https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzXXjiwlxmU&t=336s
Chomsky asserts that socialism never existed, only depraved forms of it.
I remember from a college course that Marx asserted that classes are at war with each other. The upper class oppresses the lower classes. The lower fight back and the conflict is solved into a synthesis. That’s presented as a law of history.
He logically suggests to get out of this with a completely egalitarian society. No more classes, no more wars.
I’m completely missing the transition between the two situations. If the war between classes is a law, it doesn’t have exceptions. Creating a society without warriors out of a war torn society sounds difficult to me to say the least.
Therefore, I accept Chomsky’s point. Socialism was never implemented because nobody found a way to make that transition. Several tries were made and all failed.
Peterson definition of marxism is the oppressed and oppressing classes or groups of people. Anything or group accepting this kind of relation is marxist for Peterson.
In Marx’s time, capitalists were stealing wealth from the proletariat and repressing any reaction against this evident injust situation. The relations between those two groups were violent.
Now, we have women, black people, latino and so on oppressed by white heterosexual males. That’s weird and I risk a lot by simply saying I’m one and I can’t see how I oppress. It would just show you how biased I am. Jews had the same role in nazi Germany btw. Any group will do the job as scapegoat for personal resentment. Relations between the opposing groups are also violent.
Any oppression, imagined or real, enter that scheme and it’s considered violent. Therefore any violence opposed to it is considered legitimate. We’re in the marxian scheme of the history.
Peterson makes here a shortcut. Anything respecting this scheme is Marxism at work. Therefore, to him, Marxism has been applied and is at work now.
Peterson takes a scheme and see it operating. Chomsky takes the ideal of Marxism and sees it as never applied anywhere.
They’re both clever and brilliant. They’re not talking about the same thing.
Commentaires