. And as I’ve come to realize decades later: Soviet propaganda told 90% the truth about the West, whereas Western propaganda told 90% lies about the USSR.
That is why people in the West are only now beginning to understand what socialism actually is—now that advanced Western capitalism has gone into a tailspin. I remember when I first joined Western forums back in 2015; people’s jaws would drop at the stories I told. At first, they didn’t believe me—they thought I was making it all up! I became very popular very quickly on that first Western forum.
cause there really wasn’t much other type of entertainment.
Comrade, those are just Western tall tales… )))) Деревянные игрушки, скользкий подоконник, каляска без дна)))
I was never a homebody as a child. There was a sports ground in every courtyard; we played soccer there every day—it was impossible to get me to come home. In the winter, they’d flood the area to make an ice rink, and we’d play hockey. When my parents bought me a computer—a ZX Spectrum—I went wild and started skipping school, but even so, there was always a book on my nightstand; I read every day before bed.
Yeah, that’s the ironic part, it turns out that Soviets didn’t really have to make stuff up about the west while the west had to spin tall tales about evils of communism. I do think that it was a failure of Soviet education system that it failed to make people really understand the problem with capitalism. I remember when I was a kid at school, there was no discussion about it, nobody really gave it any thought. But you look in the west, and indoctrination starts very early on. Not just in schools too, it’s in TV shows, comic books, everything. And we see now just how effective this type of indoctrination is.
And yeah, that’s fair, I meant specifically in terms of media entertainment. I did spend a lot of time outside with my friends as a kid. This is, incidentally, another thing you can’t do in the west. My parents would just let me go out by myself when I was 8 years old without a single worry. I’d go out in the morning, come back lunch, and hang out with friends the rest of the day. That’s how safe things were. That sort of thing would be unthinkable in Canada today.
That American professor said that lately, a great many supporters of socialism have been emerging—among young people in the US and elsewhere. But this isn’t because they are committed socialists; rather, they are protesting against capitalism, and since there is no alternative to socialism, and people want change…
Yeah, Russell is the quintessential British liberal, hence the disdain for the working class in all his work. But he does get at the irrationality of capitalism here where the goal is simply to maximize profit with no regard for anything else. I also very much agree with your point that overwork turns people into zombies.
My view is that required work should be minimized as much as possible, and people should have the ability to choose how they spend their time.
Also agree that’s precisely how religion is being used right now, hopefully that fails.
Yes, exactly, his article is steeped in contempt for work.
So much so that he considers writers and artists slackers—that sounds ridiculous to me.
Example: Jules Verne worked very intensively. His workday lasted up to 15 hours. The writer strictly adhered to the following schedule:
Start: early morning, from 4:00 AM to 5:00 AM.
Finish: late evening (around 8:00 PM). Daily output: he wrote 10 to 20 printed pages daily, which allowed him to publish several seminal novels a year.
How can you call this man a slacker, and where would he find the time to work for four hours, only to then… in his “free time” pursue creativity?
And what mark did this man leave on history?
Yes, I liked his logic, at some point I even got carried away reading it.
I saw this with my own eyes in Moscow. People on the metro are empty-eyed, detached, and always in a hurry. Such are the conditions for survival there.
I’m not sure about the 4-hour period. I doubt unemployment in more or less developed countries is 50%… it’s probably not even like that in Africa.
But 6-8 hours, depending on the complexity of the job, would be normal.
My expectation is that most people would be productive even if they didn’t have to work. People like making things, it’s in our nature. Imagine a society where you had minimal work, but you had things like community workshops, and places where you can get together with people to build whatever you want. Like even public access to labs, factories and so on. I think we’d see incredible things getting made because people would get ideas, find like minded people and work on projects together just because they find them interesting. We actually see this happen with software and the whole open source movement already. Plenty of people write large software projects just because they find it interesting, they don’t make any money off them, and the goal is purely to make something interesting. The reason it works for software is because anybody with a laptop can do it, but I think it would work exactly the same for building physical things if tools were readily available.
This can only be possible when AI is channeled in the right direction. AI should free people from work, not so they become unemployed, as would happen under capitalism, but so they have more time for creativity.
I think more attention should be paid to childhood education, so that children can be instilled with a passion for something sublime from an early age. How can you instill anything in a child today if all they see is profit?
The education system needs to be completely overhauled—that’s where we need to start.
By the way, Stalin personally edited the first Soviet history textbook for schoolchildren. He also placed great emphasis on educating young people.
As that liberal philosopher who fears work said, it won’t work! First education, then a creature—not the other way around. And studying is hard work, so you can’t just slack off and become Lomonosov. We need an educational foundation for that. Therefore, from early childhood, children must work; they must become accustomed to work in order to achieve real results in the future. They also need an incentive to do so, and it’s best if it’s not money, but high ideals, as was the case in the USSR, the most educated and well-read country in the world. I’ve already experienced this firsthand: the horizons of a Westerner are much narrower than those of someone raised in the USSR. In the USSR, creative people were trained from school, while in the West, they produce narrow specialists who don’t need anything beyond their specialty. They don’t need critical thinking, for whom life is a chain of simple algorithms.
I understand everything here because I experienced it myself, with my son.
The attraction to computer programs lies in the fact that a child, as soon as they begin to understand, immediately becomes passionately fascinated with computers. There comes a time when the child gets bored with computer games and wants to get something more from the computer, but the computer still fascinates them as much as ever. If your father is a millionaire, at this point you can turn into Bill Gates or Elon Musk.
But I would slightly modify your concept of the new world. It’s not about people having free access to production facilities or laboratories, but about computer simulators of various processes in schools.
A cultural revolution in society is needed.
Every form of automation is turned against the worker under capitalism. AI will be no different here, and it might accelerate the collapse of the whole system.
And agree that education needs to change significantly at this point. A lot of education focuses on rote memorization, but what’s really important now is the ability to integrate the available information, evaluate it, and make decisions. Basically, applying dialectical thinking to the world. Also very much agree that USSR education was far better and broader. Becoming an intellectual was basically seen as the way to move up in society. In the west it’s just about making money which creates a very narrow and selfish horizon for people.
Teaching kids to experiment using computers in school is actually a really good idea. Once they develop the mindset it’s applicable everywhere, and easily transfers to working with the physical world too.
I do think we’ll need to restructure society in significant ways in the near future because technology is outpacing our existing social norms. Unfortunately these kinds of upheavals tend to be highly volatile socially.
Comrade, you know a thing or two about economics—please take a look at this video; it’s short. At the end, there are formulas he uses to prove the opposite.
Do you agree with this?
https://youtu.be/LfRdDwgky0A
That’s Comrade Semin; Semin promoted him on YouTube. He’s a socialist, too.
It’s really gratifying to see young people in Russia starting to think so progressively. And most importantly, they base their arguments on science rather than Solzhenitsyn’s tall tales or fairy tales about God.
I’m convinced that the politics of common sense and science—which Musk championed before—for some reason—going quiet—will sooner or later prevail over the politics of obscurantism or “popcorn and Coke,” both in Russia and the US.
I listened to Semin recently; he attended an international communist congress in Britain a few years back. He represented the Russian Communist Party there (not the CPRF).
And the main thing is—honestly, Comrade—he used the exact same words I’ve been using for a long time. Their concept of socialism is somewhat abstract; every speaker at the forum said something different—there’s no unified concept, no single clear idea; it’s all very unrefined.
But on the other hand, progressive youth there—not just those with socialist views—are starting to realize that capitalism has outlived its usefulness, that it’s a hollow sham. So, they’re beginning to look for an alternative. Meanwhile, in Russia, the so-called progressive youth are only just starting to soak up the joys of capitalist life, because they didn’t get a chance to enjoy it for 40 years… ))) There’s a lag and some gaps here, too.
It turns out there’s a Marx Library in London; I didn’t know that… ))))
“Marx remains relevant as long as capitalism exists.”
https://youtu.be/am-D1MtZ7Xg
A quick side note: In the USSR, children were made to grow up early and shed their illusions, not the other way around.
As for Hollywood movies—if you strip away the sex, violence, and drugs, the vast majority of them are essentially children’s films.
When I got to know American culture better, I was really surprised to learn that adults read comic books… In the USSR, the closest thing to comics was produced only for children who were just learning to read (before starting school). Personally, I was already reading Pushkin and had memorized several poems before I even started school—though I read comics, too.
Comic books, for crying out loud… )))) At age seven, I read H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. I remember staying up all night in fear after reading The Time Machine.
And I’d borrowed the book from a classmate—a friend who had highly recommended it to me…
But why am I telling you this, Comrade? You were just like that yourself once… )))) You saw it all firsthand!
I’ll join Marx and add this: as long as capitalism exists, education will be crap! Because they aren’t raising intellectuals—they’re raising docile workers for their factories. Intellectuals don’t serve their interests; intellectuals think too much and notice too much… and then they say things that are highly inconvenient for the powers that be…
I’m afraid restructuring won’t be enough.
This is basically what Marx explains in the first volume of The Capital. It’s good to see young people still read Marx in Russia. :)
And he’s right that full automation is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism because the whole system is based around consumption. You need wage workers who produce value, and then pay the capital owner to consume goods. If you eliminate wage workers from the system there’s nobody left to consume the goods. And once you have the majority of population become useless within the system it can no longer function.
Basically what happened was that the US sat out the second world war and developed its economy while the rest of the world burned. Then they used their head start to prop up their ideological bloc during the Cold War and created the whole mythology that capitalism was a superior system and the standard of living in the west wasn’t because the US had a huge head start, but because capitalism is a superior system. Now that China has caught up and capitalism has destroyed all the material benefits western public enjoyed, we’re seeing the new generation sobering up.
And I’m still shocked how nobody actually reads books here. It is absolutely incomprehensible to me. Just like you, I was reading from the young age, cause there really wasn’t much other type of entertainment. And reading really opened up your imagination, I’m incredibly grateful for growing up in USSR and having developed this habit. Reading a good book is still by far the most enjoyable experience for me.
incidentally https://english.www.gov.cn/policies/latestreleases/202512/17/content_WS6941fa8bc6d00ca5f9a08243.html
In Russia, Marx is inseparable from Lenin.
By the way, listen to the story of how Russian officials, together with their Chinese counterparts, are selling a massive Soviet factory to China for scrap metal. It’s a disgrace!
When Platoshkin exposed this criminal scheme, a local official simply blew up the factory to cover his tracks…
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qsA-IegBgcg
And once again, capitalism is doing harm—this time, to the advancement of progress.
As I understand it, during the Iron Curtain era, the only information that reached us from the other side was propaganda. And as I’ve come to realize decades later: Soviet propaganda told 90% the truth about the West, whereas Western propaganda told 90% lies about the USSR.
That is why people in the West are only now beginning to understand what socialism actually is—now that advanced Western capitalism has gone into a tailspin. I remember when I first joined Western forums back in 2015; people’s jaws would drop at the stories I told. At first, they didn’t believe me—they thought I was making it all up! I became very popular very quickly on that first Western forum.
Comrade, those are just Western tall tales… )))) Деревянные игрушки, скользкий подоконник, каляска без дна))) I was never a homebody as a child. There was a sports ground in every courtyard; we played soccer there every day—it was impossible to get me to come home. In the winter, they’d flood the area to make an ice rink, and we’d play hockey. When my parents bought me a computer—a ZX Spectrum—I went wild and started skipping school, but even so, there was always a book on my nightstand; I read every day before bed.
Yeah, that’s the ironic part, it turns out that Soviets didn’t really have to make stuff up about the west while the west had to spin tall tales about evils of communism. I do think that it was a failure of Soviet education system that it failed to make people really understand the problem with capitalism. I remember when I was a kid at school, there was no discussion about it, nobody really gave it any thought. But you look in the west, and indoctrination starts very early on. Not just in schools too, it’s in TV shows, comic books, everything. And we see now just how effective this type of indoctrination is.
And yeah, that’s fair, I meant specifically in terms of media entertainment. I did spend a lot of time outside with my friends as a kid. This is, incidentally, another thing you can’t do in the west. My parents would just let me go out by myself when I was 8 years old without a single worry. I’d go out in the morning, come back lunch, and hang out with friends the rest of the day. That’s how safe things were. That sort of thing would be unthinkable in Canada today.
That American professor said that lately, a great many supporters of socialism have been emerging—among young people in the US and elsewhere. But this isn’t because they are committed socialists; rather, they are protesting against capitalism, and since there is no alternative to socialism, and people want change…
It’s a result of changing material conditions. People see they have no future within the system.
https://youtu.be/jnaI-UzWVs4