Karl Marx - Mark Steel Lectures Part 4/5

Mark Steel is so awesome, he teaches you a lot and makes you laugh.

That's because our economies are geared towards overproducing massive quantities of useless bullshit and trying to push as much of it off on all of us as well buy.

capitalism could not function if it did not push us to buy useless stuff. It relies on constand consumption in order to make profits. It could make goods that are of a quality that would last much longer than those they currently produce but they would put themselves out of business. Capitalism produces great waste. Marx's theory was that under communism societies would only need to produce what they needed and no more.

The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society - the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. ~ Marx

here here