okay uh so the approach that i want to take is a bit different than than usually in political philosophy namely when i teach political philosophy or moral philosophy what we usually do is we usually do you know we explain a lot of different political or moral philosophical positions you know this person said that and had this argument and this person said that in this argument and we have this principle this principle and then you have ideas how to compare these moral frameworks or or political philosophies and so on but to be honest you are you are you are old enough and intellectual enough and good enough and we are literally teaching you critical thinking and analyzing so you can go and read that on the internet and go compare right so there is not a lot that i could tell you right even though i do think i will offer an additional feedback later in the week i will change one of my topics i think from what i have to moral philosophy because in the in the um in the office hours you're constantly asking about what are the principles how to uh compare different principles and so on so i think that i will offer maybe one on moral philosophy so you can come and see that one but um now i want to have a specific approach i want to show you an alternative possible way how to proceed with political philosophy how to even imagine what political philosophy is how to even imagine what human society is firstly let's start with general assumption how do we implicitly understand human society in all of your arguments in all of great classes of iv universities from oxford harvard to yale wherever you teach wherever you are there is a specific way implicit way assumption that people are not even aware of how do we understand human society and you know how do we understand it we firstly uh assume that we have some that we have individuals at the beginning right and when these individuals so our first assumption is that at the beginning there are only individuals then when these individuals come together they form a society so our second assumption is after individuals come together they form a society then within this society we somehow decide um we somehow decide what kind of politics are we going to have are we going to have democracy autocracy some kind of kingdom what are we going to have and then within this political system that we have we decide what kind of economy we are going to have you know are we going to capitalism continue with capitalism are we transitioning directly back to socialism right you know what they say is the difference between capitalism and socialism in capitalism you are promised to have everything but in the end you have nothing in socialism you have nothing but you are not even promised anything from the beginning so um uh so so and then in the end within this politics we decide are we going to have high taxes low taxes what are we going to do right um you know is that that could be a president who decides that could be a parliament who decides and so on so if i share my screen just to show you briefly what do i mean this is it right so we this is our general assumption how do we how do we understand how human society work we believe in so-called methodological individualism then when people come together they form a society then in society we create some kind of political system and then within this system it can be president king aristocracy democracy whatever we decide what kind of economy taxes whatever right you can kind of imagine that i will tell you that i think that's just a you know a good night story right that's completely wrong but before i tell you that i think that's completely wrong and once again be careful all of your arguments have this implicit premise you always think at the beginning we are individual we are rational we are free we are the you know we are our own people and so on so you always have this all the universities when they are teaching political philosophy this is how they are teaching all the newspapers from guardian new york times what economies they different political spectrums they always have this interpretation right um and i i think it's wrong i think there is at least a competing possible interpretation but before i tell you why i think it's wrong i'm going to tell you that it's not entirely stupid why not because this interpretation oh my this is being recorded i should speak nicely um this interpretation is actually following a very very famous and well argued uh political philosophical theory which which theory do you constantly use in your debates and which theory did we did we actually just described just with very everyday terms what is the theory that we have just described you can just write it in the in the chat or just somebody can unmute themselves what is the theory that we have described go tell me cameron correct social contract right the idea of social contract is very easy it says that at the beginning we are in some kind of state of nature where there is no wrong and no right where there are no laws where everything is permitted nothing is restricted right it seems that we are so very free in such society that everything is so great but what is problem in such society is that is this a nice society for me that would be very bad society right the problem of security yes i'm i'm afraid that you know you're going to steal my cat or that you're going to kill me where i'm sleeping or that you're going to take away my food i do not trust you i'm looking at the screen sorry do not take it personally i do not trust you right i don't know what you're gonna do to me so even though it seems that we are all free this is kind of as thomas hops put it one of the famous philosophers he said this is a constant war of everybody against everybody right we live in a constant fear of of of being being killed or something being stolen from us right and even if i'm the strongest person here i'm obviously not but even if i would be you know you can gang up against me and you can attack me as a group so you will you know you will you will overrule me and don't don't misuse that for the argument that humans are evil humans are evil i'm not saying i'm not saying that humans are evil i'm just saying that you know resources are limited we don't have infinity infinite resources and this is why at some point our interest will just clash and when they were clashed if we have if if there is no right and wrong no morality no laws nobody to you know restrict us oh my i don't trust you what you're gonna do because you will try to take care of yourself firstly that's only normal nothing bad okay but now we are rational individuals right so what are we going to do what will be our next step our next step you can write it in the chat if you think you have an answer our next step would be that we would make some kind of agreement we would say look guys let's just sign a contract let's just make an agreement we literally don't want to kill each other we don't want to you know do bad things to each other so what we should simply do is let's say let's put it on paper and let's sign it we are not killing each other you can promise amy promise that she will not steal my cat i promise i will not i don't know go into her house and and steal wine from her father or whatever right so so this is this is how like we can make an agreement that that we will stick to some kind of rules to make our life easier cool so now we have the agreement but what is the problem of this agreement right in the chat what is like do you now feel safe i mean sorry guys once again but i look at you don't take it personal but i totally don't feel safe as i don't trust you that you're going to follow the agreement right you you maybe signed the agreement but why would i trust you right and as diego wrote me a private message how do we know that people will follow the agreement right exactly trust on the assumption that people will follow i don't trust you right so this is why we need to get make sure that somebody will enforce the agreement and this is the moment when the political authority right happens what this is the birth of political authority we get somebody who will enforce these rules somebody who'll have the power to have military army to put ourselves my myself in prison for for god's sake right so they will have such so much power so i will give a lot of freedoms away as people are saying in chat but in exchange i'm going to get something in exchange this authority is forced to make sure that people are following the agreement that is making my life easier right and then here you can make all these arguments from social contract you know what's my best argument once i was asked for slovenian tv right uh what um i was i was saying oh the government should give more money to the poor people and then the the interviewer sorry the the journalists asked but government is saying that they don't have money government is saying that they would like to help poor people but they don't have money you know what was my response i took the social contract argument and said okay but then they're not a legitimate government anymore the moment when they cannot enforce the agreement anymore even if they are really moral people and good people and want to help but if if they can't provide the money at that point they don't have the right to interfere in my freedom anymore my god they say i'm born free but then the moment that i'm born i need to follow the rules from where i can cross the street to how much money i need to give to the state to what i can do what i can this is what the state is enforcing on me the moment i mean this is an argument that you could make if you would want right the state the moment that they do not do that for you anymore when they are not making life easier for everybody anymore not we should not kill them and put them away we just could not accept them as legitimate rule maker anymore they are not allowed to take our freedoms away anymore if they can give something in the return but then the other and this is this is the argument by famous philosopher jean-jacques rousseau i will i'll i'll write you i i'll write this in the chat jean jacques rousseau this is this is the argument that he made i probably miss peltier but i'm sure google will find it uh jean-jacques rousseau this is his argument but then you have a philosopher that made the vice versa argument said yes yes yes but the state need to be sure that they only make the rules that interfere in public life not your private life so you have some you know as you have some state duty to the state and the uh do the state has some duty towards you it's also vice versa so you always have this question how far can the state go how far the the right of the state go when they can impose restrictions on you and this was the philosopher john stewart mill who was writing about that if you want to get arguments about these two you know public private how far the state can go or when can we just crush the state because they are not enforcing the agreement anymore right go read rousseau and for public private go read meal but we are in a different story now i have still one problem with this uh person who is enforcing the rules let's say let's say that i decide that joti will now enforce these rules she is now this political authority what is the problem with her being the political authority tell me what's the biggest problem i don't trust jody right if i didn't trust all of you before that you won't that we will follow the rules why would i trust one person jyoti right she now can she has all the power right she can totally abuse this power only to use it for herself right so we need to certain we need to solve this problem somehow we now have somebody who is enforcing this has the power the freedom to imp to enforce that but we don't trust this person because it's only one person or a small group of people so what is the solution who do we need to put in the position of authority in the position of power instead of jyoti who needs to be in the position of power at least indirectly somebody who is representative of people yes this is maria chang said what i would say not just a group or a group of people we need to put all the people not someone someone people trust but you know but maybe you trust different people that i trust so then we have a problem so the idea is that everybody needs to be in the position of power but not directly because we can't all decide about things so this is why we have the indirect democracy representative democracy so we together vote for somebody who is going to represent us right and then if they don't represent us well we can outvote them next time and these are these checks and balances system in democracy so in this moment democracy is being born right we put all the people indirectly in the position of this enforcer in the position of the authority and they are the one who through the representatives are voting now of course the debate that happens here always is is democracy really the best way uh to a lack of good people right democracy sometimes seem to be rigged right because uh rich people control the media and the media narratives and then it's hard to be elected because we have poor people or people of color being put in prison nobody will vote for these people or they can't even vote or for example because you only have two parties who are not really covering all the um issues that we would like uh uh right or because democracy instead of rational discussion at some point it becomes just a pr game advertising game right politicians because they know they just need to be like re-elected instead of doing good things they just do things to cater the needs of the public so that they are re-elected because that's their goal so these are some inherent problems of democracy that you can really access to this point of view but however this is how we get democracy through social contract and in the end through democracy we decide we decide about what kind of economy we are going to have through parliamentary elections and so on so now we made a great philosophical theory that actually now i'm going to share my screen to show you that actually fully supported as you can see here fully supported our implicit premises right so it seems that we are actually implicitly correctly perceiving politics right we have state of natures these are these are individuals with a sexy term we call this methodological individualism then we make an agreement we the society is born norms rules institutions restrictions then we need some kind of political authority to enforce this agreement or to sustain the society this is why we get if you see where i mean with my mouse now this is how you get politics and then with then you can have a specific political authority this is democracy and then with within politics within political system you decide for what kind of economy you will have so it seems we have a great idea of how uh this is our implicit idea this idea that seems you know that we have it seems to be correct well i still think that this is not entirely true and now we will try to look at the alternative possible way how to perceive human society now sometimes i'm i hesitate to tell you what what kind of theory we are going to take because this was a social contract theory what are we going to discuss now is going to be a marxist theory uh which will be a provocation for your thought some some controversy for yourself only so that you start thinking i'm not saying that this other theory is better i'm just saying that this is an alternative way how to look at the society you know sometimes i don't want to give up and tell students that it will be marxist because sometimes when i say marxist people like oh my god that's going to be ideology right once i was lecturing at oxford at some summer institute and they asked me oh this professor from eastern europe tell us something about capitalism and i sent the title of my lecture which was the marxist critique of capitalist economy and then the professor from oxford wrote me back omiha could you maybe you know could you maybe instead of critique say analysis and i said okay the marxist analysis of capitalist economy uh no of capitalist ideology and then he she wrote me but could you instead of ideology say you know we don't really have the ideology anymore could you rather say thought capitalist fought and i said okay the marxist analysis of capitalist thought and then she said but do you really need to say capitalist i mean is there anything else today still existing wouldn't you just say global contemporary economy and then i said okay marxist analysis of global contemporary economic thought and then she says okay but do you really need to have this marxist term in wouldn't you just say alternative and then instead of having a very cool title the marxist critique of capitalist ideology i was lecturing on the topic the alternative analysis of contemporary economic global thought right so this is how people react if you give them language so language is important the way we perceive reality right and we're going to get there but let's now do a bit of a more marxist analysis but because i don't want to be ideological i want to be philosophical i will start with the zero assumption right so my first question if you want to talk about human society is going to be what is a human being how do we define human being or write me in the chat if you have the answer or how does equality is a human being different from animal that is the easiest you know way to answer this question how is a human being different to the animal and usually the answers that i get right i i'm also getting now yeah these private answers we are rational my rational animals exactly somewhat with agency that's good self-aware that's good but self-aware and rational then then i then i usually say guys look around look around yourself not necessarily in this room not to you know be bad to anybody but look around the world would you really say self-aware and rational i wouldn't right and then then some people are saying we create tools we use fire we are okay we create tools and we use fire my question might my point is yes of course but what were there two monkeys at some point and they said oh god dude what if we would now start using fire complex thought yes but why do we have complex stop were there two monkeys who at some point said wouldn't it be nice if we would start thinking more abstractly and then they start thinking started thinking abstractly so there was some kind of reason risk and reward of thinking but why did the why did all this morality risk reward why does this develop in our species but yeah cameron because we are imperfect we are biologically imperfect this is what anthropologists are saying we are biologically imperfect meaning we cannot instinctively survive if you throw us into the nature if you throw a tiger little how do you call it um how do you call it a little baby tiger cub if you throw them into the sorry eastern european that's my excuse um if you throw if you throw them into the ecosystem okay not in the desert right in their ecosystem they will survive if you throw us in the ecosystem whatever that ecosystem it is we will not survive without help we need help right because we we do not instinctively we were not there and like oh now i'm going to search for food somebody needs to teach us to search for food that can be an animal teaches that we have this animal uh babies and so on but uh animal humans but um uh uh uh we need somebody to teach us right okay so we need in order to survive we need some kind of cooperation and how do we with the modern term uh name the system of cooperating among people in order to produce goods in order to survive we call it economy right this is the definition of a system of producing goods in order to survive right now that means that we will start with zero assumption that we are homo economicals ah that's quite interesting for marx right who is against capitalism and economy we are homo economics the our first fact is that we need some kind of economic system to survive now what happened and what would happen in every economy even if you look historically what happened in every economy in the human being human history always was that if we would now go i don't know to deserted island what is the first thing that we that we would do we would you can write in the chat i'm getting some private answers that are correct we would firstly divide the labor we would not all we would look for other people that's correct but what would you all start running for other people no at some point somebody would get hungry somebody would go search for meat somebody elect the leader and split the war work yeah very uh future leaders uh the theory sometimes uh americans like to you know the the best answer i get from americans sometimes is we would start trading that's my that's best answer i get from americans full-on capitalism from the beginning but what we would probably do at the beginning is with some kind and this is this is what historical researches are showing you what happened this is how society developed random division of work you know somebody would start a fire somebody would go to catch i don't know tiger mammoth i have no idea what you're catching there somebody would go to search for other people somebody would try to organize and we would divide labor right this would happen like when i'm lecturing this i'm always so very concerned because at this point i always realize i have no idea what would i do there i i feel i would be totally useless but okay so um we would divide labor but now what is the inherent necessary consequence of dividing the labor when we get different tasks what happened always in history for very obvious reason is that we create different groups and some groups became more important than other groups because some some tasks are more important some tasks are heavier like are much more hard to do you know if there is if there is just i don't know if there is just uh alma who knows how to catch a tiger oh my i want to get my piece of meat right even i'm on keto diet right i really want to get my piece of meat and i if the alma is the only one the teacher the professor who is with us if she's the only one who knows how to catch a tiger oh my god i will i will praise her i'll say i i i do whatever you want i will follow you i will give you like how like i will trade with you for whatever i'll be your slave just got me that tiger because i i i i can't get it otherwise right so the the hierarchy is born so we get some kind of ruling classes ruling elites and so on so this is what happened to show you on the screen if you look at anthropological researches this is always what happened if you start from a random historical economic situation it always the vision of work is the first thing then some kind of hierarchy happens and then some kind of ruling class ruling elites however you want to call it i don't care so that is the situation now the thing is that um what is now the main intention of the people who are in the ruling class let's say that me and alma we are now in the ruling class we are not the ruling elites we have all the privileges people worship us and so on what will be yeah our own interests are going to be yeah we will want to keep ruling we will want to keep our power so if we speak about about the economic system if you look back at the screen right if we speak now about this economy what will be in our interest are we going to try to change this economy or are we going to try to do everything that's in in our power to keep this economy exactly as it is now obviously we will yeah jorge has you're correct maintain hierarchy but how are we maintaining hierarchy we are going to do everything in our powers to maintain this exact economy so the point of the ruling class their main incentive is to reproduce the status economic status quo why because it is this economy that is giving me privileges is this economy that is giving um uh the the uh uh um uh alma all the privileges that she has right so we will try to maintain this economy and as cameron put it quite nicely we will try now to create society around this hierarchy now me and alma we are we we consider ourselves smart and what is now the first thing that we will try to do to sustain this economy what is the first thing you know now we are there now we realize oh boy right we are we are here we have privileges we somehow need to make sure that nobody else start catching tigers right what is the first thing that we are going to do we are going to create laws we are going to create restrictions we have the power we'll say look we will give you the meat that's fine but no the rule is nobody else can um you know uh catch tigers go or maybe we are more progressive more liberal and maybe we'll say look um everybody can do that unfortunately um the school for tigers catching tigers is only for us and our children right so everybody can do it they want no restrictions but it's only the school only for that or maybe we are going to say school for everybody but it depends on on on how we vote right on these schools but unfortunately only people with glasses and with blue t-shirts can vote right so we are going to try to create a political system that will cater to this status quo we will try to create laws rules restrictions politics society that will follow this status quo so first mechanism if you look at the screen that we are going to create in order to fo to reproduce our economy is going to be rules restrictions laws politics so this is not something that we individually freely create this is only the first mechanism of ruling classes to sustain this economy but you know what there is one big problem now the one one big big big problem is that there is just two of us you know and you are 99 and at some point you say uh well uh we are now taking over and that's it bye-bye right revolution and and so we somehow need to prevent that we need to somehow we need to prevent that we need to do everything in our power that we prevent that at some point you're going to say look we're not playing your game anymore we'll take over your police we'll take over your power you're just there's just two of you we are taking over there is something that we need to do what do we do we try to what what is the additional mechanism that we come up with the additional comment right right in the chat answers what would you do what would be your mechanism or you can just turn out audio and say what would you do to make sure that nobody would ever try to uh try to uh do that enforcement suppression but this is already enforcement suppression these are restrictions this is prison system this is all this already enforcement try to justify the system good yeah justify the system religion brilliant make people believe that we are in the best system you know when me and alma are really going to rule when you're going to say thank god that we have them maybe we are suffering maybe you know maybe it's bad maybe the life is so cruel but thank god for all my mija that they are our rulers right thank god that we have this system so we need some kind all the answers that you have that you are giving me are brilliant we somehow need to manipulate people we need to somehow play with the mindset of the individuals we need to create the individuals that are going to follow us so individuals are going to be something that we are going to try to create and we are going to try to create their mindset we are going to try to create them what do we call this propaganda or with a bit more philosophical term we call this ideology creation of the individuals that support your mindset the way you want them to think and now you have individuals and their ideology you see i will actually add this here this is ideology and not just ideology we have here individuals right i should add individuals are here we create individuals that we need and now do you see how this is totally different oh i misspell it of course um now you do you see that now this is totally different picture than the previous one you have economy random historical division of work and the ruling class proceeding out of it and then the ruling class using politics that is nothing free and rational only a reproductive system of reproducing and sustaining this economy and then you have individuals who are only thinking inside the box who are always created so that their mind cannot even think outside the box the best ideology is the one that you don't even know that it's ideology and now do you see the difference between this picture of human society and reality when we have as you see on the screen individuals dance that free rational individuals from enlightenment and renaissance right then we have society coming out of that when they come together then they create political systems and then they have economy here no no no it's economy that works in favor of some people then you have politics that is sustaining economy and the ideology that is sustaining this totally different picture alternative possible perspective not saying it's a better one saying it's totally alternative to give you a historical oversight what that does mean look if we when we had slavery as a as economic system what kind of political system do we have well slaves were not free right they had no political freedoms only few people were free slaves were not free and they were restricted to do things what was the ideology of slavery i really like that example because a famous philosopher aristotle once said that um in greek times he said that uh slaves are only are nothing more than speaking tool right that means that all greek people didn't even violate human rights because slaves were not humans right in their world view um but you see how this was the ideology mindset that was totally sustaining the uh uh uh this kind of world view then you had for example feudalism do you know what is feudalism in europe right the point of feudalism is that you had some landlords and then you had people farmers who were free right they were able to do whatever they want during the day i mean not whatever they want right a lot of things during the day but then they needed to give a part of the things that they have produced on their field the majority they needed to give to their landlords what was the political system right there were strict rules you got to prison you got killed if you didn't do that and there were just aristocracy people living in castles who had power what was the ideology of the middle ages in europe why were the kings kings what gave them the power that they are kings why because the idea was that they are the gods representative on the earth right that they have the blue blood running through their reigns right and this is why they are kings and this is why everybody accepted them as kings right um and now we have capitalism right in capitalism we are all we are all we are all free to the point of capitalism is free market you can buy whatever you want if you have money and you can sell whatever you want right this is the this is the main idea of capitalism what is the political system that you almost necessarily need if you want to sustain capitalism although this is now changing and i will speak to more about that but what is one type of system that you can use to support capitalism what did we use in western world to support capitalism we used what write me in the chat what was the political system that was used as a mechanism to reproduce the capitalistic elites in the capitalist economy it was democracy you need politically free people because police if people are not free to vote if they are not free to create laws and rules and all this they cannot act as investors they cannot act as such right meaning that i'm not please don't go away from this lecture and say oh this stupid guy said something against democracy no god no i'm for democracy but i'm just saying the democracy was used to reproduce economy that was serving specific people within you know the specific economic system i'm not saying who is this not saying that's a bad system maybe that's the best system ever tomorrow i'll say it's bad in different lectures but uh uh uh um i'm just saying this was a system to reproduce it now the ones who know the answer because i know that i have talked with the with about this with some people uh here already what is the ideology of capitalism keep in mind that the best ideology is the one that we don't even know is ideology the best ideology is the one that none of us can even think outside it you know if if you somebody people say oh the ideology of capitalism is uh everybody has the same chances to succeed how much people actually still believe in that we don't right not really so we know that's not the ideology the best ideology is the one that we can't escape only got hit but this is not something that would this is the reality of capitalism i would say yes but this is not something that would support the system what is the ideology that is supporting the system something that i am almost sure none of us everyone want to be the part of the top but we all a lot of people already know today that this is that this is not really working if you would now raise hands who agree with this ideology who doesn't i think it would be 50 50 or 70 30 in favor but i'm sure that there is one ideology that is directly supporting capitalism and we all would agree with inequality that's not us why would that support capitalism free market i'm sure that there will be people against free market here i'm sure there will be some individuality i'm sure there would be some people who would say you know but you know we need to take care of the collective also and if you only take selfish so this is this is debatable upwards mobility this is not debatable anymore american dreams are dead uh i'm joking a bit but um but there is something i mean i i think that all these are great uh great answers and they are correct but there is one that is even more hardcore and we even have a declaration on it and none of us will adopt it declaration of what declaration on independence this is always what i get from americans if you say declaration they say independence uh no there is not yet declaration of human rights the declaration of human rights if you would now go read declaration of human rights the first eight things would be like the conditions to establish a capitalist society we everybody have the right to private property everybody should have the right to their individual person everybody should have the right to dignity nobody should state should never coerce too much in your blah blah blah please don't think i'm against human rights i'm just saying that this is the ideology that is supporting the capitalist system and is sustaining it and it's really cool one why because we can't even see outside it now you will tell me give me the alternative to capitalism i can't give you the alternative i can't see outside human rights you know because this is the ideology that we are so deeply in we call this term uh we call this a a hegemony hegemony is the term where you cannot think outside of this and we cannot think outside these basic liberal terms maybe that's good i'm not saying that is bad right i i have all the mac products and i my favorite place to live would be manhattan and teach there and i exactly know where and all this right so don't think that i'm a crazy revolutionary right you know how i teach revolution in school do you know the film v for vendetta film movie v4 vendetta is a movie of a revolution in england and the movie ends how when the revolutionary people the protesters take over the parliament and then all of my students when we finish with the movie they're like oh my yeah that's it right now we are on right and then i tell them okay guys next time we are watching so the movie ends when they take over the parliament and then i tell them next time we watch v for vendetta 2 right and i'd ask them to give me a copy so that i will run it on the school player right next time and then they come in a week and they said teacher but we were not able to find reefer vendetta too it seems it doesn't exist and i'm like yeah right it doesn't exist because the day after the revolution is the horror right is like is like a hangover day where you're like oh my what have we done yesterday right because this is the horror time where you need to actually create a new system so i'm not you know i'm not some crazy supporter of a revolution here hotel rwanda is v4 vendetta too very very interesting i would actually that's an interesting take on the movie i like it um but now you see how this is a totally different interpretation of of of how we see how we see uh how we see a human society oh of course i know uh novony would very well almi also teach it in school uh and i i i i think i know why you i suggested that book um and and just to show you now some like differences you know like if we go with the first picture right when individuals are at the beginning if you want to make a real change right if you want to make a a real change um what would you change the first what what is the first thing that you were changing very good mary i agree with your comment funny um what would you funny i mean provocative uh what would you change what do you think you need to change first if you believe in the social contract theory if you want to make a big social change or small social change what is the first thing to change the first thing to change are probably individuals their mindsets right so this is why liberals social contract tests would go for education narratives creating mindsets because individuals are at the beginning of their presentation of how society looks like but if you are a marxist if you look from this perspective you can't change in individual because individuals always think within the box so you firstly need to change the box this is why these crazy socialists are always oh let's crash the economy first to see what happens right just so you understand them so it's totally you need to change other things because if you only go for like change education and all this maybe you will change the mindset but if you don't change this just a different mindset that is going to support the same economy is going to come because you can you can't think outside the box you know in what situation we are today i'll tell you a joke maybe it will not be funny you can at least pretend uh to laugh right but it's a joke to show you how hard it is from the marxist perspective from this perspective to think outside the box look the joke goes like this um and he described our situation about how we can't say what is the alternative because we don't have the language because we think within the coordinates of capitalist economy look um the job goes like this there are two prisoners that want to send letters to each other but they know that they are going to be um censored right and then they have a code the code is if everything is written in uh i don't know uh in in red then it is exactly as it is if everything is written in blue right then it is directly the opposite and then and i see i think this is the now the analogy for our situation today now one a person send the letter to the other everything is in red that means that it is directly true it is in red so this person is not lying it is not blue so everything he is saying is correct and this person says look we have everything in this prison it's very good we are quite free uh you know you know we're they're treating us well we have a lot of things to buy uh uh all is good all is nice um so he's not lying no if i say that capitalism is cool i'm not lying i actually think that analogy right i'm not lying it's in red there is only and then the prisoner with the red writes there is only one thing i am missing in this prison the blue color to write you a letter right so the only thing that i'm missing is not that something would be actually wrong it's just i don't have the language to tell you what is wrong i don't have the language to create the alternative right because i always think within the box because of this hegemony because i can't get out right because i think within the terms for example 2008 economic crisis right i will speak about economic crisis in one of the lectures where i'll i'll make a whole alternative theory of economic crisis where i will try to challenge the idea so i will firstly present that lecture a theory that i actually believe in that comes from one wall street broker and then i will show why i think that theory could be wrong and show a totally alternative theory of economic crisis that gives a very interesting prediction what might happen after the pandemic with wall street so we are going to play again with thoughts so we are going to do that but just to show you a quick thing about the crisis 2008 the economic system fell apart in front of us right thank god it recovered right but it felt apart and we got two responses to this crisis right i mean you know the first response was let's save money austerity let's not spend let's cut the spending the other respond was no no no let's invest as much as possible let's start a new cycle let's create new purchasing power so that people will buy that companies will sell the cycle will go what is in common in both two responses they are both under the for-profit capitalist society so you have the capitalism falling apart and the only response is that we have i'm not saying that we should go out of capitalism but i'm saying do you know what that means for our mindsets that we were not even able to provide a possible answer that would be different do you know how very restricted by this capitalistic terms we are it felt apart for the leftist for these communists this should be party it fell the part here we are here are 10 programs how we are going to create better society not even one we only have spending versus saving a lot of debates right um in the end by the way none of them worked you know what worked in the end something that is the most true for wall street it doesn't matter what you really do it's just it is important that we all pretend that it's going to work because you know what is the main trick of wall street the main trick of of um of of of um predicting things on wall street is that you need to know that there is a double believe there double prediction in wall street you are not predicting how much something will be worth tomorrow nah you're predicting what others are going to predict this is going to be worth tomorrow and at the moment that we all start pretending and predicting that we are predicting that it will be good and that the prediction will go on then everything went fine it was really funny in europe after 2008 we had investments and then austerity and investment nothing worked and then mario draghi the president of the commission came and he said look we are going to make it we believe on the right that we are on the right track like in the next threes everything went up the markets has recovered right have recovered so this is this is it it's a lot about believe right so we are so deeply in and i'm not saying um [Music] i see the question i'll answer i'm not saying that um i'm not saying that uh uh we should change it uh capitalism i'm just saying that thinking outside the box is something that we do have problems if you believe in this picture and there are some you know and evidence is due to support and this is why i like to say that we live in a tyranny of no alternative and that's the worst irony right you know in 60s and 90s ronald reagan he told you we are promising you a better new liberal world then in 80s and 90s clinton and these people were telling you well we can't really promise you but the better world right we see it's not working for everybody but we promise you all of you have a chance to succeed you know so from better world from everybody you get you have a possibility to get there then what were people promising in 2000s after the 911 after the terrorist crisis they were saying look guys there is no better world just if you get the leftists in or the right wingers in it's going to get worse and the terrorists will come and migrants will come and oh boy let me protect you from all these nightmares so you know not even saying that they have any idea just like we are saying no alternative and now they are just managing crisis after crisis not even you know saying that there is a better world just we are within this world and so on so this is um this is from this this is from this perspective and now by the way not saying that this is a better perspective to see the reality i spend much more time on the second one just to give you the idea how the second one looks like and just to give you a few more ideas what what is all in this whole ideology what what are the three branches of government that you would say i want to show you how do we create individuals what does it mean to create a mindset how these power structures work what are the three branches of government legislative yeah no i can come and somebody could write it legislative executive and judicial perfect i believe that's a wrong cancer i believe three branches of power are hollywood prison system and psychiatry why let's firstly go to the psychiatry for example what is the point of psychiatrist please don't stop going if you're going i'm sure that if you haven't been there at some point you will be we all were that's fine please take pills if you need but what is the point of going to psychiatrists what what what do they do with you they make you functional what does it mean in today's world consumeristic world the world of pleasures what does it mean to be functional it means to enjoy so that means that i hate my job i work 12 hours per day i am poor i have no family i should be depressed but now i go there and they're going no don't be depressed and after i will go out i will still work for 12 hours i will still have no family i will still be poor but now i will like right now i will be functional now i will support the system so they make me functional to support back the system and i say you know before you were exploited but at least you were allowed to hate it now you are exploited and you need to like it and enjoy it because if you're not you're sent to psychiatrists because you're not normal because you should enjoy because we are the the society of enjoyment right or for example prison system if you look at feudalism there were two crimes for what you were sent to prison in the most cases crime number one saying something bad about the kings why because this was directly going against the system no kings are special or gods right the second thing if you did not give the product from your field why because this was the second most important thing in the system right sustaining the system kings are special and the product and now you know thank god that we are progressive society thank god that we don't do this in prisons anymore right oh yeah who do we have in prisons now who do we put who did we put in prisons for example in great britain in the industrialization area in time when the capitalism was born firstly you know who people who were st fought the system but who concretely these are people who were not in that thieves why because private property was born before there was no private property or it was it did not play such an important role now we put people who are stealing in prison why because they are literally union leaders giuseppe that's fine that's funny answer um we have literally the most thiefs in prison like from economic criminal or whatever but they are stealing private property and they need to go there because that's against the system if you don't sup if you don't support the system who you go to prison you know who are the the second group of people who went to prison in for example great britain in the industrialization time people who were begging for money people who weren't productive enough in nowadays people who are poor why because they are not making profits because they are not increasing they are not increasing um productivity because they are not helping system to grow so literally it's exactly the same role that prison had in feudalism it has it now we put people there predominantly those who are not supporting the system now of course we don't do this directly indirectly they go they are more likely to go to crime and all this but this is how it is by the way currently in united states there are more poor people in prison than there were ever people in concentration camps in hitler and stalin camps together so much about numbers and poor people right by the way just one note i'm not saying this is my personal opinion and i'm not saying that this is like the final truth i'm just saying that if you take this second perspective this is the answers that you would get because you would simply look you know because if you know why is this different because if you would look okay there is a poor person in prison if you would look to the first prospect if you would say individuals are first okay what did this individual do and then you would go through individual story what happened to them and you would say ah stolen something did bad decision and that would that is true but if you look through this a different story you would say okay first let's take a look what kind economy do we have then let's take a look how this person was created and now let's take a look why did they end up where they did so it's simply a different perspective on society and then obviously hollywood right i said psychiatry prison hollywood uh marvel uh um uh iron man versus uh the guy thanos i'm sorry i hope i'm not spoiling uh cut your voice if i'm if you haven't watched it yet um so in the last movie they both kill equal amount of people they are both mass murderers but only one is deemed as mass murderer as crime as as criminal against humanity but the other is a hero what is the difference between them in the story thomas who is a criminal she wanted to change the system he wanted to change the status quo and that's why he's a criminal but what did iron man do did he even travel through the time he did everything what literally to regain status quo literally to put all the changes back and restore the liberal global neoliberal global order so literally the difference between the two s one wanted to change it one did everything to restore it they did the equally bad act but one is hero one is criminal so much about the message that we are getting the identification with the heroes that we're getting again if you would approach this through the individual analysis to the methodological individualism oh yeah okay maddie i agree thanos wanted to kill more people i fully agree yeah so i'm stretching it i do agree also especially if you would look it through the perspective of individualism um you would see that you know obviously the intention of tanos you could say was morally much more corrupted even if you don't agree with neoliberal order even if you want to spread pluralism around the world whatever even if you want a change in the system still iron man you know allowed more rights gave more rights to people than thomas i fully agree just like you do see that you do have predominantly in hollywood like support for status quo let's not change anything right um if possible so you do have these three branches okay uh to conclude so now you see we do have these two different we we do have these two different um uh two different uh approaches and i so my my only idea in this lecture was to show you that there are two competing interpretation of what political philosophies there are two competing glasses through which you can look at the reality i used much more time in the second one simply you know to simply to uh uh show you uh uh where could we get um uh and and yeah you by yourself now need to decide which one you want to look at uh um to to to to decide um where do you want to be what i want to conclude is is something that i always conclude this lecture with to do the analysis of the five minutes to do the short analysis of the most popular political term that is very abused in the in the uh in the current situation and this is the term freedom and i will analyze it through this perspective that we just had and i will ask myself what what are different types of how very free you are different levels of freedom and i'll i'll show you how sometimes liberalism can be even more dangerous just to provoke you just to provoke you keep in mind let's say that political power equals your parents let's say that this is the analogy because your parents they are the political authority let's say and this is the example i always use let's say that they want to force you to go to your grandmother but you really don't want to go right nothing against the grandmother just you know that's the situation and now if you have very autocratic parents right autocratic parents autocracy is a system where only one person is deciding what is right and wrong autocracy one person is leading dictatorship what are they going to say why do you need to go to your grandmother they're going to say you need to go cause i said so and you are going and what happens oh boy you go because i say so you go but you know it's really easy to fight against such power you just need to become politically economically physically stronger than your parents and the moment that you are politically economically hopefully not physically stronger than your parents you just say look you're not a dictator anymore i am now stronger and i'm dictating the terms now usually it's an economic struggle as long as you live under my roof you will follow my rules blah blah right so it's a struggle with authoritarian parents but you exactly know what to do if you want to crash them if you want to uh if you want to be better if you want to go over this power over this authority what if you have totalitarian parents that's a different system totalitarianism is defined not by one person ruling but but that we need to live according to one total idea of religion of morality of marxism of islamism of christianity so total idea so what are parents going to say you need to go because not because i say so it's not mika's making the decision you need to go because it is the right thing to do if that's a religious totalitarianism it is what maddy said because god said so because ideology said so and now you still know how to fight against them right you need to go you go to your grandmother but you still know how to fight against them right you need to destroy this ideology that's a bit worse right because even if you defeat your parents your uncle will come and she he will say uh okay you maybe destroyed your parents but it is still right thing to go so you need to go because ideologies you'll say so so oh boy it's really hard to fight narratives ideologies morality systems oh my you really need to fight it but at least you know what you can protest against we are against capitalism we are against marxism we hate communism let's destroy berlin wall right so all this but what if you have liberal parents liberalism is based on liberty but they are still the political authority they still want them to follow you they still need to force you to go to your grandmother but they need to base their authority on liberty so what are they going to say they're not going to say on autocracy you need to go because i said so you know they won't base on the ideology you need to go because ideology they will say oh come on michael as maddie says you want to go you know you want to go you'll enjoy your grandmother and what do i do i go to my grandmother and with what i do exactly what my parents wanted to do i followed the orders exactly with one little difference i believe that it was me who decided to go so i literally believe that i have decided and you know then what happens then i'm annoyed oh my it's so annoying here my grandmother and then my mom said oh michael stop annoying us you wanted to go now be here it's you who wanted to be here and how am i going to protest this now what am i going to say i made wrong decision i made wrong decision you can't even protest because it was the idea that it's your decision because it was it it was supposed to be consensual and that could be the trick of how the ideology of freedom can trick you because for me the only worst thing that not being free is not being free and not even knowing that you are not free so that is my concern right so i think um that that that so this is like you know the funky analysis that you can make thinking of different ways that authorities try to convince us and and just like you know this is like how do you think mr mr and mrs stevens asked me to be here right did they say oh michael you need to come here because we said so omija do you need to come to lecture here because you uh because it's the right ideology to lecture the gds no they were like come on you know you would like to lecture to kid you know you will enjoy you know you will scream in front of your computer all will be good and here i am it's 8 p.m instead of me drinking coffee petting my cat drinking reading my newspaper i'm not lecturing here don't take it personally i love it but you see this is the way you get you can get persuaded and persuaded this is just again another strategy this is not something that would be against liberal world this is something that is to keep in mind what are the manipulative structures that are going to be used against you because keep in mind that and here i'll get a bit personal and not not personally in a way like why my what my theoretical position is i would say that you need to use all this as possible ways how to look at reality to avoid people trying to coerce you right so this is like these are these are your pluralistic views that you can use in order to know what to do at wall street for example i actually invested some money at wall street right after no after having the idea of what marxist theory would predict so i'm not i don't know i don't want to crush capitalism right so this is don't don't accept this as political activism but accept this as trying to broaden your possible horizons of how to look at the reality and these are this is critical thinking right that you have as many possible glasses through which you can look at the reality and then you make your arguments and you make your own decisions and this is what i think would work and like the only job i see i have instead of okay teaching you how to debate and create arguments and strategies that i give you a very concrete advice is i force you to follow uh but in such lectures i only want to like spur your thought give you the idea try to provoke you everybody disagrees with everything said great because now you have ideas with what you need to disagree and so on so that's it okay hope you enjoyed the lecture if you have any particular questions you can stay here i'll i can answer them here otherwise we're done you can go take 20 minutes break and then stay for the lecture um hope it was something interesting something useful i am really sorry for those uh who who already heard that but yeah i was literally i'm always when i do something in america i'm asked to do this and not one other lecture and and yeah so i i was asked to do again so if anybody heard it i'm sorry hope it was something interesting enjoy thank you thank you thank you