Hasan Piker is one of the biggest streamers on Twitch, which is quite the accomplishment because the platform was originally for gamers, but he does political commentary. With over 2.2 million followers on Twitch, 1.1 million on Twitter, and 1 million on YouTube, he has quite the influence. He’s a hardcore “eat the rich” type pro-socialist leftist, but he’s not who he appears to be.
I know you said this feels like running sandpaper across your face, but bringing up charity / "effective altrusim" is completely orthogonal to Marxism, truly. Nothing about charity is relevant to a Marxist vision of history, or to a better economic order of society one way or the other.
It's difficult, too, to talk about "a Marxist morality" -- there really is no such thing. Morality and ethics is something you have to bring to a Marxist analysis, not something you can take from it. Having a certain morality or ethics will influence you to adopt a Marxist critique of society, but Marx wasn't doing ethical philosophy. One of my favorite Marx quotes:
"To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense couleur de rose [i.e., seen through rose-tinted glasses]. But here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class-relations and class-interests. **My standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them.**"
It would only be relevant if charity were a piece of the puzzle in overcoming capitalism, and it simply isn't -- even though more money helps poor and working people more than less money does, charity does nothing to restructure the social relations of production in society -- if anything, charity can only reflect or reify them in a "superstructural" way.
My family received some charity recently -- not to get too much into it, but rarely in life have I "felt my place" so clearly. When we interacted with volunteers, some people were normal and chill, but more often than not we were expected to go on and on about how grateful we were, how lucky we were, how much this meant to us. It was a weird position to be in, because this assistance had very little to do with money -- we're about as well off as your average Americans, a little better probably. But because we needed this assistance, it put us in a social position of subservience anyway that we had to perform for others, and that subservience took on these class characteristics because we live in a class society -- we had to prove we "deserved" it, and that means knowing our place, which is "lower," and performing it for others. It also meant outperforming our cohort, meant putting in *more* time and effort than other families who didn't get it, who aren't "lower," or else we would've been severely penalized.
Needless to say, this isn't a Marxist vision.
I appreciate Hasan, mostly because I see the general Marxist analysis he makes spread online among younger people. He's spreading an understanding of class and capitalist international relations that just did not exist when I was a teen, and in a way that even Bernie couldn't given the sound-bite level limitations of political campaign discourse in our country.
I would also like to add that not only does he have massive amounts of wealth, but even his defense that he "didn't exploit anyone's labor" is very weak. There is a very good argument to be made that he does in fact exploit people, because he is one of the online figures who produce "react content" - which is basically just theft by another name.
React content is when big streamers and YouTubers sit down to watch the entirety of other people's videos while recording both themselves and the video, with the reactor putting no effort in to editing. This ends up having the effect of making the rich richer and the poor poorer because the views and engagement are effectively stolen from the original content creator and given to the reactor, because whoever has watched the reaction is not going to watch the original video (after all, they already watched it through the reactor's video).
DarkViperAU has made a good video detailing how Hasan Piker has exploited people in this way, in a series of videos explaining how other streamers and YouTubers have done the exact same exploitation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va1zPshj5f0
Apologies in advance for the length of this comment. I started writing it and there were a lot of things I wanted to say, so it got away from me a bit. It is all related to the article you wrote here, though. It also appears that another commenter has pointed out some of the issues I have with Marxism and morality in this piece much more thoroughly.
I don't agree with some of the things you've written here. I'm not a huge fan of Hasan, but I'd like to bring up some points of difference I have and hear your thoughts.
The first thought I have, is why Hasan is in the wrong for his apparent wealth hoarding, but not Bernie Sanders? You mention at the start that you are aligned with Bernie and you like him, but he has a net worth estimated around $3 million and owns three houses. Is he not hoarding wealth by your standard? I'm simply curious, I like Bernie's politics personally myself.
The broader question behind the question is: how much is too much wealth to hoard? You mentioned this in the article a bit, but you weren't very clear. In my eyes, that number is one that has to be determined by a democratic consensus, as opposed a mass of individuals simply deciding to donate more to charity. Effective Altruism is an interesting moral framework, but I don't think it is scalable in the way you imply here. If you personally decide to give more to charity, you are affecting your own level of comfort. It is a massive step to decide what other people should give to charity. So, there should be a democratically determined legal method for redistributing wealth i.e. taxes. Telling people to give more to charity does less to combat inequality than raising taxes; people can just not do it, and the people receiving the charity will always be beholden to the whims of the more fortunate.
You claim multiple times that politics and morality are inextricably linked. This may be true, but in the context of a Marxist political framework, morality is ideology. Marxism is at its base a materialist political framework. Materialism is the belief that the world around us, everything that happens, is the result of physical processes. An orthodox marxist sees Marxism, the transition from capitalism, to socialism, and then to communism, not necessarily as the morally correct thing, but as a scientific inevitability based on Marx’s analysis of economic history. Marx himself never very clearly linked his economic theory to morality, and some scholars believe he avoided it deliberately. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/#Mora
There are other left-wing political theories that deal with morality more directly, but claiming that someone cannot be a marxist without adhering to particular moral guidelines is dubious in my opinion.
I also disagree with calling Hasan privileged elite. He attended two public colleges that have acceptance rates of 66% and 80%. 42% of Americans between the ages of 18-24 attend college. You may be able to argue some level of media-elite status granted to him by his connection to the Young Turks, but it is pretty bold to claim that almost half the country is privileged for attending college and revoke their right to participate in leftism. You make some claims about nepotism that are interesting as well. I would prefer to live in a society that is more meritocratic, but I have trouble faulting someone for taking advantage of opportunities afforded to them by circumstance. Should Hasan have turned down the opportunity to work at The Young Turks, to fight nepotism? I don’t see how that would have an impact on all the other cases of nepotism that take place throughout society.
I don’t think he’s making up his own definition of academic, either. I also when to college and graduated cum laude, but I don’t consider myself “an academic”, because the work I do now is not academic in nature. Typically, when someone refers to someone as “an academic”, they mean that they do academic work. See the noun definition of the word in merriam-webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/academic
This claim here is also strange: “Hasan’s educated elite background of privilege allows him to use academic lingo that doesn’t connect with the lower class.” I didn’t see any examples in the article of him using particularly academic or impenetrable jargon. Admittedly, I went to college, but I didn’t study politics, economics or anything related to marxism. I’m self-taught in those subjects and find all of this to be readable, or as readable as tweets can be. I’d be interested to hear what you found to be academic and difficult to understand here.
I found your Jeff Bezos thought experiment to be very strange. Especially this line here: “Or, let’s say his workers are so grateful to Bezos’ change in heart that they still let him keep a fat salary.” This is completely unfounded. The point in democratizing a workplace is that rational workers would reduce his salary and raise their own. The money Bezos already has is addressed through taxes. That’s outside of the workers’ jurisdiction, because his investments don’t have anything to do with their workplace (at least, not directly). Overall, the goal should be an overall system of political economy that ensures Bezos is not and cannot become as rich as he is, regardless of his own personal moral choices. Otherwise, we are just crossing our fingers and hoping he takes pity on his employees.
This all being said, I don’t disagree with calling Hasan a debate bro, or toxicly masculine, or something similar. I don’t watch his stuff because he’s loud and grating, and he often creates hot takes to increase his engagement without real substance. I also think the issue with react content that one of the other commenters brought up is worth considering, but I haven’t thought much about it myself. Those things do not preclude someone from being anti-capitalist, or a leftist, or a marxist, however. You can find someone’s personal conduct to be morally wrong, but that cannot be extrapolated to whether they are “really a marxist”, because simply believing in a marxist political philosophy is what makes someone a marxist. If someone believes that a communist revolution or socialist transition is inevitable and/or desirable, they could be a marxist.
Again, sorry for the length of this comment, but this kind of thing has been sitting in my mind for a while. All of this is presented in good faith, and I would be interested to hear what you have to say in response.
I know you said this feels like running sandpaper across your face, but bringing up charity / "effective altrusim" is completely orthogonal to Marxism, truly. Nothing about charity is relevant to a Marxist vision of history, or to a better economic order of society one way or the other.
It's difficult, too, to talk about "a Marxist morality" -- there really is no such thing. Morality and ethics is something you have to bring to a Marxist analysis, not something you can take from it. Having a certain morality or ethics will influence you to adopt a Marxist critique of society, but Marx wasn't doing ethical philosophy. One of my favorite Marx quotes:
"To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense couleur de rose [i.e., seen through rose-tinted glasses]. But here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class-relations and class-interests. **My standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them.**"
It would only be relevant if charity were a piece of the puzzle in overcoming capitalism, and it simply isn't -- even though more money helps poor and working people more than less money does, charity does nothing to restructure the social relations of production in society -- if anything, charity can only reflect or reify them in a "superstructural" way.
My family received some charity recently -- not to get too much into it, but rarely in life have I "felt my place" so clearly. When we interacted with volunteers, some people were normal and chill, but more often than not we were expected to go on and on about how grateful we were, how lucky we were, how much this meant to us. It was a weird position to be in, because this assistance had very little to do with money -- we're about as well off as your average Americans, a little better probably. But because we needed this assistance, it put us in a social position of subservience anyway that we had to perform for others, and that subservience took on these class characteristics because we live in a class society -- we had to prove we "deserved" it, and that means knowing our place, which is "lower," and performing it for others. It also meant outperforming our cohort, meant putting in *more* time and effort than other families who didn't get it, who aren't "lower," or else we would've been severely penalized.
Needless to say, this isn't a Marxist vision.
I appreciate Hasan, mostly because I see the general Marxist analysis he makes spread online among younger people. He's spreading an understanding of class and capitalist international relations that just did not exist when I was a teen, and in a way that even Bernie couldn't given the sound-bite level limitations of political campaign discourse in our country.
This is a very good article.
I would also like to add that not only does he have massive amounts of wealth, but even his defense that he "didn't exploit anyone's labor" is very weak. There is a very good argument to be made that he does in fact exploit people, because he is one of the online figures who produce "react content" - which is basically just theft by another name.
React content is when big streamers and YouTubers sit down to watch the entirety of other people's videos while recording both themselves and the video, with the reactor putting no effort in to editing. This ends up having the effect of making the rich richer and the poor poorer because the views and engagement are effectively stolen from the original content creator and given to the reactor, because whoever has watched the reaction is not going to watch the original video (after all, they already watched it through the reactor's video).
DarkViperAU has made a good video detailing how Hasan Piker has exploited people in this way, in a series of videos explaining how other streamers and YouTubers have done the exact same exploitation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va1zPshj5f0
Apologies in advance for the length of this comment. I started writing it and there were a lot of things I wanted to say, so it got away from me a bit. It is all related to the article you wrote here, though. It also appears that another commenter has pointed out some of the issues I have with Marxism and morality in this piece much more thoroughly.
I don't agree with some of the things you've written here. I'm not a huge fan of Hasan, but I'd like to bring up some points of difference I have and hear your thoughts.
The first thought I have, is why Hasan is in the wrong for his apparent wealth hoarding, but not Bernie Sanders? You mention at the start that you are aligned with Bernie and you like him, but he has a net worth estimated around $3 million and owns three houses. Is he not hoarding wealth by your standard? I'm simply curious, I like Bernie's politics personally myself.
The broader question behind the question is: how much is too much wealth to hoard? You mentioned this in the article a bit, but you weren't very clear. In my eyes, that number is one that has to be determined by a democratic consensus, as opposed a mass of individuals simply deciding to donate more to charity. Effective Altruism is an interesting moral framework, but I don't think it is scalable in the way you imply here. If you personally decide to give more to charity, you are affecting your own level of comfort. It is a massive step to decide what other people should give to charity. So, there should be a democratically determined legal method for redistributing wealth i.e. taxes. Telling people to give more to charity does less to combat inequality than raising taxes; people can just not do it, and the people receiving the charity will always be beholden to the whims of the more fortunate.
You claim multiple times that politics and morality are inextricably linked. This may be true, but in the context of a Marxist political framework, morality is ideology. Marxism is at its base a materialist political framework. Materialism is the belief that the world around us, everything that happens, is the result of physical processes. An orthodox marxist sees Marxism, the transition from capitalism, to socialism, and then to communism, not necessarily as the morally correct thing, but as a scientific inevitability based on Marx’s analysis of economic history. Marx himself never very clearly linked his economic theory to morality, and some scholars believe he avoided it deliberately. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/#Mora
https://www.britannica.com/topic/materialism-philosophy
There are other left-wing political theories that deal with morality more directly, but claiming that someone cannot be a marxist without adhering to particular moral guidelines is dubious in my opinion.
I also disagree with calling Hasan privileged elite. He attended two public colleges that have acceptance rates of 66% and 80%. 42% of Americans between the ages of 18-24 attend college. You may be able to argue some level of media-elite status granted to him by his connection to the Young Turks, but it is pretty bold to claim that almost half the country is privileged for attending college and revoke their right to participate in leftism. You make some claims about nepotism that are interesting as well. I would prefer to live in a society that is more meritocratic, but I have trouble faulting someone for taking advantage of opportunities afforded to them by circumstance. Should Hasan have turned down the opportunity to work at The Young Turks, to fight nepotism? I don’t see how that would have an impact on all the other cases of nepotism that take place throughout society.
I don’t think he’s making up his own definition of academic, either. I also when to college and graduated cum laude, but I don’t consider myself “an academic”, because the work I do now is not academic in nature. Typically, when someone refers to someone as “an academic”, they mean that they do academic work. See the noun definition of the word in merriam-webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/academic
More food for though regarding privileged socialists and marxists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels
This claim here is also strange: “Hasan’s educated elite background of privilege allows him to use academic lingo that doesn’t connect with the lower class.” I didn’t see any examples in the article of him using particularly academic or impenetrable jargon. Admittedly, I went to college, but I didn’t study politics, economics or anything related to marxism. I’m self-taught in those subjects and find all of this to be readable, or as readable as tweets can be. I’d be interested to hear what you found to be academic and difficult to understand here.
I found your Jeff Bezos thought experiment to be very strange. Especially this line here: “Or, let’s say his workers are so grateful to Bezos’ change in heart that they still let him keep a fat salary.” This is completely unfounded. The point in democratizing a workplace is that rational workers would reduce his salary and raise their own. The money Bezos already has is addressed through taxes. That’s outside of the workers’ jurisdiction, because his investments don’t have anything to do with their workplace (at least, not directly). Overall, the goal should be an overall system of political economy that ensures Bezos is not and cannot become as rich as he is, regardless of his own personal moral choices. Otherwise, we are just crossing our fingers and hoping he takes pity on his employees.
This all being said, I don’t disagree with calling Hasan a debate bro, or toxicly masculine, or something similar. I don’t watch his stuff because he’s loud and grating, and he often creates hot takes to increase his engagement without real substance. I also think the issue with react content that one of the other commenters brought up is worth considering, but I haven’t thought much about it myself. Those things do not preclude someone from being anti-capitalist, or a leftist, or a marxist, however. You can find someone’s personal conduct to be morally wrong, but that cannot be extrapolated to whether they are “really a marxist”, because simply believing in a marxist political philosophy is what makes someone a marxist. If someone believes that a communist revolution or socialist transition is inevitable and/or desirable, they could be a marxist.
Again, sorry for the length of this comment, but this kind of thing has been sitting in my mind for a while. All of this is presented in good faith, and I would be interested to hear what you have to say in response.
>Healthcare is a human right
Human rights are just a social construct