And? He has to make ends meet somehow.
I’ll never understand “communists” that start private capitalist companies. Seriously, why not put their money where their mouth is and start a coop? It makes no sense to me for JT to do everything he does just to end up a capitalist lmao
Coops aren’t necessarily bastions of workers’ rights you know. Coops exist within the same framework of capitalism and are guided by the same rules, they’re also businesses, they just have distributed ownership (or don’t, in the case of the one coop I worked with).
JT’s not a party leader or a revolutionary, he runs a youtube channel where he wants to make videos. I guess that best works as a private business in his situation. Running a business as a communist sounds normal to me honestly, especially if they’re in a capitalist country already.
if you wanna get into theory then I’ve always been down with Mao’s prescription of how domestic, regional bourgeoisie do not necessarily have an antagonistic relationship with the proletariat in every situation
I don’t think Mao meant that communists should become capitalists… he meant it makes sense to align with nationalist bourgeoisie to fight off a common enemy, like international and imperialist capital.
I wholeheartedly disagree that the best way to run anything under this system to be a private company. Unless “the best way” means the most profitable. Sure exploiting the labor of others is always gonna be more profitable. Even if you pay your workers well and give them nice benefits. But you’re still exploiting them, for profit.
I don’t understand how you can’t see how antithetical to what being a communist is. Unless you accept JT is just selling the product of communism and anti-capitalism, that he is just the expression of capitalism commodifying everything including the fight and resistance against itself… and like it? I don’t understand how this is fine and acceptable.
Shouldn’t we hold ourselves to higher standards…? It’s a thing being born into privilege and using that to help the communist cause. It’s another to climb the ladders of capitalist exploitation using the mantle of revolutionary thought.
If he’s managing to provide a living for 4 people and those people are in a situation where they don’t feel exploited, I don’t really see how what he’s doing is why different than say Pravda pre-revolution, or any number of other communist newspapers/periodicals over the years that until the revolution had to support their workers through wages and sales of a product.
I mean, Marx was only able to write Capital because Engles had money from profiting off the labor of others. How is this any worse than that?
he’s managing to provide a living for 4 people
Quit being a lib. Those 5 people are providing the living. If he is extracting profits from them then they are exploited. Full stop.
I support secondthought i can also understand why its not perfect. This is the critical support.
Those people are providing a living for themselves, all I’m saying is that working with someone on a project where they’re very involved and you’re all passionate about it and you don’t have to balance that with another full time job is nice.
Until the workers come out and say that they feel that JT is exploiting them or using them this whole relationship seems to be fine compared to the alternative of working for a company that directly seeks to exploit you to the maximum extent.
I’m sure cooperative ownership isn’t out of the question for this project, but there isn’t really much money in communist propaganda so it’s amazing that they’re able to support 4 salaries doing it.
But if you’re doing the work, its not profit, its pay right?
it’s 5 people’s work, if JT receives a greater share of the surplus due to being the owner than he would if they were all equal partners then he is exploiting the other workers. It’s the relationship of him as the owner and them as the employees that matters here.
Feeling exploited is not the issue… or do you think if every worker had the same conditions of Facebook employees everything would be fine? If that’s the case you are not a communist, but a social democrat.
Also hilarious for a leftist to say an employer is PROVIDING a living to their workers. When all value is produced by the workers. JT is not giving anyone the privilege of a job, he is exploiting the labor of others. That is a technical idea within capitalism, not a moral one. Exploitation is not “evil” is just how capitalism works.
And paying salaries and selling a product are not “capitalism”. It’s the structure of the business, the owners and laborers.
And like I said, if you are born to privilege, giving it up for “the cause” is stupid. It’s better to use the privilege to forward the cause. Like Engels. But striving and fighting to BECOME part of the owner class as a communist is nonsensical, unless being a communist is just a grift for you.
Gonna be completely honest, I don’t put this much thought into how a person runs a YouTube channel because it doesn’t seem that consequential to me. It’s entertainment and a product. If JT were also a landlord or running exploitative farm labor you’d have more of a point, but if he’s making internet videos in an office I just can’t really muster the emotional capacity to say he’s betraying the working class or whatever. He’s an internet content creator, not a revolutionary with an AK.
Yes, you’re right. JT is selling a commodity. It just is what it is. You’re not going to find the fight against capitalism in YouTube videos and podcasts. They’re all commodities being sold to you. Maybe I’m cynical.
You are right, I agree with your points. But then why would anyone praise and defend this? Sure it’s just slop, content, but then why put people like this on a pedestal as thought-leaders? A capitalist selling you the idea of liberation…
I tend to agree with your conclusion, but I’m gonna run with the argument. If JT is a capitalist selling the idea of liberation, does this mean his videos were somehow more proletarian or revolutionary before he employed people? He still “sold” the idea of liberation, he just didn’t engage in labour exploitation to do it.
Besides, I think you’re missing the point of the post. JT was explaining why it’s neccesary for Second Thought to generate revenue, and like another commenter said, that would still be neccessary even if the channel was a coop.
Also, we don’t have any information on how the business is structured or what the workplace’s democracy looks like. After all, the only thing that really determines if it’s labour exploitation or not is what happens with the surplus value the
companyworkers generate. If it goes to JT, sure, he’s a capitalist, but we don’t have that kind of information, so I’m not willing to make that judgement (yet).There is a collective in Brazil called Soberana. They have a lot of presence in online spaces, and they are Marxist-Leninists. They employ no one, they help each other but they each acts as an “independent” propagandist. They don’t need to make a profit as an organisation to survive. The efforts and works of each member, directed in tasks, is what keeps the collective going.
Each individual might or might not try to make a living out of producing propaganda, but it’s not a profit incentive as they are just laborers making money off their work. Their incentive is to survive.
I understand JT was explaining his reasoning, but it falls short of what he espouses. Sure his private company needs to make a profit to survive. This profit is the direct surplus value from the employees’ labor. Before he had a private company with a profit motive, his only incentive was to survive within the system as a worker. He has completely different incentives as a business owner, diametrically opposed even, no? That’s the whole basis of class, his material incentives are now different. Would he sacrifice the business he’s been growing for years because of ideology? Perhaps, but it’s more likely he’d sacrifice ideology for the business instead.
Your example is not that good. Soberana members like Ian Neves and João Carvalho still have video editors and other people that directly work with them, even if Soberana itself don’t have that.
We are all living in capitalism, if that type of thing is needed for us to be able to spread class consciousness, then it needs to be done. JT is not hypocritical for doing things this way, it’s the unfortunate reality if he wants to continue to be a propagandist.
Answering your own question, don’t put breadtubers on a pedestal.
I don’t 🤷♂️
but then why put people like this on a pedestal as thought-leaders
The people doing that are literal children
I wouldn’t put him on a pedestal, he’s just some person. His videos are neat and he’s seemed like a cool guy from the Q&A he did on Hexbear, but that’s about as much as I’d say. I don’t think his videos are disqualified because he employs people though.
Never said that. I just think it’s wild people will bend over backwards to justify it instead of criticising it.
If he has no shareholders and no outside sources of debt funding (loans) to repay, his “business” never needs to make a profit though.
Yes it does. How does it grow? How do you expand operations or upgrade equipment? If you’re breaking even and something breaks, how do you replace it?
Would income be profit if it were used to build the business? I wouldn’t say so, necessarily.
Its all relative to time periods.
It is.
Profit is quite literally only the money left over after a business accounts for all expenses. Reinvestment is not seen as an expense, as it can only happen in the business cycle after the money was generated.
It doesn’t really matter what you define it as, profit has two distinct purposes, and the first is for reinvestment into the company that created it. The second is to pay shareholders and generate wealth. The second purpose is what socialism and sane people are opposed too, but you cannot run a profitless firm, it is not possible.
A worker can never receive 100% of the value they generate, as it would not be materially possible even without profit because of taxes. They should receive as much as possible, however a portion must be divided out for investment back into the labour.
That’s why socialism advocates for coops owned by the workers who can make those decisions themselves, and state ownership, as the state is not motivated by greed.
…but you cannot run a profitless firm, it is not possible.
Yes you can. That’s the whole point behind the term “break even.”
I think more important than co-op organizational structure would be a question of work place democracy. Are the workers given say over how their work is undertaken, do they have power over decisions? Ultimately under capitalism we are limited by the need to make enough profit to reproduce the business. The form that business takes when given those constraints can only be on some level exploitative.
The best you can do as an owner or part owner in the case of coops is to listen to your employees needs and compensate them as much as possible given the constraints of the budget.
The problem, as always, with capitalism is that exploitation goes into overdrive when the goal is to make a profit above the cost of production (including labour inputs) and this there is pressure to keep wages down and force longer hours.
If we had an unbiased look at his employees perspective and the finances, we could judge if he is engaging in profit making, or just earning enough to keep the lights on and to keep product moving. We can only take him at his word at this point.
Are there issues with this format, probably, but in the final analysis, will another pro communism propagandist be beneficial for the cause?
As long as proletarian interests are being upheld and pushed forward - we’re fine with it. JT’s channel is useful for the movement, and this is something I can attest to myself - I, for instance, got radicalized at least partly because I stumbled upon his content. We need more comrades, we need more cadres, we really need the movement to grow - thus, we can critically support JT’s work.
Not sure how he’s organized the operations between Hakim and Yugo and their production staffs, but a coop would still have employees, need to pay taxes on revenues/profits, work within the tax system of the country of operations, etc.
So effectively, there would be no difference financially. Coop organization needs to have a minimum number of people to reach quorum, annual meetings, a board of directors right? It might not be feasible for JT, Hakim, Yugopnik and their respective production staff to organize as a coop as they are all in three different countries.
The difference is a coop doesn’t exploit the labor of the workers, and there are no owners profiting off of them. Why are you all clawing at technicalities to dismiss this as an issue? It’s like if Coca Cola had a campaign saying Che was based and socialism is actually cool, you’d all be saying “fuck yeah coke is true praxis! Critical support for coke!”
This is absolutely a dog shit take… I’ve worked at a coop, we absolutely were exploited by management.
Coops still exploit the labor of the workers, just not for the salary of the owner. It still exists within the capitalist paradigm, so it still exploits to stay competitive.
idk if this guy is a grifter or not, but syndicates aren’t going to topple capitalism
I don’t agree that coops (as a concept) exploit the labor of workers, as the workers decide what is done with the value they produce.
Some “coops” do, but they hardly are coops (like Mondragon or w.e that Spanish one is called).
And ofc coops, unions or syndicates won’t end capitalism. But you know what also for sure won’t? Capitalist fucking private businesses.
Like not becoming a fucking capitalist just seems like the bare minimum y’know…
You ever started a coop? It sounds to me like you need to ask yourself why you almost never see them and then realize you don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s not JT’s job to innovate on corporate governance, he should focus on making good content. There’s nothing that precludes one from running a corporation or LLC exactly like it were a coop. That’s left up to the operating agreement or just internal agreements within the enterprise. If he wants to call everyone in to vote on everything, he can do exactly that. Coops create a whole host of legal and governance issues that need to be worked out. There are lawyers that specialize in it. It’s not for the feint of heart and it doesn’t confer any advantages over a vanilla company. Instead it opens you up to all kinds of legal problems when your realize you didn’t spend enough capital up front to have a bullet-proof agreement.
Reiterating that I don’t have an interest in defending this guy in particular and now adding that I don’t have an interest in “coops (as a concept” but instead coops as they exist.
You were doing a decent job of explaining to that other person that exploitation isn’t a vibe but instead an objective measure of circumstances, but nominally free agreements in council votes don’t erase that reality just like the nominally free agreements in employment contracts don’t. Under capitalism, if a coop is to stay competitive, the owners must still agree to foregoing some amount of compensation for subsidizing cut prices and reinvesting into the company to stay competitive. That they are signing this away in a council meeting and not a hiring contract is immaterial.
Ultimately, all of this is edutainment slop. It is not “the movement.” It is not “the Left.” However, for something more credible, we shouldn’t be evaluating it on the basis of its personal moral purity, but on the basis of the change that it produces. If syndicates are the most useful, then use syndicates, but if the most useful tool under brutal capitalism is to “brutally use it” as Zizek says, then we should consider that too, even if ultimately those capitalists too will ultimately be our enemies (as Zizek is already).
Why doesn’t this content creator jump through even more impractical hoops to sooth me personally?
Like yeah, it sucks we’re stuck within the systems we’re in, but its not like he’s running an IPO to buy shares of SecondThoughtAI$.
Coca Cola is a massive multinational, multi-billion dollar corporation. It would take a lot more than a shallow campaign pandering to socialist imagery for supporting it to be considered anything resembling “praxis.”
For those of you wondering, this is why JT needs more money to keep running his channel
reads
To make sure that the people working for him can get paid? Seems alright by me.
I was going to make the joke of “omg jay tee is bourzhgeysee??!?1?”
I am disappointed to see not only that that comment has already been written, but it has been made without a single drop of irony.
In a nutshell, JT is a petite-bourgeoisie, huh, so this is what bourgeois class traitors look like, neato.
bourgeois class traitors
Do you mean a member of the bourgeoisie who betrays theirs own class, aligning with the Proletariat?
Or a member of the Proletariat who aligns with the bourgeoisie, betraying their own class?
first one
The bourgeois backstabbing their own class, kinda like Marx’s sugar daddy Engles.
Okay, I’m glad I’m not the only one who makes the “sugar daddy” joke.
Ah, so JT is petit-bourgeois? While I was reading that I couldn’t help but have the idea for one of those TikTok style videos where an AI JT voice reads that message while the Soviet Union anthem grows louder and louder. Maybe it could feature a happy picture of him in front of a drab concrete wall which shakes more and more intensely as the audio goes on and the image is slowly eclipsed by the USSR flag.
[tone indicator: this is a joke]
that message
What message?
He is.
Yep, he technically is lol
Lotta western leftists seem to learn class analysis 101 without deconstructing their liberal moralism
Anyone worried about this: read any historic class analysis; read about past revolutionary movements and the diverse material interests that comprised them. Also stop obsessing about the moral purity of entertainers, there’s so many more important things to do.
To add to your point, I think of Mao’s fantastic essay On Contradiction: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm
In particular, this part:
For instance, in the period of its first cooperation with the Communist Party, the Kuomintang stood in contradiction to foreign imperialism and was therefore anti-imperialist; on the other hand, it stood in contradiction to the great masses of the people within the country–although in words it promised many benefits to the working people, in fact it gave them little or nothing. In the period when it carried on the anti-Communist war, the Kuomintang collaborated with imperialism and feudalism against the great masses of the people and wiped out all the gains they had won in the revolution, and thereby intensified its contradictions with them. In the present period of the anti-Japanese war, the Kuomintang stands in contradiction to Japanese imperialism and wants co-operation with the Communist Party, without however relaxing its struggle against the Communist Party and the people or its oppression of them. As for the Communist Party, it has always, in every period, stood with the great masses of the people against imperialism and feudalism, but in the present period of the anti-Japanese war, it has adopted a moderate policy towards the Kuomintang and the domestic feudal forces because the Kuomintang has pressed itself in favour of resisting Japan. The above circumstances have resulted now in alliance between the two parties and now in struggle between them, and even during the periods of alliance there has been a complicated state of simultaneous alliance and struggle. If we do not study the particular features of both aspects of the contradiction, we shall fail to understand not only the relations of each party with the other forces, but also the relations between the two parties.
The relevant point being that someone’s, or some entity’s, relation to the cause is not always as simple as “for” or “against”, “helping” or “not helping”, “corrupted” or “pure.” There are times that interests intersect, but are not identical. I’m not sure if it can be generalized adequately how to deal with that fact, but it is something we have to contend with.
Thanks for sharing!
Honestly diving deeper into mao and Chinese history has been an incredibly enlightening experience.
Guerilla History is halfway through a four-part series (plus a precursor episode on GH or revleft) on China which is a great resource for anyone curious.
ITT: a thread I’m not gonna read
