How Will Capitalism End? The Orville, Eduard Bernstein, and What is to Be Done?

What does comedic science fiction television show The Orville tell us about how capitalism will end? How did Germany go from having the largest and most powerful socialist movement in the world to finding its movement gutted and its country given over to fascists? How did Eduard Bernstein, despite his best intentioned, upend the Marxist movement and provide cover for those who wanted to destroy it? And was he actually right all along? All this and more will be answered! The previous video, Star Trek into Socialism, is not necessary for appreciating this one, but the two inform each other: Also mentioned in this video: * Loki and How Conservatives Become Fascists: * How the Hippies Became Yuppies: The Trial of the Chicago 7: Not by me: Using Corporate Governance to Understand Socialism: Text of the episode and other ways in which you can access it at One correction I wanted to add: One of the things I say is that when the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government (which in turn had overthrown the Tsar a few months earlier), the allied powers of the US, Britain, and France joined the White Army’s effort and invaded Russia. This is true. However, their goal was actually less to overthrow the Bolsheviks per se (though Winston Churchill, then merely a Conservative MP, in particular was chomping at the bit for it), but to put people back in power that would get the Russians back into the War, since the Bolsheviks had pulled out. Once the war was actually over, the Allies withdrew their forces because their reason for being there was gone. Thus, it’s entirely possible, even likely, that if the Germans had become Communist, as long as they’d still surrendered to the Allies, they could’ve stayed in power. Now, there certainly were other challenges they’d have faced—Bernstein, for example, was firm in his belief that council democracy was unworkable in Germany—but Communism going the distance there is not nearly so unlikely as I supposed. Excerpts of deleted material on the Patreon at , which you can get access to for as little as $1 an episode, and also get exclusive author’s notes, draft excerpts, and early access to episodes. There’s also a whole thing I wanted to get into here about the role of identity politics in all this, but it was too complicated and too much of a digression from the main point, so I’ll probably talk about it there. Bibliography My primary literary sources were: - [id55737130|*The] Preconditions of Socialism* by Eduard Bernstein, 1899, edited and translated by Henry Tudor, 1993 (originally published in English as *Evolutionary Socialism*) - *Eduard Bernstein on Socialism Past and Present: Essays and Lectures on Ideology*, edited and translated by Marius S. Ostrowski, 2021 - [id55737130|*The] Quest for Evolutionary Socialism* by Manfred B. Steger, 1997 - [id55737130|*The] Dilemma of Democratic Socialism* by Peter Gay, 1952 - [id55737130|*The] German Revolution 1917-1923* by Pierre Broué, 1971 (translation 2005) - The Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles, 1848 - Capital Vol. 1 by Karl Marx, 1867 - Critique of the Gotha Programme by Karl Marx, 1875 - “The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution” by Karl Marx, 1848 - “Speech to the International Workingman’s Association” by Karl Marx, 1863 - Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Friedrich Engles - Anti-Dühring by Friedrich Engels, 1877 - Reform or Revolution? by Rosa Luxemburg - “The Russian Revolution” by Rosa Luxemburg, 1918 - [club226287491|*Capital] in the 21st Century* by Thomas Piketty, 2014 More sources can be found at