He starts the video off with the obligatory lib "totalitarianism 42069 gorillion dead" but I promise he actually sincerely engages with Marx's writing later on from a perspective of somebody that's done a lot of research on occult writings.
It's a pretty interesting video, I've never heard somebody compare Marx's Capital to a gothic horror novel and he does have a point when he says some people start looking at Marxism in an almost religious way (looking at you Gonzaloids).
If you want to learn about Marxism and the Occult, this site has pretty amazing analysis.
https://ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/
This was the first article I read from there, and it's been really useful for explaining Marx's ideas to folks with minimal experience with his theories: https://ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2020/09/03/marx-on-capital-as-a-real-god-2/
Yeah, he's called Hegel. Hegel is quite mystical on his own being inspired by Eastern religions and such.
When I took a Kabbalah class (it was one of those free online free unis, I needed some humanities credits) the professor forced us to read some Hegel first in order to better understand non-duality before we even touched any other text. As an extra bonus he'd generally flip out on you if you said the words antithesis, synthesis, thesis around him in regards to Hegel in office hours or glibly typed them in any communications.
I adore the Esoterica channel and never expected this type of video. I've got something for my lunch break, thank you!
I think it's established that Marx used vampires, werewolves, blood, zombies, sorcerers, and the undead etc. as metaphors for the monstrous nature of capital. He also threw in comments about commodities coming to life on their own and a reference to "table turning," which is a seance/spiritualist gimmick.
I really like/liked this guy and I remember when I first found him I thought he had really good material analysis and then learned after that he says he's a structural Marxist or something and was excited. I can deal with the Stalin ate all the grain crap but was mostly turned off by the bit about people treating Marxism religiously in the modern day, which is not how I feel at all. There's baby leftists out there who maybe are just waiting around for the second coming of the USSR (but perfect this time) but I felt he was painting with too broad a brush and dismissing historical materialism as ahistorical just because capital is in fact hard to win against. Bordering on end of history stuff.
I think maybe it annoyed me to see someone who I usually felt had really good rational analysis say some dumb ass shit (looking at you Sabine Hossenfelder). I think I was also hoping for something about capital as a "real god"/demiurge or something and maybe that wasn't a fair assumption to go in with
Mostly commenting to remind myself to come back and revisit this video at some point I guess but also hoping other comrades can help me articulate why it rubbed me the wrong way.
He needs to read the Enchantments of Mammon.
To be fair to him this is nowhere near as bad as Sabine's capitalism video which was really embarrassing even on a Lib level, she just really had no idea what she was talking about.
It just felt like for every positive point he made he had to throw in a jab or two to balance it out, which is unfortunate. Either he actually believes it or was afraid his audience would run away thinking he's a commie if he didn't perform sufficient disavowal.
What's funny is I never even saw the Sabine video on capitalism everyone hates cause I dropped her when she started saying stupid shit about HRT. But yeah this definitely isn't that bad, I think you're exactly right about it being some weird balancing act.
FWIW he does say in the end of the video he uses historical materialism often as a framework for analyzing history, he's not entirely dismissive of Marxism.
Sabine's video was embarrassing as hell tho, it's literally just "Um ackshly commie have you heard of economics 101?" but stretched out over a 20 minute video.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I had literally just found this guy's channel a week ago and was super excited. It was disappointing how much disavowal he did (or felt he had to do) to appear 'impartial'.
But honestly this video was pretty basic literary analysis of Capital. Which I guess is good for libs to hear, a couple might actually read it maybe.
