This is the take of a person living in a privilege bubble. The people who will make the revolution are already experiencing much worse than just "discomforts and inconveniences". The revolution will be made first and foremost by those who have nothing to lose but their chains and a world to win.
I haven't heard the podcast for context but if he thinks "people aren't willing to deal with the discomforts inconveniences and pain" of revolution, he's only talking about a small handful of the people in this world. The white people in the imperial core.
Now not too long ago that handful of people had a disproportionately huge bearing on humanity's prospects, so you couldn't really fault anyone for ignoring everyone else in their evaluation. But that disproportionality is eroding, and it's being accelerated as the world rejects the US.
So his statement about that specific set of 'people' may be true, but it increasingly doesn't matter.
Yeah, he's completely ignoring places like Afghanistan, where things are violently out-of-control. I'm pretty sure the scary sectarian violence and risk of starvation probably has a lot of folks over there ready to just say "fuck it, let's burn this fucker down" because their lives are already so uncomfortable. The idea that revolution against violent religious fanatics would be less comfortable is a joke.
It's a very elitist and out-of-touch Western take on the whole idea, but perhaps he only is referring to revolution in the West. Which just makes him Euro/Amerocentric.
Even in the case of white settlers in the imperial core. Conditions will worsen for enough of them for the plurality to see it in their own interest to do revolution rather than keep on carrying on with the capitalist bullshit. First, however the third world will get what they are owed in wages, then the rest shall fall into place.
I think it has less to do with not wanting to lose comforts as much as it has to do with hypernormalization, which you'd think Curtis would be familiar with since he made a fucking movie named.... hypernormalization.
What Curtis I don't think has discussed enough in regards to is is capitalism and psychology. The unfortunate truth is the best way to make a living as a psychologist in the West is to work for a private corporation making advertisements and/or propaganda, or working for a government making propaganda. In other words, creating media that normalizes all this on purpose.
By and large, beyond the limitations of our technology that Curtis has covered in detail, the biggest way you normalize these things is with psychology. We have the smartest and most capable psychologists working against the common good for most people.
Even on a personal level, when you're seeing a psychologist for mental health help for yourself, if you tell them about how stressed you are because you're not making enough money, yet you've done "all the right things," but you're still struggling and it is weighing on you.... Well they can't prescribe "money" so they just shove antidepressants in your face, telling you "these will help."
(Aside: undoubtedly, this isn't meant to be some kind of take-down of modern psychology, many, many people need things like anti-depressants and anti-psychotics to function. I'm speaking almost exclusively about people who are mostly okay mentally, but their mental state is damaged by their poverty.)
In many ways, instead of addressing major problems, we teach people in our society to take drugs to avoid thinking about the major problems. We have psychologists using their training to promote advertisements or propaganda to make us question our own knowledge and how we feel about our own lives.
In past revolutions, the ruling class simply didn't have access to this kind of knowledge of how humans and groups of humans function psychologically. Through this knowledge, there is a finer grained control over modern society than there has ever been.
How do we begin to fight the work of the people who know the most about how to exploit the human mind? I'm not sure there's an easy way. I think others in this thread are correct, we're more likely to see "the revolution" begin in the global south, far away from the influence of the US and Europe.
You make an excellent point pointing out the weaponization of psychology in service of the status quo. This is often overlooked.
I think my wake-up call was probably the two psychologists from Spokane, WA, USA who helped Bush engineer his torture program. If you can justify the use of psychology for torture, you are definitely ready to justify it for societal control.
Absolutely not. This is boomer talk. Idealistic rant without basis in reality.
Who is he talking about? Extremely privileged white upper middle class in core capitalist countries?
Because everyone else is living fucked up lives everyday and dealing with it. The working class deal with "discomforts and inconveniences" daily. What the fuck is this guy talking about?
Those people need to get out of their bubble and talk to working class people every now and then.
The working class deal with “discomforts and inconveniences” daily. What the fuck is this guy talking about?
I don't know if it's really his argument, but I think that no matter how hard the working class is getting it, without class consciousness they will be unable to deal with all the specific hardships of revolution.
Sure they have to work in terrible conditions but are they ready for extreme leftist infighting, with all the betrayal and conspiracies? Are they ready to engineer laws and a prison system that is ready to deal with counter-revolutionary activity? Like, reeducation programs, surveillance and jailing of reactionaries, enforcing ban on reactionary publications?
Hardships aren't an abstract degree of suffering, they are specific. People learn how to deal with paying extremely high rent, it doesn't mean they can deal with any other type of hardship. Not because someone lived 5 years without a house it means they'd be able to actually kill anyone.
That's a fair point, but... Well, that's what the Leninist party organization is for. To forge this revolutionary spirit on the advanced members of the working classes and then spreading this through the class.
It will not come naturally. Class consciousness doesn't come from nowhere. We can't complain that there isn't class consciousness without actually building organizations to foment it. We need more Lenin in this conversation.
Edit:
Sorry for editing but this is an important point. As Marxists we shouldn't rely on idealism but on the material conditions for something to happen, right?
This discourse "people aren't ready for the hardships of revolution" is idealist. It pressuposes that metaphysical conditions and ideas ("being ready for the revolution") are the movers of history. As Marxists that's not what we believe. We believe that material conditions are the movers of history.
So we ask ourselves: what material conditions make people apt for revolutionary action? And we work to bring about those conditions.
That's the Leninism in "Marxism-Leninism"!!!! That's one of the great contribution of Lenin (not the only one, of course): the first steps on the theory of revolutionary organization.
That's what frustrates me about the phrase in the title. We have a lot of past theory and practice to apply for that problem. Granted: I didn't listen to the podcast. Maybe that's what he talks about later. But I think the phrase as it's written is a disservice.
Thank you for clarifying your analysis. I recognise that I haven't automatically seen the vanguardist aspect of the matter, it is right that the vanguard party will be the one teaching the ways of the revolution.
However we still need to address why is there no credible vanguard parties in the imperial core. My bet is that imperialism allow for the fragmentation of the working class by virtue of not having any more industry, as well as a lifestyle that is depressing and precarious rather than physically violent, and a political system that can orchestrate a spectacle of democracy.
All of these are material factors, it's not about the metaphysical state of the proletariat, it's their material relality created by imperialist extraction.
But of course you're also right to mention that there is a Eurocentric tendency in saying "people aren't ready" without mentioning that only imperial core workers are in that state
I think this is talking about an old chapo episode right after the trump election where they asked Curtis about change, if so his point is being completely misrepresented imo:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mlaPZ-xMPGY
Unless there’s been a new one and he’s gotten significantly more black pilled. Doesn’t help that the meme doesn’t mention the podcast ep or give a direct quote; you can post chairman mao quotes on pictures of Taylor Swift and liberals will share them
A YouTube link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same video on Invidious, which is a YouTube frontend that protects your privacy:
I mean I think the region being talked about matters a lot too. USA? Absolutely I agree, when it comes to the 3rd world? Historically speaking, usually the nation that is extremely exploited revolts. Russia and China were backwards and behind the times before their Revolutions. Cuba Laos and Vietnam were struggling under Imperialism before winning their revolutions, the 3rd world still has Revolutionary Potential
My two cents are that as someone from the imperialist core he probably just sees people who aren't willing to deal with all that around him, because they don't have a reason to. A big problem with revolutions there is that most of production is happening outside of those countries, where labor is a lot cheaper. As a result, most work in the service sector and shit, which is where people are very replaceable, so strikes are just monetary suicide, and those who work in domestic industry don't have it bad enough to contemplate revolution.
That's kinda why we need national liberation in places where most of production and mining are. Especially mining these days, because China accounts for a shitload of production and we can only hope CPC doesn't stray from the path.
I agree with him at this present time, however revolutionary sentiments have always been low during periods of capital expansion. The revolutions of russia, china, and germany required decades of hardship, famines, wars, and humiliation in order to achieve liberation.
Revolution isn't possible now, but to predict the capital crisis is rather simple really. Capitalism will reach a stage once again on the verge of imploding. The current boiling temperatures that the US economy is experiencing is reminiscing the 1920s, and I argue it'll be even worse, since absolutism of capitalism flow into one country only, the US.
"Revolution is impossible, until it is possible"
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Keep this in mind.
Curtis has made some creative narratives in his documentaries that provide a sometimes useful and interesting way to present a critical perspective of history, for liberals who are becoming more radical it can be refreshing and thought-provoking. But the moment Curtis speaks about the left and historical/current examples of socialist projects, it is clear that he has anticommunist boomer baby-brainrot. His analysis of the Soviet Union, China, or even more amorphous left social movements is facile and often factually wrong.
It is clear he feels he knows all about socialism, but has never done the reading. After I became radicalized and started reading and organizing, revisiting his works is painful and irritating. Ultimately, it serves some of the very problems he poses in his critique, where he rejects an alternative to the system as it exists and forms a narrative that offers no solutions and only concludes with, "oh, dear!" He has nothing to offer the left, or working class people and the world generally, because he uses all of his creative energy to ultimately undermine the liberation of mankind.
Right now, currently, yes. However there will come a point where the "inconvenience" caused by the exploitation of the working class becomes significantly greater than any suffering that comes with the transition period of a revolution.
