Game Theory #8: Communist Specter

Today we discuss communism, Marxism. We will discuss what it is, where it came from and why it succeeded. Now the 20th century had the Cold War, and that was an ideological struggle between capitalism and communism. And for the longest time we believed that capitalism and communism were polar opposites, a dialectic, okay, black and white.

But if that is the case, then how do we Because for the longest time, China was a communist country and then in the 1980s it started to reform and now China is very much a capitalist country. In fact, if you think about it, this transition has been seamless. There hasn't been much conflict because of this transition. And this is not true historically, where transitions have been very violent. Okay? So, think of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Okay. That was a very violent process. Think of the process from Catholic Europe into Protestant Europe.

That was also a very violent process. But in China, communism transitioned into capitalism pretty easily, pretty quickly and extremely successfully. Okay? And in fact you could say that today China is very much a capitalist country with some communist elements but it's very much capitalistic. So the question then is, if these two ideologies, capitalism and communism, are such polar opposites, if it's a dialectic, then how did this happen in China? And what I want to show you today is that actually this is a false dialectic, okay, meaning that communism and capitalism are actually more similar than they are different. In fact, what I will show you is that in many ways communism is a creation of capitalism as a weapon to destroy capitalism's major enemies.

Okay, so communism is not really the enemy of capitalism. The real enemies of capitalism are different ideologies. Okay, so these ideologies include The idea of monarchy is that rather than power in the hands of a capitalist, power is in the hands of the king. Okay? And what a king often does is capital in a way that is more fair. So for example, when a king first comes into power, what a king often does is cancel all debts and redistribute the land. And that's why he's so popular. Okay? So capitalists are afraid of kings.

They don't want kings because a king will often redistribute property. Another great enemy of capitalism is religion or theocracy. Okay. The idea here is that all religions teach you that money is evil.

God doesn't want you to make money. God wants you to be kind to others, to love your children, to be a nice person. Okay? So that's why in Catholic Europe, they were so poor, because people were more focused on redemption and salvation than they were on making money. Okay? So theocracy is also a major enemy of capitalism. Then you also have Nationalism is the idea of loyalty to your people, loyalty to your nation. For capitalism, that's a problem. Okay? Because capitalism wants to be loyal to capital and it wants capital to flow across borders.

So I see an investment opportunity in China. I want to take my money from America and put it into China. I don't want to worry about, oh, China's my enemy. China is not my people. Okay. So nationalism is also a major problem. And then you also have another problem, okay, called democracy. So believe it or not, capitalists hate Why do they hate democracy? Because if you think about it, if people had power, if the workers had power, they would all get together and vote to redistribute wealth, right? To make the rich pay more taxes.

We call this socialism. Okay? So, if you think about it, the enemy of capitalism is not communism. It's these four other things. If you actually think about it. Okay?

Is working with capitalism to destroy all four of these things, right? So let's look at this. Monarchy. Okay, communism does not allow for monarchs to arise. It allows for a party to arise, right? What is a party? A party is an oligarchy.

All right, which is a capitalist system. Now theocracy. What does Marx say? Marx says that religion is the opiate of the people. Religion is the great evil of the world. Religion creates false consciousness. Therefore we must destroy all religion. Right? And if religion is destroyed, what is left? The only thing that is left is money. Okay. Now nationalism. Communism is international. Right? Workers of the world unite. So nationalism is also bad. We want to unite as a world. All workers unite. Class consciousness is more important than national identity.

Right? Now democracy. No, no, no. This is bad too. Right? Because workers cannot defend their rights. Workers have false consciousness. Workers have been brainwashed by the capitalists in school, in the media, by the internet, by Hollywood. Okay? Therefore, a vanguard, the party, must lead the people into socialism.

So this is really convenient, how capitalism and communism have similar enemies and communism helps destroy all four enemies in a way that capitalism So you could also make the argument that maybe communism was a weapon or a virus created by capitalism in order to conquer the world, in order to destroy the world so that capitalism can spread throughout the world. And China is an example of this, right? Think about the Cultural Revolution that destroyed religion, that destroyed tradition, that destroyed cultural identity. And what happened after the Cultural Revolution?

China became capitalist and it became hyper-capitalistic. China had the fastest growth rate, economic growth rate, in the world. How did that happen? Okay. So, I'm not saying this is true. I'm saying this is something for us to think about. All right. So let us now think about this, and again this is all just speculation on my part, okay, I don't really know. I'm saying, you know, why is this happening? Why is this the correlation, right? All right. So an example is Karl Marx, of course the founder of communism, and the history of Karl Marx is really, really strange. So for example he is a German citizen but he spent all his time in Britain.

He was exiled from Germany because he advocated for world revolution. So he went to Britain. But Britain is also a capitalistic country. So why is it that he's allowed to do whatever he wants in Britain? He wrote most of his works in a British library, in the British Museum. So why did the British authorities allow him to do that? That's a question for us, right? Britain is the most capitalist country in the world at this time, the 19th century. And Britain basically allowed Marx to live there and do whatever he wanted.

Okay, that's strange. Number two is Karl Marx. Where did he get his money from? Okay, so Karl Marx, actually his wife is a German aristocrat. So she's used to luxury. But Karl Marx never made any money in his life, right? If he writes these works, the Communist Manifesto, Capital, no one's going to read them. They don't sell, right? So he's not a wealthy person, but we know for a fact that he actually lived a very good life. Okay? He wasn't an aristocrat. He wasn't wealthy, but he was middle class.

His kids went to private school. They had a nice house in So the question is, where did he get his money from? Well, what they say is he got his money from his partner Friedrich Engels. And where did Friedrich Engels get his money from? Well, his father was a capitalist, an industrialist. So here's a question for you. Why would his father, who is a very wealthy person, give Engels a lot of money to give to Marx, and Marx is calling for a world revolution to destroy the capitalists? Why would they do that?

Okay, that's kind of strange. The third thing is that at this time socialism was the most dominant ideology for many reasons. Okay. And the idea of socialism is that it will evolve naturally. Okay. But Marx says no, no, no, we cannot allow it to evolve naturally. It will not evolve naturally. We need a revolution.

We need a world revolution. Right? So that's a question for us. Why would he say this? Okay. So let's look at what socialism is and then let's look at what communism is. Okay, let's look at socialism. All right, the idea of socialism is pretty simple. All right, so before, you had feudal and then it became industrial. Because it becomes industrial, you have lots and lots of workers, okay? And you have capitalists.

The problem though is that capitalism exploits labor. It makes people very unhappy. Okay? So the workers want change. Then you have the industrialists, the capitalists. The problem is that it consolidates. Okay? So maybe you have a thousand capitalists to start, but then maybe 10 will take over all the money. Okay? All the means of production, the factories. Then maybe one, okay? Because that's how capitalism works. It consolidates, which means that eventually the capitalist will turn against capitalism as well. Okay? And because people can vote, they can then together affect political change and this will lead to socialism.

What is socialism? Socialism is just a redistribution of wealth. Okay, a redistribution of wealth. Now for the sake of simplicity, say there are three classes. Okay, you have the rich, you have the middle class and you have the poor.

Right? So all redistribution is doing is taking the money from the rich and giving it to the poor. You understand? But because of this, what happens is the middle class improves in status and power. Okay? So if you look at the system, you would think, okay, look, the poor want this system because they have more money, they have more equality, but also the people who really want the system are the middle class because it means that over time they have more power and status than the rich, right? And this is a pretty powerful coalition.

That's why socialists believe that over time this is just a natural evolution. And this is true for most of human history. Right? So after World War II, Europe didn't become communist. It didn't become capitalist. It became socialist. It had a very strong welfare system. Okay? So just the natural course of human history, socialism will become inevitable. Okay? Does that make sense to you guys? Okay? Because this is a majority of people. But Marx had problems with this. Okay, Marx says, "Okay, all right. The major problem with this is class, sorry, false Okay, you think that this is a natural process, but capitalists, the ruling elite, have a lot of tricks up their sleeves." Okay, for example, they can brainwash the workers, right?

So for this to work out, you need to create true consciousness. So you need to destroy religion. You need to revamp the education system. You need to control the media. Okay? Otherwise, the capitalists will use the schools, the media, religion to brainwash the workers. And also these workers need to unite together across the world to have true power. Okay? Why? Because the real is one of class. Okay? Consciousness.

And for socialism to arise, we need to destroy class. Okay? So the idea of the middle class obtaining power, that's bad. What we should have is just everyone the same. Okay. Equality.

And that's the idea of Marxism: to destroy all property. Okay. That's the main difference between socialism and communism. Socialism is the redistribution of property. Communism is the destruction of property. But if you do it this way, what happens is that the middle class now loses status, right? And so it's both the rich and middle class that suffer under communism and therefore they will probably unite together against the poor. You understand? So it sounds similar, socialism and communism, but it's night and day. Socialism seems like the natural evolution of things.

And so it sounds right. So why is Marx screwing around with this? Okay. He also says that, okay, you also need a party. You also need a vanguard, an elite, to destroy the false consciousness, unite the workers and create a communist society. And when they do that, when the system is completely communist, then the party will give up power and you will have a socialist paradise. But then the question is, why would the party give up power? Right? So if the party is capable of creating consciousness, why don't they just switch to a different false Okay.

So the problem with Marx is that he's working on socialism and making it more extreme. It's also making it more And why would he do that? Okay, it's very confusing now. All right. And my argument to you is that when this happens, when an idea becomes more extreme, the intention is to discredit it, to make it illegitimate, to destroy the idea. All right? So if you think about it, according to game theory, the people responsible for communism are not Marx. The people responsible for communism are the capitalists, the ruling elite, because they want to destroy the idea of socialism, right?

They don't want this unity between the middle class and the workers. They want the middle class to remain with the nobility and the oligarchy. Okay? Does that make sense? All right. So, let me show how this works. All right? So in the feudal economy you have the monarch and the nobility. Okay.

And the monarch and nobility have power through three mechanisms. First of all they control the land, they control the military and they control the religion. Okay. So this is the status quo. And then the peasants are the people who work the land. And this was true for most of Catholic Europe. But then with the rise of industrialism, you have new people come into power. Okay? So for example, you have the bourgeoisie.

Who are the bourgeoisie? The bourgeoisie are just the capitalists, the factory owners. Okay? And because of the bourgeoisie, you now have the workers. And then because of this industrial economy, you have the middle class. Okay, the middle class are just lawyers, teachers, journalists, people who support the industrial economy. All right? Now, when this happens, when you have new groups of people emerge, you now have tension, you have violence. Okay? And this is ultimately what led to the French Revolution, where the new order, okay, these people worked together to try to overthrow the old order, and this led to the Napoleonic Wars.

Seven wars fought between France and everyone else. Okay. And that led to the deaths of millions, tens of millions of people in Europe. It was a deadly war. And after Napoleon was defeated, all the leaders, the nobility of Europe, got together and decided that from now on we will no longer fight wars. Okay? They create something called the Concert of Europe.

The Concert of Europe is basically these different monarchies agreeing to resolve their differences through negotiations rather than on the battlefield. So think of it as a United Nations. Okay? And it worked really, really well. The problem is that it worked too well because you're not resolving this problem. Okay? You're not resolving this conflict between the new order and the old order. These people want to maintain the status quo, but these people, the industrial economy, want a new order that allows for democracy. Okay. Liberalism.

Okay. Socialism. Okay. So, more redistribution of wealth, greater participation in the political system and the limitation of religion. Okay. So basically the French Revolution. So right now, this system was created to avoid the French Revolution but because of peace the ingredients for the French Revolution are increasing. Okay. And this led to something called the 1848 revolutions. And this happened throughout the entirety of Europe, where in each place there was an uprising, a combination of these people, the bourgeoisie, the middle class and workers, who called for changes in government.

Okay. Some places were violent, some places were peaceful. Some places focused more on democracy. Some places focused more on liberalism. Some places focused more on socialism. Okay. All right. So, does that make sense? After 1848, what the leaders of Europe recognized is that, you know what? If you don't do anything about this situation, eventually the new order is going to consume us. The new order of the bourgeoisie, middle class and workers. This alliance is going to destroy us. So, what can we do about it? Their solution is we have to divide them.

Okay, we have to divide them. So before, the conflicts were about status, religion. Okay. So the first idea is, let's create the idea that the real conflict is class. Okay. So the real enemy is not between the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Okay. The real enemy is between the bourgeoisie and the workers. Okay. This is the real conflict. Right. Second is that we have to discredit these people and make this movement seem extreme, fanatical, zealous. Okay? And you do that by saying, "Okay, no property." What we want is not a warfare society.

What we want is a completely equal society where no one has any money. No one has any rights. No one has any freedom. Communism. Okay. And the third way you delegitimize it is to say that this is an international Hey guys, Jews. These communists are a secret society who want to take over the entire world. So it's not that, oh, these workers just want more rights. No, no, no. These workers are tools in an actual conspiracy to conquer the entire world. They are funded by Jews, by capitalists, by the British. Who cares?

Okay? But they're not Germans. They're not French. They're not us. Do you understand? So you think about it. Communism was a scop, a tool used by the elite to make the movement of democracy, socialism, and liberalism illegitimate. Okay, this is propaganda. Okay, does that make sense, guys? All right, so let's look at the evidence for All right. So this is the 1848 revolutions. So what happened was that because of peace you have overpopulation, you have economic growth. Okay. That led to inequality, that led to corruption. That led to conflict between the bourgeoisie, the new rising powers, and the nobility, the status quo powers.

Okay? And that's why you have these revolutions throughout Europe. Okay? So look at France. Okay? This is a French you look at all these places, this is happening all at the same time, okay, everywhere, and again different systems will respond differently. The only place in Europe that basically spared these revolutions is England, and the reason why is that England has colonies where if you're not happy you can go somewhere else like Canada or the United States or Australia, New Zealand, okay, you can leave, but everyone else is stuck where they are and they are fighting for more rights, and again this puts the fear of God into the European nobility.

Okay, for the longest time they got along, they maintained peace, but now the bourgeoisie, the industrialists, the capitalists want to overthrow the regime. Okay. So what they do now is they sponsor the creation of communism to divide the capitalists, the middle class and the workers against each other. Okay. To create the idea of class conflict.

Okay. So, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. All right. They write something called the Communist Manifesto. And this comes after the 1848 revolutions because after the 1848 revolutions they are absolutely convinced that Europe is ready for a global revolution. Okay. And this is their agenda and this is also a secret document because at this time the communists are secret societies all around Europe. Okay. And I would argue that this was probably being funded by the nobility. Okay. So it calls for the abolition of property. All right.

No more property. That's pretty extreme. Because again remember the middle class wants to support socialism but it cannot support communism. Socialism is just a redistribution of wealth. Communism is the abolition of wealth. Two different things. All right.

The abolition of inheritance. Okay. Again, you're middle class. You're like, I worked really hard to make this money. I want to give it to my children. Now I can't anymore. Okay. This is pretty awful. All right. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state.

By means of a national bank. Okay. And you think, okay, this sounds pretty extreme, but you know what? They already do this in capitalism. It's called the Bank of England, right?

So there are already a lot of similarities between capitalism and communism. Remember the Bank of England is where all wealth from around the world is stored, right? So a centralized bank in a communist system, it's the same thing, right? Centralization of the means of communication, right? A party. Well, this is just the capitalist class, an oligarchy, like does it really matter?

If it's an oligarchy or a party, it's the same thing really, right? Extension of factories, instruments of production owned by the state. Equal liability of all to work, combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries. All right? So this is the idea of creating a proletariat.

All right? Or manufacturing. And this capitalists want guys. Okay? So at this time most of the world is agricultural, feudal, and this calls for the creation of a manufacturing, industrial economy. That's what capitalists want, right? Because that way they can better exploit people.

Free education for all children. And you're like, "Oh, well that's great, man. Free schooling." No, it's not, because now you can brainwash them, right? This is brainwashing. So, you know, you're like, "Okay, well, this agenda is communist. Well, if I'm a capitalist, I'm okay with this agenda. Right. I'm happy with this agenda. What's wrong with this agenda?"

All right. When the course development class distinctions have disappeared and all production has been country enhanced vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, so-called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. The proletariat, during its contest with the bourgeoisie, is compelled by the force of circumstances to arise of its class. If by means of a revolution it makes itself the ruling class, and as such sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will along with these conditions have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

Okay. All right. So this sounds very public but it's not. Okay. First of all, it establishes the proletariat and the party as the real enemies, not between the capitalist and the monarchy, between capitalism and religion. The real conflict is class, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Okay? And for the proletariat to win, they need a party. Okay? They need a vanguard party. But hey, once this vanguard party establishes itself and destroys class, it will go away. Okay, you understand? It will give up power voluntarily. It will choose to not exist anymore.

This has never happened in history before, but trust us on this one. Okay. This time it will be different. All right. Okay. So, this is interesting. In the Communist Manifesto it says, okay, Switzerland, we support the radicals; in Poland, we support the aan revolution; in Germany, we support the bourgeoisie, sorry, yeah, the proletariat. Okay, so in different places they have different concerns, they have different needs, right? And what these people are saying is that we're not part of a national conspiracy, all we want is a more fair, just society, that's all we Not we're not part of a secret society bent on world domination.

What the Communist Manifesto says is, yes you are. Yeah, we're all part of this great conspiracy to conquer the world and establish communism. Right. So why would they do that?

Why would they do that? That's really strange, guys, right? Why would they admit we are a national conspiracy? Worst society. This is a secret document that we read amongst ourselves. But it's also possible for you to steal it and show that yes, there is this secret society and that's a conspiracy of Jews who are trying to destroy the world. Okay. Really interesting. Okay. So now I want to talk about 1917.

They launched the October Revolution. So basically they seize power and then have an election. As you can see from this election, the Bolsheviks, even though they have seized power, they're not as popular, okay, as the socialists. Okay, the socialists are going to argue for more gradual change. The Bolsheviks want radical change. So you can see 17 million people voted for the socialists. Only 10 million people voted for the Bolsheviks even though the Bolsheviks controlled the government. Okay? And also look at this. At the end of the day, they only got 23% of the popular vote.

Okay? So they are not a popular faction. They're a minority. Okay? And so this launches the civil war. Okay. And as you can see at this time in history, yes, the communists have control over the major cities of Russia, but they don't really control most of Russia. In fact, they have lots and lots of enemies. They have the Whites to deal with. The Whites are basically the nobility. Okay? And they have also allies who come in. They have the Greens, who are the peasants. Okay, they have lots and lots of enemies.

And at this time in history, you could not possibly expect that the Bolsheviks would win this battle. Okay, but they do. All right, here's something interesting. This is the Romanovs. Okay, the The Romanovs.

The Romanovs had been in power in Russia for hundreds of years. Okay? And the Romanovs are beloved by the peasants and they themselves are part of the Orthodox tradition. They're also relatives of the nobility of Europe. Okay. So, England and All right. So, this is Tsar Nicholas II. The Tsar here is Nicholas II. Okay. And these are all his relatives. This is the Romanov dynasty. Now, when the revolution broke out, you would think that they would just run away to Europe, right? Where their relatives are. They didn't do that.

They just stuck around. So the question then is, why would they just stick around? The answer is they never believed they were in danger. Okay, first of all, they could not expect the Bolsheviks to win out, but also they're beloved by the peasants, they're part of the Orthodox church tradition and they have relatives who are the most powerful people in Europe, including in England, including in Germany, right? The Kaiser. So they thought they were fine. But then something strange happens. The Bolsheviks decide to kill every one of them.

Okay? They wipe out the Romanov family. Between 17 and 18 members of the Romanov family were And you're like, that makes no sense. Why would they do that? By doing that, first of all, you piss off the peasants, right? You turn the peasants against you because the peasants love the royal family. You now get the families of Europe pissed off at you because you killed their relatives, but also you come across as fanatical bon revolution. Okay? And then you piss off the Orthodox as well. So these communists are fanatics.

So, but let's assume they're not fanatics and let's assume that in fact they had a good reason to do this. Why would they do that? Okay. And the answer is this. The Romanovs had billions and billions of dollars in foreign banks.

Okay. In the City of London, on Wall Street. Okay. A lot of their wealth, billions and billions of dollars, is stored overseas. What happens if they die? What happens if they all die? Right? Guess what? These billions now belong to the foreign banks. That's a lot of money, man. And in fact, this is exactly what happened, where they all died and the foreign banks just took control over this money. And this is one of the great controversies of the 20th century. Okay? The government of Russia has been trying for a long time to get this money back.

And the foreign banks are like, "Well, you don't own this money. It's the Romanovs who own this money." So, this is evidence that the communists and the capitalists actually are friends. They're working together. Okay. Does that make sense, guys? All right. Let's continue.

All right. Another thing is that again, the Bolsheviks are not that popular. Okay. The peasants are pissed off at them because they just killed a noble family. There aren't that many workers. So, how can they fight this war? Well, they fight this war using mercenaries, okay, from Latvia, from China, from the Hungarians. Okay, so there are lots of these mercenaries. And you're like, wait a minute here. How did these guys get paid? The Bolsheviks don't have any money. How are they getting paid? Right? And the answer is, well, Wall Street, guys, Wall Street and the City of London gave the Bolsheviks money to pay these mercenaries.

It was Wall Street who paid for these mercenaries. You're like, why would they do that? And the answer is because the Bolsheviks, to pay Wall Street back, created the Red Terror.

Okay. The Red Terror is when the Bolsheviks basically went to all the rich people in Russia, the nobility, and said, you either give me all your money or I will rip your daughter. I will kill your wife. I will kill you. Right? And guess what? By doing that they made a lot of money. And that money went to pay Wall Street for the foreign mercenaries. Again, capitalists and communists work well together. Okay. Then you have the Allies, right? So, Britain, America, France, Japan sent these huge armies to Russia.

And everyone thought, okay, they should destroy communism because these are capitalists. They're afraid of the communists. But in fact, that's not how it happened. Okay, they went to collect Okay. So, Russia owed these countries money. The Soviet, the Bolsheviks, paid off their debt. So then the Allies left and attacked the Whites. Okay. All right. So the Allies helped the Bolsheviks and Wall Street gave money to the Bolsheviks for mercenaries and that's how the Bolsheviks won the war. Does that make sense? All right. So capitalists and communists work well together because they have a similar worldview.

All right. So this is a passage from a book called Wall Street and the Russian Revolution by Richard Spence. Okay. And Richard Spence is a historian and he had lots of documentation where Wall Street is actually financing the Bolsheviks and he explains why this has happened. He says that Wall Street wants to destroy the Russian economy. Okay, destroy the Russian economy because Russia is a threat. Okay, and then it wants to steal the riches and the resources from the Russians. Okay, that's the purpose of financing the Bolsheviks: to destroy the Russian economy and to steal the wealth of Russia.

All right, from 1918 until 1921, the Bolsheviks reduced Russia to an economy based on barter and robbery. Okay, so they basically stole everything from the rich, the middle class, and the poor to finance their war. Besides the opposition of private trade and the destruction of the monetary system, the red regime embarked on a massive looting campaign, ransacking palaces, bank vaults, churches and museums. Okay, we call this asset stripping. So basically the Bolsheviks destroyed their own society in order to get the money to finance this war in order to pay off Wall Street.

Okay. They appropriated every valuable they could get their hands on and stashed it all in a new state treasury. By the close of 1921, an estimated $450 million in valuables had been sequestered there with more to come. Much of it was going to be fenced abroad for a fraction of its value in capitalist hard currency. Okay. So basically the Bolsheviks stole everything in order to finance the war. Okay. And in the process, by destroying their tradition, by destroying their wealth, by destroying their religion, by destroying their nobility, it made the Soviet Union now much more amenable to capitalism.

That's what happened when the Soviet Union fell. It became capitalist. Okay. So that shows us that capitalism and communism are not enemies. They're partners in world conquest. And that's what the 20th century is about. All right, any So I think for China, when China is officially recognized as a country, most of them said that we need to pursue communism and abandon capitalism. But there is, like, they followed Marx's thinking and currently there's a special term which is, I think, I don't know the English name, but it's called Chinese unique socialism.

I don't know, is that a way that the leaders deal with it when the country is, you know, actually pursuing capitalism, or is actually pursuing capitalism but the communism goal is just professed? Okay. So China is an interesting example because when Marx was examining the world the two places he didn't really consider are Russia and China. Okay. So Marx, okay, Russia and China, okay, why? The answer is because both are agricultural, agrarian, or what he calls so from his perspective Russia and China have not reached a state of development which is ripe for world revolution, okay, for him the focus is on Germany. And this makes sense because remember Britain, Marx is being supported by Britain, right?

And Britain is a great enemy of Germany. So that's why Britain would support Marx, because Marx is trying to create a revolution in Germany, which is a great enemy of Britain. Okay, that makes sense. So for Marx, he thinks that China and Russia don't really matter because they're backward. They're agricultural. They have monarchies. Okay. So it doesn't really fit into his model. But then Lenin came and said, "No, you can speed up the revolution. Okay, even though they're peasants, peasants can become workers if you have a party to help the process." Okay.

So, that was Lenin's contribution. And Mao is like, "No, you don't even need workers, okay? You can have a movement entirely of peasants." And then once you have won the revolution, then you can create an industrial revolution. So really, if you think about it, Mao wasn't really leading a communist revolution. It had the facade of communism, but it was really a peasant uprising.

Okay. So, Mao was not a great communist theoretician like Marx or Lenin. Mao was a military commander. Okay. So, he was no different from peasant leaders in the past, people like Janjang, okay, of the Ming dynasty, these people. But in order to create legitimacy, in order to have support from the Soviet Union, from Russia, they had the communist facade.

Okay. And also communism provided a framework in order to industrialize very quickly. So what's important to understand is that at this time in history Mao was trying to actually work with the United States as well. Okay. He's trying to work with both the Soviet Union and the United States. The United States wanted to support Chiang Kai-shek. So when Mao won, basically the United States shut off China, embargoed China, which forced Mao to fully embrace communism. Okay. Right. But for Mao, communism was not that important. What's important is to industrialize very quickly.

Okay. So for him what's important is industrialization. The other idea is the idea of national sovereignty. All right? So he didn't really want to be controlled by the Soviet Union. If China was fully communist then the Soviet Union would say, well, you're our little brother. Okay. But for Mao what was important is national sovereignty. And that's what ultimately led to the Sino-Soviet split in 1957. Okay. Does that make sense?

So can we understand that capitalism equals communism, or communism is a weapon of capitalism, but if we try to pursue communism at the end we will finally achieve All right. So capitalism is the belief that you can shape society around capital.

And this is a direct threat to the old order. Okay. The old order which focuses on religion, the king, the military. Okay. So the capitalist is like, no, let's get away with all this complexity. Let's just make capital the basis of society. Okay. Now what happened is that as these two systems came into conflict, all right, the workers wanted socialism. Okay. Social democracy.

From capitalism you had social democracy, right? Social democracy is easy. Okay. Yes, we believe in capitalism but we believe in restraints on capitalism. We believe in a fair distribution of capital. All right. And that makes sense because, well, you can't just have a few people with all the money. Okay. All right. But what happened was social democracy was both a threat to the old order and a threat to communism as well. Right? So the old order, capitalism, what they did was they would mutate social democracy in order to delegitimize it, okay, social democracy, to make it into a threat against everyone.

Okay? Does that make sense? Right. So to summarize, capitalism is just a natural outgrowth of history. But this comes into conflict with the old order and capitalism will give birth to social democracy. All right? Which is a natural response to capitalism. Social democracy becomes a threat to both the old order as well as capitalism. Capitalism and the old order are also in conflict with each other. So what they do is they conspire to create communism. Okay. So in the early days communism is being supported by both the nobility and the capitalists but for different reasons.

All right. And then what happens is that because of this support communism becomes much more extreme, which leads to Or revolution. Right. Does that make sense how the system worked out? So we can't say, okay, well, they all had this plan out. No, it's actually much more organic, much more confusing than that. At first, they had communism just as a scop. Okay, no one actually believed that. Oh my god, from communism, you'll have Bolshevism. Okay, because Bolshevism is just crazy. Okay. But at first they thought communism was crazy but then it became much more mainstream and that led to the birth of Bolshevism, which was really crazy at that time, but over time it also became more extreme, sorry, became much more mainstream, which led to the rise of communism everywhere including in China.

So 1917, the October Revolution, it was a wild gamble and it worked because of the greed of capitalists. Okay. But once it worked out, once communism was established in the Soviet Union, then it changed the way people saw the world and they thought that now communism is possible anywhere including in China. Okay. Does that make sense? All right. Any more questions, guys? Okay. Great. All right. So, we go on break for a month and then we come back from the break. What we're going to do is we're going to learn, we're going to take all that we've learned, okay?

All this history, all this game theory, and apply it to the modern world. So, we look at specific current events. So, during the break, I want you guys to focus on current events, reading news, right? So, America is about to attack Iran soon. America is going to take over Greenland, Canada. Trump is visiting China in April. There's going to be a lot of news for us to cover. Okay. So, during the break, please focus on keeping up with current events. All right. Okay, guys. All right. See you after the