Why is Hakim a Socialist?

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Hello. Today will be another rambly type of video and I'm coming to you straight from the attic of my building which is very cold and that's why I sound very stuffy like some sort of goblin creature. If you want to know why then listen to the latest uh podcast episode. I'm going to put it on screen here. All right.

Today I was thinking I would talk about something a bit more personal which is requested plenty. Uh I don't know why you guys want to know more about me but here it is. And it's kind of a the general question of why I am a socialist or am into this kind of type of radical politics. I'm putting on a glove by the way because it's [ __ ] cold up here. All right.

The common drivers for political radicalization. There's three of them really, maybe four. The first and most fundamental which is material circumstances. What you experience in your life. the social and geopolitical and economic foundation of your society and of your personal life family wise and whatnot which forms your eventual consciousness, right? The material circumstances that's the fundamental base. But then there's two that kind of build on top of that. The first one's intellectual interest and that means mostly reading or seeking out asking questions then seeking out like more academic or scientific ways of analyzing things. And then you have the emotional appeal or exploration of why things are the way they are in a more I guess nebulous way. noticing injustice in the world and being outraged at that kind of stuff.

The material reason or circumstance, of course, it's the main force. Your class defines political existence because of your organic class character. Basically, if you're, for example, a owning class, wealthier or imperial core person versus if you're somebody who is born to a family of textile workers in Bangladesh, your your perspectives are going to be very different, of course. And that's like the first step of of what your political reasoning ends up being. But then there's also these people who develop like aspirational hopes of becoming part of the ruling class and as a result they kind of like delude themselves into their perspectives which isn't necessarily a good thing but it does happen very frequently. This is usually referred to by Marxists as false consciousness like is no not the class consciousness it's the inverse [music] right where they don't have a understanding of their class position. In fact they ally directly against their interests. This usually happens because of some closeness to certain labor aristocratic values or the general ideology in society like the cultural hegemonic ideas in society that kind of force themselves on to you in hopes of you know instilling you with a thought that you may one day you know reach that kind of high level of income and ability to be uh influential politically and economically and whatnot. It's the temporarily embarrassed millionaire stereotype. And then afterwards you have also in some cases a proximity to white supremacy. doesn't mean you're white supremacist. It just means that you benefit a lot from, for example, whiteness if you're a white person. And as a result, you end up with uh perspective, let's say, that aligns you closer, especially if you come from a multicultural society where white people tend to be kind of like the the top of the social ladder. And this can also engender this false consciousness.

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Regardless, the material basis for my case is the fact that my country was illegally and uh and brutally invaded by the United States and also the previous buildup to it, right? The um economic sanctions against my country that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people because of lack of healthcare access and lack of sanitation services and whatnot that were li greatly limited because of what we were allowed to import. The foundational core was that direct experience of seeing the aggression against my country. That's number one. And that kind of leads to what I was saying before. You sometimes develop organic and correct social consciousness. Like analyzing or experiencing imperialism causes you to be anti-imperialist kind of like as a knee-jerk reaction. You have to be because you're experiencing this aggression against your country. But it can also at the same time form incorrect political opinions. For example, the typical I guess universal almost exclusively European actually anti-immigrant bias because of economic [music] difficulties. Right? the economy isn't doing so well and they're immigrants in a particular country. So, it's the immigrants fault, right? Instead of understanding that the economic failures or or shortages or whatever are mostly driven through bad economic policy, vast majority of of which suits the ruling class, the owning class, it has created or generated massive profits for them, but has imiserated the rest of the population. And you can kind of meme on for example like you look at certain Gulf countries and the their immigrant rates are like 85% or something versus Britain which is like 10% or 15 or whatever it is and those countries work just fine and are in some form of economic ascendancy like comparatively I mean meanwhile Britain is not doing so well and the ways that they deal with the immigrant perspective politically. Now this discussion gets a lot more nuanced but I just want you to to understand the difference in uh what people perceive or people think based on the material basis of [music] what happens.

But back to the point I was talking about the material circumstances of my life was the the invasion and imperialism against my country but subsequently and this is when I start this gets into the intellectual bit and kind of loops back in on the material analysis. It's the fact that ownership of Iraqi national assets or or resources are non Iraqi. they're owned by something American or European or whatever else interests usually post invasion or almost exclusively post invasion actually at the same time the general politics or economic situation of my own country if you're to consider for example youth unemployment [music] or illiteracy as is rising or the state of public facilities currently services healthcare services educational services maintenance of roads simple things that the state's supposed to be able to do that they are not able to do or lack the political will to do or lack the economic resources to do which is kind of all of the above the net decrease in quality of life the severess of climate change and what it's doing particularly to agriculture. The inability to uh use the relatively arable and fertile land of the country to produce a self-sufficient agricultural system like we had previously. These things kind of all lead into this intellectual interest where you read and and and want to find scientific explanations of certain political or economic or social phenomena. And when you find these analyses convincing, you also kind of develop a particular political consciousness. And that is what I started doing as I got older. I started to read more into just generally what is imperialism? What is what why did this happen to my country? Why is my country the way it is? Why are other countries in similar situations despite being very wealthy, you know, historically and uh resource-wise and and culturally and so on and so forth, right? the more that you read and particularly in you know geopolitical and economic matters the more you'll eventually land on like the base theories of Marxism and eventually you build up on that with the modern analysis economic analysis like Wallerstein and John Smith and in Swandi and Torlaus and all these other people like build on the value transference theory and unequal exchange and all this stuff right that leads you to understand that the system economic system is much more complicated but also is directly set up in a way to benefit a certain part of the over another part of the world as a heritage of colonialism. And this arose out of a particular momentary I guess shift in in in historical development regarding means of production expansion means of production that eventually leads to military development that that's what allowed for colonialism to become so significant and allowed relatively quote unquote insignificant countries I mean like the Netherlands and Belgium and Britain right to become so ascendant in the world afterwards and to to conquer such large swats of the world despite that for the vast majority of history they're not much and that's not like an insult to these countries I mean the land and the area and whatnot did allow for them to become significant powers. But economic forces that developed from leaps in technical sophistication or or capacity of the productive forces allowed them to expand much more greatly than other quoteunquote historically established societies that have much more favorable geographic and and resource spaces. And as a result of that, you end up understanding why the global south is the way it is, what the economic system is that leads into these things that cause it to be quote unquote so poor, and also the political consequences of of imperialism.

Something that you find also that's interesting in this is that the um cultural hedgemony in the west or in the imperial core is then kind of like juxtaposed or mirrored in the imperial periphery and you see these social side effects or these like culturally hegemonic transnational bourgeoa ideologies or ideological precepts or forms of analysis that present themselves even in your own country wherever you may be in the world for example in the case of Iraq [music] they present themselves through the lens of certain aspects of white supremacy or through orientalism they also present and themselves in in the imperial corps as like ideological justifications of this imperialist aggression against these imperialized countries through for example women's rights or whatever else right these people don't treat women well supposedly even though we have no statistics and we like it's all made up you know criticism that we have of this country by the way that means that we should legally invade them and also take over their resources like the the justification is two levels deep it's not difficult to see but because the ideology goes so deep it's enough to fool a lot of people. But concluding all of this, this is where the intellectual aspect really comes into play because when you have solid or concrete systems of analysis, they can lead you to correct conclusions and this gives you the ability to correctly interpret the reasons and causes of events. Again, we mentioned immigration earlier, so I can mention it again. The desire to reduce wages in the imperial corps means importing cheaper labor and as a result of that the imperial corps regular workers feel disadvantage or feel that this is unfair which gives a rise to uh anti-immigrant politics and as a result of that you end up with more significant issues despite the fact that the very core of what was happening was they want to just reduce wages to be able to increase profits which is a necessary prerequisite for capitalist expansion or capital expansion. A person who lacks the ability to see that the core of this issue is reducing wages so that you can increase profits so that you can expand capital and and reinvest into the circuit of capital. Person who does not know this or lacks the ability to understand that this is the reason that these politics have been put into place will think that no immigrants are coming in because the Jews are bringing them in or some other nonsense, right? Like, oh, they're doing it to dilute the white race or other nonsense despite the fact that many imperial periphery countries have far more immigrant and and refugee populations working and living and whatnot. Those countries have their own issues, of course, but nothing of the sort of oh, they're diluting our race or anything. that that that ties back into the white supremacy angle. But that's what I mean. If you don't have the ability to correctly interpret these things, then you end up with incorrect political conclusions that force you or it causes you to have a false political consciousness that only leads to incorrect political quote unquote solutions for the issues. For example, let's just deport all the immigrants. Oh, who will do all these jobs? Who will maintain the profit rate of this nation and keep their enterprises economically competitive? Well, we don't really care. Let's we think about that later. And then eventually the economic system of that country collapses or its ability to be competitive internationally collapses. To quote my very dear friend Yugo, it's a snake that eats its own ass.

Um, another example of this would be the reasoning for sanctions, right? If I recall correctly, Iran is one of the largest producers of various forms of nuts and so is California in the states. And there's a huge lobby, the nut lobby in the states that wants sanctions or war with Iran because they want to reduce the competitiveness of Iranian nut production so that Californian nuts can be more sold on the world market and have get better prices so their profits can increase, right? But people don't know this. Instead, they just think, oh yeah, it's because Iran does X to dissident or whatever as if the United States doesn't do the same or even worse to their own dissident. But that's a conversation for another day. And you'll never find anybody who dislikes the Iranian regime more than I do. But more importantly, this is just another example of why having intellectual curiosity that leads you to correct conclusions or abilities to analyze can result in a fuller understanding of why things happen the way they do. And that's what I did for my own country. I analyzed I looked into why our oil is processed in this particular way. Why uh all our various ores are produced in this country. all the trade links that we've had historically are monopolized by certain political or local militia factors or international conglomerates stuff that does not make sense. It's things that would thoroughly enrich our country and allow us to have a better life individually as as Iraqis. But this disappears because it suits the private interests of international capital for the most part.

And finally then there's the emotional aspect which is the least intellectually convincing but not least important one which is for example the plight of the general state of the global south. When you see poverty around you, for example, in your own country, either experience it yourself or you perceive it or even in the Peer Court, there's so much when it comes to inability to access healthare or inability to have secure sources of food, living food deserts and whatnot, having basically no reasonable amount of access to something that's healthy and and and plentiful or bad infrastructure or bad schooling or whatever else, right? It doesn't really matter. These are universal things in the modern world. Sadly for me like as my personal experience has thoroughly radicalized me even further uh when it comes to these perspectives [music] despite the fact that I've been in this sphere for quite a bit of time. It's my experience as a physician. The disparities that poverty cause when it comes to healthcare, the worse outcomes, the worse ways of handling med not medication but specifically your disease or various diseases, the reduced quality of like so much is worsened by the fact that people do not have access to the basic needs that they need. And that is something that society or the state should be able to at least create a a minimum level of right that's not done for a lot of the world even in the many imperial core countries. Why is that? That leads back into the intellectual and the material things, but the preliminary outrage is an emotional one. And that also helps you.

And and then I'm going to kind of round off with the very final point to this, which is the um evidence generally which has pushed me into this direction, which is the achievements of former socialisms in self-sufficiency, healthcare, and agriculture and education and so on so forth. level of infrastructure especially for such poor countries China and and and SAR structure for example having developed to such significant Vietnam Cuba despite the fact that's been so thoroughly sanctioned I made many videos about this that you can probably see on screen moreover is like the historical evidence of this or current development like modern China or modern Vietnam or even like personal anecdotes I've had my father and other relatives of mine have studied in the USSR or other socialist countries they generally have had nothing but positive to say like the the few negatives that I've ever heard which are very few by the are mostly like social differences like you know they disagree with a particular social practice or you know things like that but the criticisms weren't really that deep and they were mostly positive and that's like to counter the the nonsense oh talk to somebody who lives in the US I know people who lived in the USSR and other socialist countries they generally had nothing but positives to say about these places and that's aside from all the evidence that that are plentifully available and all the mountains of research and and and books written on this and so on and so forth.

Um, the concluding part of this is when it comes to what forms your political consciousness, you have to be very honest with yourself in interrogating why do you believe what you believe. And you have to realize at some point it is kind of things forces outside of your control, things that you experienced, economic, social, geopolitical, so on so forth. And then it's whatever you've decided to read and how you decide to interpret the world. And then finally it's your own emotional processing of things. And all this kind of comes together to create a particular social outlook. Now, this can be quote unquote positive and correct [music] and there's an objective correct thing uh in this or it could be nonsense like the vast majority of farright rhetoric. But at the end of the day, the only way that you can continue to maintain a correct perspective or to develop one in the first place is to read and to read widely. There's a lot of garbage out there, but it's also good to read garbage cuz then you can develop the ability to notice it as garbage and and be able to digest it properly or to criticize it properly. or also you may be challenged in a positive way and you might grow out of it. But the point of this as as as so frequently from all my videos is that you should read. That's that's that's about it. That's why I'm a socialist because I read. All right, that's all for today. I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know if you want to hear more of stuff like this or if you thought this was very boring. And uh yeah, I'll see you in the next one. I like