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Lex Fridman Podcast / episode intelligence

#444 – Vejas Liulevicius: Communism, Marxism, Nazism, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler

20 Sept 2024 26 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Vejas LiuleviciusLex Fridman

Claim mix

evaluation 11belief 11uncertainty 2observation 1preference 1

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26 published records

01 / evaluation

One of the things though that also makes Bakunin so significant is Bakunin is the first in a longer series of approaches between anarchists and communists where they try to make common cause, and you have to say that in every case, it ends badly for the anarchists, because the communist vision in particular, especially in its Leninist version, argued for discipline and a tightly organized professional revolutionary movement.

“One of the things though that also makes Bakunin so significant is Bakunin is the first in a longer series of approaches between anarchists and communists where they try to make common cause, and you have to say that in every case, it ends badly for the anarchists, because the communist vision in particular, especially in its Leninist version, argued for discipline and a tightly organized professional revolutionary movement.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

02 / evaluation

Moreover, the middle class rather than dwindling and dwindling, seemed to actually be strengthening and growing in numbers or the appearance of new kinds of people like white-collar workers or technical experts. So already in Marx’s own lifetime, and then especially in what follows Marx’s lifetime, this becomes a real problem because it puts a stick into the spokes of this particular historical prediction.

“Moreover, the middle class rather than dwindling and dwindling, seemed to actually be strengthening and growing in numbers or the appearance of new kinds of people like white-collar workers or technical experts. So already in Marx’s own lifetime, and then especially in what follows Marx’s lifetime, this becomes a real problem because it puts a stick into the spokes of this particular historical prediction.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

03 / belief

I think one of the things I find so wonderful about the best lectures that I’ve heard is it’s a chance to hear someone thinking out loud, not laying down the law, but taking you through a series of logical moves, imaginative leaps, alternative suggestions, and that’s much more than data transfer.

“I think one of the things I find so wonderful about the best lectures that I’ve heard is it’s a chance to hear someone thinking out loud, not laying down the law, but taking you through a series of logical moves, imaginative leaps, alternative suggestions, and that’s much more than data transfer.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

05 / belief

I think he would certainly have been very surprised at the course of events as it unfolded because it didn’t match his expectations at the outset.

“I think he would certainly have been very surprised at the course of events as it unfolded because it didn’t match his expectations at the outset.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

06 / uncertainty

For most people, I think, nihilism is introduced in the brilliant philosophical work, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, by the name of The Big Lebowski.

“For most people, I think, nihilism is introduced in the brilliant philosophical work, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, by the name of The Big Lebowski.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

07 / observation

There are some people who condemn cultural appropriation and say that borrowing from one culture to another is to be condemned or the problem is a synonym for cultural appropriation is world history.

“There are some people who condemn cultural appropriation and say that borrowing from one culture to another is to be condemned or the problem is a synonym for cultural appropriation is world history.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

08 / belief

I think that throughout the early part of the 20th century, the late 19th century, early part of the 20th century, so much of the compelling case for communism came from the confidence that people in the West more generally placed in science, the notion that science is answering problems.

“I think that throughout the early part of the 20th century, the late 19th century, early part of the 20th century, so much of the compelling case for communism came from the confidence that people in the West more generally placed in science, the notion that science is answering problems.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

09 / belief

I think my concern is about the part of the equation that involves people just being desperately unhappy, laying the foundations for more trouble to come.

“I think my concern is about the part of the equation that involves people just being desperately unhappy, laying the foundations for more trouble to come.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

10 / belief

I think the answer that our historian can give is a historical answer that we have to inquire into what has to happen in order to arrive at the past we are today.

“I think the answer that our historian can give is a historical answer that we have to inquire into what has to happen in order to arrive at the past we are today.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

11 / uncertainty

Even just in the religious context, it challenges our conception of who we are as humans. There’s Nietzsche who’s also, I don’t know, hanging around the area.

“Even just in the religious context, it challenges our conception of who we are as humans. There’s Nietzsche who’s also, I don’t know, hanging around the area.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

12 / belief

” I think that the arrival on the scene of a new generation of Ukrainians has produced a very different dynamic and a disinclination for any kind of nostalgia for the past, packaged however it might be, and however nostalgic it might be made to appear.

“” I think that the arrival on the scene of a new generation of Ukrainians has produced a very different dynamic and a disinclination for any kind of nostalgia for the past, packaged however it might be, and however nostalgic it might be made to appear.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

13 / belief

I think that in the process of hatching schemes that were one-size-fits-all for a country as big and as varied in its communities as China, inevitably, such an imposition of one model was going to lead to serious malfunctions.

“I think that in the process of hatching schemes that were one-size-fits-all for a country as big and as varied in its communities as China, inevitably, such an imposition of one model was going to lead to serious malfunctions.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

16 / belief

” I think that in retrospect, that special role carved out for special individuals who can move this process forward and accelerate historical development allowed for people to step into those roles and appoint themselves executors of this ideological vision.

“” I think that in retrospect, that special role carved out for special individuals who can move this process forward and accelerate historical development allowed for people to step into those roles and appoint themselves executors of this ideological vision.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

17 / evaluation

That involved things like creating small smelting furnaces in individual farm communes. It involved folding together farming territories into vast communes of very large size that were, just because of their sheer gigantism, supposed to be by definition more efficient than small-scale farming.

“That involved things like creating small smelting furnaces in individual farm communes. It involved folding together farming territories into vast communes of very large size that were, just because of their sheer gigantism, supposed to be by definition more efficient than small-scale farming.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

18 / preference

I tend to want to take an anthropological perspective in the history of communism and to take very seriously those people who avow that they are communists and this is the project that they have underway. And then after hearing that avowal, I think as a historian, you have to say, well, let’s look at the details.

“I tend to want to take an anthropological perspective in the history of communism and to take very seriously those people who avow that they are communists and this is the project that they have underway. And then after hearing that avowal, I think as a historian, you have to say, well, let’s look at the details.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

19 / evaluation

In the case of Hegel, in this very Prussian and German context, he identified the realization of freedom also with the growth of the state because he thought that governments are the ones that are going to be able to deliver on laws and on the ideal of a state of the rule of law, in German the Rechtsstaat.

“In the case of Hegel, in this very Prussian and German context, he identified the realization of freedom also with the growth of the state because he thought that governments are the ones that are going to be able to deliver on laws and on the ideal of a state of the rule of law, in German the Rechtsstaat.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

20 / evaluation

Because to win, or even just to survive in World War I, you need to centralize, centralize, centralize, and to put everything onto an authoritarian wartime footing in country after country.

“Because to win, or even just to survive in World War I, you need to centralize, centralize, centralize, and to put everything onto an authoritarian wartime footing in country after country.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

21 / evaluation

Because without it, you’ll only have half-hearted compromise and something less than the consciousness that they then need in order to rule, to administer, and to play the historical role that they’re fated to have.

“Because without it, you’ll only have half-hearted compromise and something less than the consciousness that they then need in order to rule, to administer, and to play the historical role that they’re fated to have.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

22 / evaluation

When I was able to visit the Soviet Union later for a language course in the summer of 1989, one of the obligatory tours that we took was to file reverently past the body of Lenin outside the Kremlin in the mausoleum at Red Square, and communist mummies, like those of Lenin, earlier, Stalin had been there as well, communist mummies like Mao or Ho Chi Minh really, I think, speak to a blending of earlier religious sensibility, reverence for relics of great figures, almost saintly figures, so that even what got proclaimed as atheism turned out to be a very demanding faith as well, and I think that’s a contradiction that other scholars have pointed out as well.

“When I was able to visit the Soviet Union later for a language course in the summer of 1989, one of the obligatory tours that we took was to file reverently past the body of Lenin outside the Kremlin in the mausoleum at Red Square, and communist mummies, like those of Lenin, earlier, Stalin had been there as well, communist mummies like Mao or Ho Chi Minh really, I think, speak to a blending of earlier religious sensibility, reverence for relics of great figures, almost saintly figures, so that even what got proclaimed as atheism turned out to be a very demanding faith as well, and I think that’s a contradiction that other scholars have pointed out as well.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

23 / evaluation

Marx would have been furious to hear this and it’s almost heroically wrong as a historical statement, because Marx insisted that all previous philosophers have theorized about reality.

“Marx would have been furious to hear this and it’s almost heroically wrong as a historical statement, because Marx insisted that all previous philosophers have theorized about reality.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

24 / evaluation

I think there was allied to this was a tremendous confidence in some very 19 century ideas about how society could be administered and what made for orderly society in a way where if the right infrastructure was in place, you might expect society to kind of run itself without the need for micromanagement from above.

“I think there was allied to this was a tremendous confidence in some very 19 century ideas about how society could be administered and what made for orderly society in a way where if the right infrastructure was in place, you might expect society to kind of run itself without the need for micromanagement from above.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast
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