Full transcript of “The Dark Truth About Consumerism: A New Kind of Slavery — Prof. Jiang Xueqin”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 All right? Now, what's amazing about Marx is that today we say he's wrong, right? Communism happened in the Soviet Union, it happened in China, but it didn't happen in Europe and in the United States, where Marx said it would happen first, because Germany was more industrialized than Russia or China, okay? Does that make sense? That's that's that's what we say. But if you think about it deeply, okay? Um Marx was right. After World War II, every society, every industrial society, to some extent adopted the ideals of communism.
0:46 Okay, does that make sense? Okay, we call this socialism and not communism, but basically it adhere to the thinking of Marx, which is to make the worker the heart and center of your society. And and why did they do that after World War II? Professor Jang is setting the stage, explaining how post-war societies, even in the West, adopted Marxist principles by prioritizing the worker as the engine of value and the center of society. Exactly, okay? Because workers create value. Okay? Money doesn't create any value. Money just creates more money. It's okay, it's speculative. But the workers create value, they're productive. And therefore, you have to treat your workers properly. So, in America and in Europe, workers became
1:33 the heart and center of your society. And the workers, through unions, could uh demand political reforms. And so, our society was geared toward making the lives of the middle class, the working class, better, okay? That's why you had excellent health care, great great public schools, um cheap universities. Okay? So, the '50s and '60s and '70s was basically the peak uh of society for the working class. But in the '80s, we start to change this. Why? Why would you why would you want to
2:19 change the system? It's a great system, right? Marx was right. Having the worker as the heart and center of your of your society, as the central organizing unit of your of society, makes a lot more sense than having money as the heart and center, okay? But starting in the '80s, we start to go back to money. Why? Excuse me? Like they have the um production necessary for our society, so they want more Who wants more? Yes, exactly, okay? So, what happened in the '80s is something called the revolt of the elite.
3:07 Okay? In other words, the problem with having a society based on the worker is it becomes too egalitarian, too equal, right? But if you are like the elite, you don't want equality, you want difference. You want to have power and money in your hands. Does that make sense? So, the revolt of the elite happened in the '80s, and this is what we call in the United States the Reagan revolution, okay? The Reagan revolution. The beginning of neoliberalism, free market capitalism. And in Britain it was called Thatcherism, okay? Margaret Thatcher, the Thatcher revolution. And so, now you need to transition away
3:54 from the worker to something else, okay? Another ideology that allows the elite to amass power. Okay? So, just to show you how radical this revolution was. In the late '70s, okay? In the '70s, if you were a CEO, the head of a company, okay? You were making on average 1 million US dollars a year. That's pretty good, right? That's really good money. And that 1 million dollars was more than 20 times the worker. Okay? And that's pretty reasonable. Today, the average CEO in the United States makes 20 million dollars a year.
4:43 And that is 200 to 300 times more than the average worker in the company. Okay, does that make sense? So, um in the '80s, inequality started to explode. Right? And so, they're transitioning from the worker to a new organizing unit called the consumer. This is the core of the lecture's shift. Professor Jang is identifying the 1980s as the moment society's organizing principle changed from the worker to the consumer. Okay? So, they needed to destroy the the working class, the middle class. And the way they did it was by introducing a new concept called the consumer, okay? So,
5:29 in the '50s, '60s, and '70s, the government promised you a good job. If you were a member of our society, if you were a citizen, I promise you a good job that you would have for the rest of your life okay? Starting in the '80s, the government said, "I promise you that you have low prices and a wide selection of goods." Okay? Does that make sense? All right? So, this sounds like a subtle shift, going from the worker to the consumer, okay? But what this meant was a revolution in society, a revolution in politics. So, remember that an example of the worker, the worker has
6:15 to have political consciousness in order to protect his or her rights, in order to organize and and unify and uh push for favorable political reforms, okay? That's what what the worker must do, okay? But now, let's think about the mentality of the consumer. And to do this, let's do another thought experiment. And the thought experiment experiment is this. Everyone in the school, about 500 people, I decide to give everyone 1 million US dollars, okay? So, everyone in the school has exactly 1 million US dollars to spend. What happens now? Think about this. What happens now? Use your imagination.
7:03 What happens? What's the first thing you do? >> [snorts] >> What's the first thing you do? I've given you a million dollars. What do you do with it? Well, the first thing you do is buy something right? What do you want to buy? Well, a million dollars is a lot of money. What What What do you want to buy now? You buy a house, right? That's great. That's a great purchase. Then what do you do with Then what do you do? Um like I try to con- convince my classmates to
7:50 Okay, first thing is Naba's a house. Then Then what does he do? Excuse me? Buy furniture. Then what does he do? And And there's something that he must do that's very important. What What What's he buy the house? What does he want to do? Make more money. He wants to take pictures and post it on social media. >> This social media-fueled competition for status is a key part of modern consumerism. What are your thoughts on this? Drop them in the comments below. Right? So, everyone sees it on social media. Then you see this. Naba's has huge house in Beijing with lots of fancy furniture. What do you do now? You also want to buy a house. But what kind of house? A bigger house, right? And then what do
8:36 you do? You also post pictures, okay? Then how do other people feel? You You think this is funny, okay? But this happens all the time. So, very quickly, what happens in the school? And you Yeah, you all spend your money, and you all go into debt, right? Because you're in competition with each other to buy the biggest thing. And 1 million dollars is a lot of money, but it's not enough to buy everything, right? So, you go into debt, you borrow more more more money to buy more things. And then what happens?
9:25 >> [music] >> And then what happens? How do you guys feel about each other? Do you guys have lunch together? Do you guys have dinner together? Do you guys like like like like to share homework together? You guys hate each other, right? At the end of the day, what will happen is you all go into debt, and you all hate each other. Right? So, that's consumerism. This is what what consumerism is. Consumerism creates a competition in society for prestige, okay? To see who can post the nicest social media pictures. This leads to the individualization or the atomization of
10:11 you, okay? In other words, you are now unable to act together. You don't want to organize, you don't want to act in solidarity, okay? And ultimately, this means that you develop economic logic, okay? Professor Jang argues that this consumer-driven competition isolates us, replacing community solidarity with economic logic, a state where every decision is filtered through a lens of personal gain and capital. And what is economic logic? It's just see the world only through the lens of capital. Okay? Does it make sense? So, when you when you see someone and you you're like, "Okay, well, do I want
10:58 to date this person?" You don't ask, "Oh, is this person a nice person?" You you ask yourself, "How much money does this person have?" Okay? Do you understand? You use economic logic in order to understand the world and to reason and analyze the world, okay? Now, let me ask you this question. Today, is this how China works? Is this how the world works? The answer is yes, okay? Are do you Are you like this? Yes, you are like this, okay? You've been brainwashed into think thinking that this is the only way to behave and to think. You're in school. Why are you in school?
11:43 So you can get a good job. So you can get a good job. Why? To make money. To make money. And so you can buy things, okay? Do you understand? That's how you all think. But there are different ways to think about school, right? You're like, "I'm in school to learn, to open my mind, to have an imagination, to think critically about the world, right?" And that was the way we thought about school when the workers were dominant. But now that consumers are dominant, all we think about is, "How do I get a good job? How do I buy a bigger house?" Because I want to post it on social media. Okay? So, if you think about this, what this really is is the perfection of slavery. This is the professor's
12:28 central thesis. A perfect slave is one who doesn't know they are a slave and, in fact, actively chooses their chains, which is what consumerism achieves. Okay? Does it make sense? What does this phrase mean, the perfection of slavery? Yeah, you become a slave of the money, but what but but what? Why is this perfect? Like, we don't even realize it. Yes, okay? Do you understand? If you're a slave, you rebel, right? But you don't know you're a slave and you like this, you choose this, then you will never rebel, okay? So, the consumerism is the perfection of slavery.
13:14 Okay? And that's why Francis Fukuyama thinks that consumerism is the end of history, because it is a system that achieves what the elites want and the masses are unwilling and unable to protest and rebel. Okay? Does that make sense? It's a perfect system. Okay?
