"and the outcome here is a horrific man-made famine not a natural disaster not bad Harvest but a man-made famine as a result of then the compulsion that gets used by the Soviet state to extract those r..."

"space and with analogy to other Frontiers to always give more fighting experience and more training in aggression to generation after generation of German soldiers in terms of nightmarish Visions this..."

"were the central ideas of Marx that lay the foundation of Communism I think there were several key ideas that Marx deployed that were destined to have such an impact and in some ways they were actuall..."

"it far more powerful than the earlier versions that he decried as merely utopian socialism so there's a million questions I could ask there but so on the utopian side so there is a utopian component t..."

"necessity um in in smuggled in among those things are most definitely utopian elements and there they come especially at the end in which Marx U sketches the notion of what things will look like after..."

"talk about the history of Communism you have to include the fact that this often tragic and dramatic history produced a lot of jokes jokes that were in part reactions sometimes to the ideological clai..."

"meaningful was that it was the working out of an idea through different civilizations different stages of historical development and that idea was the idea of human Freedom so it was not individuals o..."

"remained though was the confidence of being on the right side of history and there are few things that are as intoxicating as being convinced that your actions not only are right in the abstract but a..."

"line that history of all existing societies is the history of class struggles so what about this conception of history as a history of class struggle well so this was the motive force that KL Marx and..."

"class conflict with the the the class below them which is the working class or the proletariat and so this sort of this sort of conflict uh um uh also by the way obtains within classes so the Bourgeoi..."

"fascinating this battle of big ideas in the 19th century what are the ideas that were swimming around here yeah yeah well um the to describe the 19th century as sort of an age of ideologies is very ap..."

"potential strengths British historian ajp Taylor always has a lovely turn of phrase even when he's wrong about a historical issue uh in this case he was right he said that um angles had charm and Bril..."

"Hue to Marx's historical uh uh Vision the last thing to mention about this is that uh this uh predominance of Germany in the thinking uh of of uh Marx had two other Reflections one was that uh German ..."

"an absolutely key element in the leninist prescription for a successful Revolution if you can take that tangent a little bit uh so I guess anarchists were less organized yeah that's my definition yeah..."

"that's actually uh a disagreement with this idea that uh you know people sometimes say that uh the Soviet Union is an example of an atheistic Society so when you have atheism is the primary thing that..."

"that's right that's right I think that the that last one is is especially significant because it's it's deeply paradoxical I mean trying to outline these contradictions by the way is like subjecting M..."

"in the long run I would love to sort of uh talk about the works uh of marks The Communist Manifesto in Das Capital what can we say that's interesting about the manifestation of his ideas on paper well..."

"in form uh Das capital is intended to be the Origin of Species of its uh realm of economic thought and and represents years and years of work of of Marx laboring in the British Museum library uh worki..."

"case is there something we could say about the difference between marxian economics and Marxist political ideology so the political side of things and the economics side of things so I I think that Ma..."

"points to a really key problem or question for all of the history of Communism it has to do with it being a tradition in spite of itself and that could be expressed in the following way an original se..."

"that we're talking about let's step back to the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century and let's Steelman the case for communism let's put ourselves in the shoes of the people t..."

"also allows you to take huge liberties with the tactics and the strategies that you follow as long as your ultimate goal remains the one sketched by this this master plan so um you know ultimately som..."

"really powerful idea it is I mean at the same time though it kind of points to uh you know a further problem and that's the identity of the revolutionaries um it it turned out that uh many of these re..."

"know a fundamental tension in uh in radical movements because uh left to their own devices lennin uh announces workers tend to focus on their reality their families their workplace want better working..."

"the status of the individual versus an all powerful State and the claims of the state because to win or even just to survive in World War I you need to centralize centralize centralize uh and to uh pu..."

"do and has the chance to do uh in the course of 1917 um incidentally just to get a a sense of the sheer chaos and the um the human on an individual human level what the absence of uh established Autho..."

"faithful disciple of Marx and and most true to the received uh theory in in practice there's other influences earlier influences that operate in the Russian context uh that were not operative let's sa..."

"revolutionaries uh and Lenin is a perfect example of this because his uh older brother uh was executed as a result of being in a uh radical revolutionary movement uh that was who was arrested and exec..."

"mix because Lenin as a result and part of this family trauma of his brother becomes a absolutely reconcilable enemy of the tarist regime and sets about turning himself into what you might call a guide..."

"of Revolution so when the opportunity comes in 1917 he's primed and and ready uh for that role it's interesting that nihilism Russian nihilism had an impact on Lenin I mean traditionally niist philoso..."

"that's right that's right so prior generations of nihilists or populists um had resembled Lenin's single-mindedness by being you know by by arguing that uh one needed total devotion for this this was ..."

"leads the the party through some really difficult steps that involves things like signing the humiliating treaty with the Germans the Treaty of breslov where critics of the Bolshevik said that no one ..."

"and and dominate uh he's co-opted and promoted to positions of importance by Lenin who sees him as uh a somewhat Rough Around the Edges not very sophisticated uh much less Cosmopolitan than other Bols..."

"person who's chosen for that task also is a anomaly among Bolsheviks uh that is a man of Polish aristocratic background Felix zinski who comes to be known by the nickname iron Felix uh here's a man ab..."

"said about Stalin that he used to spend a lot of time flipping through makaveli's the prince and um it seems that Stalin's personal copy of the prince um nobody knows where that is if if if it still e..."

"criticisms by later dissidence of Bolshevik morality this question of what is the ethical standard what is the ethical law uh will bring this question into Focus Because by the and this goes back to M..."

"actually perfectly compatible in his historical role the notion that that there's an ideology it gives you a a a master plan for how history is going to develop and your own power the the increase of ..."

"the the short answer is that um the Bolsheviks in particular but also Communists more generally have had of very conflicted relationship with agriculture agriculture um as a very I mean vital obviousl..."

"that's what marks and then later the Bolsheviks have in mind um similarly the goal uh even as articulated in Marx's writings is to put Agriculture and farming on a factory model so that you won't need..."

"suffering because the for the farmers their plot of land that they thought they had gained as a result of the revolution is now taken away they no longer have the same incentives they had before to be..."

"that had to do in part I think with the incentives that had been taken away um prosperous individual Farmers have a motive for working their land and maximizing production by contrast if you are an em..."

"happening even if he wanted to stop the vicious D cycle which he certainly didn't but he wouldn't be even able to so there's all these like dark consequences of uh of what on paper seems like a good i..."

"rural societ Society was absolutely not inadvertent that was deliberate the doctrine was you bring Civil War now had there been social tensions before of course there had had there been envies had the..."

"a whole society uh stood paralyzed uh in this this process uh and how uh neighbors would be taken away in the middle of the night and people would be wary of talking about it um resistance uh uh at le..."

"left and the way in which how people were not able to talk about these things in public because that would put you next on the list uh suspected of uh of of having less than total Devotion to the stat..."

"to save people the stories soja nen's Gulag archipelago is full of stories of dedicated Communists uh who find themselves in the GG and are sure that some mistake has been made and uh if only comrad S..."

"want to be confessing on your boss on your and is this weird dark uh dynamic system where human nature just as it is it's worst absolutely absolutely why if we look at this deep discussion we had abou..."

"open um so I think that that that aspect was uh present from the very beginning uh I think that the um expectations of Marx uh that the revolution would take hold and be successful in a developed coun..."

"what that dictator is like so can you imagine a world where the dictator uh was trosky would we see very similar type of things or is the hardness and the brutality of somebody like Stalin manifested ..."

"like talk about ambition to create essentially the next stage in human evolution a new species growing out of humanity um those don't sound like very modest or limited approaches um and uh I guess we ..."

"uh although they announc that they're coming as liberators uh consider uh the foundation of communist China on the heels of World War II and yet more Chinese Civil War uh consider uh cases like Korea ..."

"this leads to an an ethos I think that um that's very hard for historians to quantify or to study in a methodical way but it's the insistence that you hear with Lenin and then especially with Stalin t..."

"1920s to the home of KL Marx fascism as implemented by the Nazi party in Germany was called The National Socialist German Workers Party uh so what were the similarities and differences of uh fascism s..."

"The Duce musolini uh in order to rep licate in peace time the ideal of total military mobilization in Wartime um although the Nazis in in Germany are inspired and borrow heavily from fascist ideology ..."

"the Nazis claimed that they were a movement not a party even though their party was called a party so what did Nazism and bolshevism and communism share or how were they opposed to one another we need..."

"uh for their part the Comm Communists uh and and from the perspective of the Soviet Union the Nazis um were in essence a super capitalist conspiracy if the if the cosmological enemy are the capitalist..."

"end so the other uh uh Beyond this um ideological uh total opposition in terms of their hoped for futures the reality is that there were aspects that were shared on either side and that included the c..."

"argues that Churchill forced Hitler to expand the war Beyond uh Poland into a global war second the mass murder of Jews po slav gypsies in death camps was an accident a uh byproduct of a global war an..."

"argument has been tried out in in different ways before in previous decades there had been attempts by historians who were actually uh well read and well-published to argue that World War II had been ..."

"so I consider um both of these claims absolutely untenable given the facts and documents so do you think it was always the case that Nazi Germany was going to invade the Soviet Union I think as you ca..."

"against them on the Eastern Front this master plan is called the genal plan OST meaning the general plan for the East and it foresees things like Mega highways on which the Germanic Master race will t..."

"there's finally a a a a fact that is speaks volumes about what the Nazis planned for the East Hitler and himler envisioned permanent war on the Eastern Front not a peace treaty not a settlement not a ..."

"Man a point that was also made as part of this uh that The oversimplified Narrative of uh sort of to put it crudely Hitler bad Churchill good has been used and abused by neocons and and uh warmongers ..."

"interchangeable in that role um is uh is a key question let me go back to the 19 19 20s and sort of asked another counterfactual question given the battle between the marxists and the Communist and uh..."

"Nazis what do you think Marx would say about the 20th century let's take it before we get to Ma and China just looking at the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany that's a really good question um I think tha..."

"success that would lead to a different reply and uh that is uh one person's perspective so that takes us to the other side of the world uh the side that's often in the west not considered very much wh..."

"be the junior partner to take an example of a Masterwork in major milestone in the history of Communism the Polish philosopher Lea kovski who was at first a committed communist and then later became d..."

"vast yeah in the darkest of ways he did outdo Stalin that's right in the statistics the Great Leap Forward ended up killing approximately 40 million people from starvation or murder can described a gr..."

"a race to get first to the achievement of full-scale Communism one of the themes that I think it's so valuable to pursue and to take seriously in the history of Communism is what concrete promises wer..."

"propose Alternatives and to let a full discussion happen and then after some of them had ventured that to come and purge them to punish them ruthlessly for having done what he had invited them to do t..."

"being as he put it beautiful blank pieces of paper upon which one can write new characters and that is um clearly at variance with what you and I know about the complex nature of human beings as we ac..."

"that again and again um The Coop in of the authority of Science by um the Soviet Union by Mao by Nazi Germany Nazi science is um is is terrifying and should serve as a reminder that science is the thi..."

"outward appearance uh statistics can also be misleading and um I think that very much in question is China's further revolution in our own times in the west China is often demonized and we've talked e..."

"their GDP into the military so I guess the question there discuss in terms of analysis is uh how do we deal with this kind of system that claims to be a uh communist system and what lessons can we tak..."

"of Communism but like the word and and the color red with a hammer and sickle you know Rocky four one of my favorite movies well that's canonical right yeah yeah I mean it is a bit of a meme but meme ..."

"patience or Leisure or Surplus for introspection but after an initial period of great interest in understanding the full measure of what Russia and other parts of the Soviet Union had undergone in thi..."

"were experienced in the past no nberg trial took place in order to hold responsible those who had repressed others in uh the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union in other ex-communist countri..."

"the vast nature of what it all cost Putin uh upon replacing yelon uh was in a position to instead traffic in the most varied eclectic and often mutually contradictory historical memories or packages o..."

"exclusion of other values has undertaken a course of aggression that has produced results quite different from what he likely expected and I think that timing is crucial here it's fascinating to try t..."

"individual leaders zalinski you can imagine all kinds of other figures that would have uh folded much easier and zinsky I think surprised a lot of the World by somehow you know this comedian somehow b..."

"reasons we just talked about uh about how these things Escape human management or even rationality um I think that war takes on a life of its own as accumulated suffering actually eliminates possible ..."

"families and everyone they know in terms of lives destroyed uh I think that peacemaking is going to face a very daunting task here given all that's accumulated um and I think in particular you know ju..."

"you mentioned territory is on the table you know NATO European Union is on the table also funding and Military help from the United States directly to Ukraine is on the table do you think it's possibl..."

"5 years in 10 years well in in a way we may already be there because ratifying the use of force to change borders in Europe was a taboo since 1945 and and now look where we are uh if that is validated..."

"interviewing world leaders whether it's people who who are no longer here some of the people we've been talking about Hitler Stalin ma or people that are still here Putin zalinsky Trump KLA Harris tha..."

"word and in German it's the Horizon of expectation so um in the case of figures like Churchill or Hitler their experience of World War I shaped their actions in World War II uh their values were shape..."

"of Europe and then already thinking about the Mastery of the world but contemporaries who met Napoleon said that it was very disturbing to talk with him because meeting with him oneon-one revealed tha..."

"that magical moment of a reading a book or seeing a movie that that really got you launched on some particular set of things that you're going to find fascinating for the rest of your life and there's..."

"world as he knew it and um he's most famous probably for the depford trilogy three novels in in a series that are linked and they're just masterful uh if only there were more books like that the Defor..."

"well it comes down to one word and that one word is read I'm as a college teacher I'm concerned about what I'm seeing unfolding before us which is classes not my classes but classes in which students ..."

"because the experience of thinking your way into other people's minds that sustained reading offers is so crucial to human empathy a broadening of your own sensibilities of you know what's possible wh..."

"a really uh interesting idea so let me give a shout out to perplexity that I'm using here for to uh to sort of summarize and take quick notes and get little Snippets of stuff which is extremely useful..."

"and combining these things is probably the key I I think one of the things I find so so wonderful about the best lectures that I've heard is it's a chance to hear someone thinking out loud not laying ..."

"intuitive um interaction between Ai and the text unfortunately partially because um the books are protected under DRM and so there's like a wall where you can't access the AI can't access the thing so..."