My lecturer used this example as to why Communism would never work

[Poppytry]

He said if I give all 5 of you (Politics not a very popular lesson) $1000 and I invited you all back next week you would all have different amounts. Some would buy material goods and others would buy plenty of food and such but never the less when we are all called back we would unequal. On that principle equality is unachievable.

I found it hard to find a come back. Is he right?

[Pogue]

Under communism we wont have currency much less one that can be traded and hoarded. It'd be a situation of people literally working to make sure the community runs and exists and thrives and taking freely from what is there. So there'd be no potential to hoard or epxloit things. And even if someone had a bit more than someone else, it'd be irrelevant, because we'd all have more than enough to enjoy life. I think the problem with alot of people when they talk about communism 'not working' is they don't understand what communism is and how we'll get there, they just attack it as if we literally wanted to just implement it right now witohut a revolution or anything. That ignores the vital fact that during the revolution we will have problems we get over, trials and challenges, and we can only call it communism when it actually works, so to say communism doesn't work is almost a paradoxical position, because if it wasn't 'working' it wouldn't be communism.

[Pawn Power]

Equality does not equal everyone having the exact same amount of capital/goods/anything. Your lecturer raises a false proposal based on a misunderstanding of the word equality in a socio-economic sense.

What equality does mean is that people have equal access to necessities and luxuries. That is, that people determine what they need and want and not their economic circumstances. In your hypothetical case, the individuals wouldn't come back with the same amount of money because people have different needs.

[F9]

Moved

[Psy]

He said if I give all 5 of you (Politics not a very popular lesson) $1000 and I invited you all back next week you would all have different amounts. Some would buy material goods and others would buy plenty of food and such but never the less when we are all called back we would unequal. On that principle equality is unachievable.

I found it hard to find a come back. Is he right?

It is a straw man argument since the question of equality has nothing to do with consumption and everything to do with production and class relations to production.

[commyrebel]

That has nothing to do with equality firstly because it has to do with an economic value. This doesn't work because of the unpredictable controls of this test first you have to see if they support some else if you eat more if you have a need for entertainment, if you smoke or drink. there are only some of the problems that faces plus in a communist country they fallow the basic theory of you do what skill you are best at and you receive in return what you need.

[20acresandadonkey]

I think the kid just needs a simple comeback for the professor, and since everyone knows that under Communism everyone in the class would be standing in line all week to buy a $3 stale loaf and a $9 pack of dry cigarettes and a 50 cent quart of vodka everyone would come back with $988.50, a hacking cough, the runs, and a wicked hangover.

Communism is not about equality of ownership or work or anything else - its about equality of suffering under yet another duplicitous regime!

[BIG BROTHER]

Under communism there would be no currency to begun with. And when we refer to equality we mean it in a social way, not in a currency sense.

[Kassad]

Well, this is one of the easiest things to refute I've ever seen. First of all, I want everyone here to imagine this scenario and everyone here needs to fully understand what surplus value is. Say Wal-Mart needs $300 billion a year to pay off all expenses, wages, benefits and maintenance. Then, let's also say they make $315 billion in total revenue. Where does that money go? Does it go to the laborers who made that wealth through their tiresome work and struggle? Of course not! It lines the pockets of the executives who own the company and who exploit the workers. Imagine if every company paid the surplus value to the workers who earned it. That's billions a year, maybe more, being poured into the pockets of the working class. Everyone, and I mean everyone could live in luxury.

Now, onto your lecturer's point. He claims that people would come back with various amounts. Well no shit! Some people have diseases that require medical treatment. Some people eat out more, whereas some make dinner at home. Some people drive massive distances to work, whereas some work from their homes. Some people have three kids, whereas some people live alone. Of course they will have various amounts of money. Marx's poetic statement of 'from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs' sums everything up. Everyone has different levels of needs, based on their lifestyle and necessities they require. Under capitalism, many never get these needs fulfilled. Under socialism, who cares if one family requires less while another requires more? We have the resources, by eliminating surplus value and imperialistic hegemony to let everyone live in luxury. The idea that people have varying needs is a refutement of scientific and economic socialism is totally fallacious. Ask him if it's wrong for a diabetic to need more money than a healthy man because of his medical costs. There's no reason why we can't all live in luxury, but capitalism is the prime impediment to that luxury.

[commyrebel]

I think the kid just needs a simple comeback for the professor, and since everyone knows that under Communism everyone in the class would be standing in line all week to buy a $3 stale loaf and a $9 pack of dry cigarettes and a 50 cent quart of vodka everyone would come back with $988.50, a hacking cough, the runs, and a wicked hangover.

Communism is not about equality of ownership or work or anything else - its about equality of suffering under yet another duplicitous regime! Are you a cappie because that was a wrong statement that was only the cost of the decline of the economic system.

[20acresandadonkey]

What in the world is a cappie?

First off, that was not a "wrong" statement in either sense. Bread lines and shoddy mercantiles in the Soviet system were not a result of any "decline," but a failure to thrive brought on by every farmer who knew how to grow something having been shipped off to Siberia or killed.

Oh, and if cappie is a capitalist? Wow, quite an insult. Just because I ain't a communist doesn't make me a capitalist. I own my own means of production (e.g. a grain mill, an axe, a shovel, a hoe, a hammer, etc.), thank you very much, and I ask no one's leave nor take anyone's crap nor employ anyone nor use anyone nor rely on anyone. But if you ask for help I'd be glad to, and I hope you would return the favor.

Because only then can we truly be human beings.

[Hoxhaist]

What in the world is a cappie?

First off, that was not a "wrong" statement in either sense. Bread lines and shoddy mercantiles in the Soviet system were not a result of any "decline," but a failure to thrive brought on by every farmer who knew how to grow something having been shipped off to Siberia or killed.

Oh, and if cappie is a capitalist? Wow, quite an insult. Just because I ain't a communist doesn't make me a capitalist. I own my own means of production (e.g. a grain mill, an axe, a shovel, a hoe, a hammer, etc.), thank you very much, and I ask no one's leave nor take anyone's crap nor employ anyone nor use anyone nor rely on anyone. But if you ask for help I'd be glad to, and I hope you would return the favor.

Because only then can we truly be human beings.
how does capitalist pigdog sound?!

[Hoxhaist]

He said if I give all 5 of you (Politics not a very popular lesson) $1000 and I invited you all back next week you would all have different amounts. Some would buy material goods and others would buy plenty of food and such but never the less when we are all called back we would unequal. On that principle equality is unachievable.

I found it hard to find a come back. Is he right?
Everyone would of course be equal. Each would have bought something that to that individual would be equal to 1000 dollars. Inequality comes in when people are taken advantage of or people abuse their economic power over someone not as powerful. Because all of you have $1000, you are all in the same class so cant exploit each other without everyone realizing and rejecting the offer.

[20acresandadonkey]

how does capitalist pigdog sound?!

Sorry, but I'm new at this.

I thought I was home, having found a site full of rational, stimulating debates.

Instead I've found a bunch of supposed communists who have adopted the manners of Dick Cheney.

[Communist Theory]

Communism is not about equality of ownership or work or anything else - its about equality of suffering under yet another duplicitous regime!
If you're going to come onto a leftist forum at least know what Communism is. You seem like a kid that just wants to play Anarchist.

[20acresandadonkey]

I know what communism is, thank you. Maybe not Communism. trademark copyright
(C) Communism is what you make it. Labels label labels.

And I ain't playing at anything. Maybe I know what communism is, but I thought Communists might be cool. I used to be one of those that argued with people who denigrated communism by associating it with the Soviets; you know, "the USSR is not communistic, it is a totalitarian socialist dictatorship." Whatever. I've read the Communist Manifesto a few times. I just don't let my views stop there, and I see the problem inherent in a necessarily guided revolution. When the revolution is successful, what are you guiders of it going to do?

I just don't trust anyone not to cross the Rubicon.

[Communist Theory]

I know what communism is, thank you. Maybe not Communism. trademark copyright
(C) Communism is what you make it. Labels label labels.

And I ain't playing at anything. Maybe I know what communism is, but I thought Communists might be cool. I used to be one of those that argued with people who denigrated communism by associating it with the Soviets; you know, "the USSR is not communistic, it is a totalitarian socialist dictatorship." Whatever. I've read the Communist Manifesto a few times. I just don't let my views stop there, and I see the problem inherent in a necessarily guided revolution. When the revolution is successful, what are you guiders of it going to do?

I just don't trust anyone not to cross the Rubicon.
Well you see the guiders are going to purge the talkative ones.
Like you. :lol:

[Communist Theory]

Or maybe we just look to the guiders as advisors after the revolution.
Tell me what are you going to do after the revolution?

[commyrebel]

ok so you say your not but you follow a type of anarcho-capitalism which is pretty much chaos. The reason there has never been a big form of that is because that is to lonely for humans its like a capitalist tribalism. Also just cause you are a type of anarchist doesn't make you a leftist which is what this website was made.

[20acresandadonkey]

This part is for the post 2 up:

Grow corn and eat it and feed others.
Grow barley and drink it and get other people drunk.
Sit around a fire and play the guitar so that others may sing and dance.
Dig a hole for my neighbor when he needs a hole dug.
Type because I'm good at it, if someone needs something typed.
Teach people anything they need to know and I can help with.
Lift heavy things.
I don't know, how long should the list go on?

[Communist Theory]

ok so you say your not but you follow a type of anarcho-capitalism which is pretty much chaos. The reason there has never been a big form of that is because that is to lonely for humans its like a capitalist tribalism. Also just cause you are a type of anarchist doesn't make you a leftist which is what this website was made.
You make absolutely no sense due to the fact you make no mention who you are directing this post at
Anarchists seem to me like leftists, and Malte seems to think so we got a big red A on our top left corner.

[20acresandadonkey]

ok so you say your not but you follow a type of anarcho-capitalism which is pretty much chaos. The reason there has never been a big form of that is because that is to lonely for humans its like a capitalist tribalism. Also just cause you are a type of anarchist doesn't make you a leftist which is what this website was made.

I didn't say I wasn't anything, but I'm certainly nothing you can label man. Once you label something its a target for someone else.

What the hell is capitalist tribalism? Y'all throw big words around a lot and I really doubt any real capitalist would survive in any world I envision. Capital implies ownership of the means of producing things for other people. Screw that. Communism either implies collective ownership of the means of production by the proletariat, in which case there's still ownership, or a complete and completely harmonious system where no one owns anything, it all just sort of works.

Take it or leave it.

And nothing is lonelier for humans than being removed from our means of production, which is what you have in any post-industrial society.

I don't know how you get loneliness out of tribalism. Tribes are essentially collections of as many people as a certain area, travelled over in a short period of time, can support. Tribal cultures have no anomie, little or no suicide, and if one person goes hungry, everybody is probably going hungry.

How in the world is that capitalism?

[commyrebel]

This part is for the post 2 up:

Grow corn and eat it and feed others.
Grow barley and drink it and get other people drunk.
Sit around a fire and play the guitar so that others may sing and dance.
Dig a hole for my neighbor when he needs a hole dug.
Type because I'm good at it, if someone needs something typed.
Teach people anything they need to know and I can help with.
Lift heavy things.
I don't know, how long should the list go on?
You are really confusing i am getting that your a man for yourself only, then i get this communal person which believes in hippie communism. You have like a multiple personality but for politics beliefs.

[commyrebel]

What the hell is capitalist tribalism? ok take capitalism then take tribalism and mix them there you go (not so hard)

[20acresandadonkey]

You are really confusing i am getting that your a man for yourself only, then i get this communal person which believes in hippie communism. You have like a multiple personality but for politics beliefs.


Its not about being a man for myself only.

You completely miss my point.

The point is that I can do everything I need to survive and to ensure the survival of a number of other people. Its not hippie communism. Its called being human: sharing with other members of the species that which you do not need. And in order to provide as much as I can, I learn and produce as much as I can.

And no one should tell me what I can or can't produce, who I can or have to or can't give it to, etc.

All you commies, with all your rules and labels and definitions and nit-picking, and your contemporaneous belief in a collective society where no man is subjugated to another man? That's dreaming man. Once you label something, someone somewhere will find a way to subjugate it.

[Communist Theory]

Its not about being a man for myself only.

You completely miss my point.

The point is that I can do everything I need to survive and to ensure the survival of a number of other people. Its not hippie communism. Its called being human: sharing with other members of the species that which you do not need. And in order to provide as much as I can, I learn and produce as much as I can.

And no one should tell me what I can or can't produce, who I can or have to or can't give it to, etc.

All you commies, with all your rules and labels and definitions and nit-picking, and your contemporaneous belief in a collective society where no man is subjugated to another man? That's dreaming man. Once you label something, someone somewhere will find a way to subjugate it.
While I don't know what exactly Nihilists believe in or what they don't it seems like you are one just due to the meaning of the word Nihilist.

[20acresandadonkey]

While I don't know what exactly Nihilists believe in or what they don't it seems like you are one just due to the meaning of the word Nihilist.

Oh my GOD! STOP LABELLING ME!

Nihilist means you don't believe in anything.

Are you high?

Do you need to label me for your lists or something?

Oh, wait, that 20acresandadonkey guy is a capitalist-tribalist-nihilist-narcissist-coffee-drinker. DON'T LET HIM IN!

Can't I have a view without an ideology? You know what it says when you look up "Ideologue" in the thesaurus? "Murderer."

[commyrebel]

Its not about being a man for myself only.

You completely miss my point.

The point is that I can do everything I need to survive and to ensure the survival of a number of other people. Its not hippie communism. Its called being human: sharing with other members of the species that which you do not need. And in order to provide as much as I can, I learn and produce as much as I can.

And no one should tell me what I can or can't produce, who I can or have to or can't give it to, etc.

All you commies, with all your rules and labels and definitions and nit-picking, and your contemporaneous belief in a collective society where no man is subjugated to another man? That's dreaming man. Once you label something, someone somewhere will find a way to subjugate it.

how did i miss your point. you say were humans but constantly you make it as though were animals you said in a earlier post i make my own stuff and grow what i need, then later said i also help my fellow humans. first get your beliefs all down so it makes sense. The thing you imply is that darwinism is what we need. When what we need to start doing is getting over that darwinist factor. That is what makes us different, we have a society that can evolve and be equal for everyone that is why we are communist

[20acresandadonkey]

how did i miss your point. you say were humans but constantly you make it as though were animals you said in a earlier post i make my own stuff and grow what i need, then later said i also help my fellow humans. first get your beliefs all down so it makes sense. thing you imply is that darwinism is what we need. When what we need to start doing is getting over that darwinist factor. That is what makes us different, we have a society that can evolve and be equal for everyone that is why we are communist

Just because I can grow my own food and probably yours too doesn't make me or you an animal. And just because I would gladly give it to you rather than sell it to you (capitalist) or jointly own it with you (communist) doesn't make me an animal or an anarchist or anything. If you need to call it something so that it can fit into your convenient political spectrum chart, call it "OH MY GOD STOP LABELLING ME I'LL WAIT MY TURN."

How is Darwinism a political philosophy? And in point of fact a society evolving is not Darwinism, its called civilization. And Darwinism needs capitalized, but communism does not, unless you're a Communist, which means you need to label me so I can be sent to the gulag.

And if George Bush happily becomes my equal? Pigs will fly out of my butt.

I'm not the one with beliefs that don't make sense. I'm just looking for some fellow human beings who feel like doing what they feel like doing and whose talents complement one another. If everyone was organized in small groups along those lines, call it what you want, but I wouldn't have to eat dinner with a bunch of rulebook-toting commies, or interest-charging capitalists.

You don't make sense if you think hoighty-toighty Ivy Leaguers are going to welcome an equal footing with a pig farmer from Indiana. Are you just going to kill them all? Or "reeducate" them?

HA HA HA. Belly-busting laugh.

Screw this. I have to go to sleep because tomorrow I have to wake up and go to work for the man.

Helping people. But still for the man, unfortunately.

[Communist Theory]

[QUOTE=20acresandadonkey;1424415]Oh my GOD! STOP LABELLING ME!

Nihilist means you don't believe in anything.
QUOTE]
Well thats quite a easy guess considering Nihil means nothing.
You add -ist into anything and you've got an ideology.
Well it seems you are religious consider you put oh my god.
Admit it you're a Anarchist thats what people are going to call you so you might as well get used to it. btw do you reject your own name?
Do you believe in "I think therefore I exist." type of thing?

[20acresandadonkey]

[QUOTE=20acresandadonkey;1424415]Oh my GOD! STOP LABELLING ME!

Nihilist means you don't believe in anything.
QUOTE]
Well thats quite a easy guess considering Nihil means nothing.
You add -ist into anything and you've got an ideology.
Well it seems you are religious consider you put oh my god.
Admit it you're a Anarchist thats what people are going to call you so you might as well get used to it. btw do you reject your own name?
Do you believe in "I think therefore I exist." type of thing?

Yeah I guess people call me an anarchist all the time. Or a hippie, but then only if they smell me, 'cause I cut my hair awhile back.

And that wasn't an easy guess. That's The Big Lebowski. I don't really know that having an ideology of believing in nothing is having an ideology. I mean, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, it still landed on an ant. And I don't look good in all black.

And I'm areligious. Or irreligious. Or atheist. Or agnostic. I say Oh My God in jest. Its a cultural expression.

In any event thank you for your kind tone. I don't know what "btw" means. I don't reject my own name, but the idea of anarchists organizing is not valid if you are truly an anarchist, just like the idea of a communist settling for Leninist-style socialism is abhorrent to me. I know there's a path, I just refuse to follow it because everyone that does has been largely unsuccessful to date. Who are we to emulate? Pol Pot?

And no, I exist therefore I exist. I don't know very much particle physics, only a little, but from what I know I'm pretty sure that I'd still be an entity even if I was brain-dead.

It just wouldn't be any existence I'd care to experience.

But again, thank you for the warming of your tone and not throwing "capitalist-tribalist" at me again. I was gettin' pissed.

[StalinFanboy]

20acresandadonkey is the most down to earth person on this forum. Regardless of his politics.

[Communist Theory]

[QUOTE=Communist Theory;1424423]

Yeah I guess people call me an anarchist all the time. Or a hippie, but then only if they smell me, 'cause I cut my hair awhile back.

And that wasn't an easy guess. That's The Big Lebowski. I don't really know that having an ideology of believing in nothing is having an ideology. I mean, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, it still landed on an ant. And I don't look good in all black.

And I'm areligious. Or irreligious. Or atheist. Or agnostic. I say Oh My God in jest. Its a cultural expression.

In any event thank you for your kind tone. I don't know what "btw" means. I don't reject my own name, but the idea of anarchists organizing is not valid if you are truly an anarchist, just like the idea of a communist settling for Leninist-style socialism is abhorrent to me. I know there's a path, I just refuse to follow it because everyone that does has been largely unsuccessful to date. Who are we to emulate? Pol Pot?

And no, I exist therefore I exist. I don't know very much particle physics, only a little, but from what I know I'm pretty sure that I'd still be an entity even if I was brain-dead.

It just wouldn't be any existence I'd care to experience.

But again, thank you for the warming of your tone and not throwing "capitalist-tribalist" at me again. I was gettin' pissed.
Well what I was refering to with the "I think therefore I exist." quote was this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito_ergo_sum)
Also I didn't call you capitalist or any variation or.
I did label you as a Nihilist because at first it seemed to me that you want to be in the middle of politics neither left nor right. But you rejected my labeling of you.
Do you mind being labeled just as a leftist and nothing more?

[GPDP]

I'm not sure I agree with 20acres on quite a few things, but goddamn, can some of you back the fuck down? Granted, he did start with the "equality to starve" crap, but that was more a critique of Leninism than anything, it seems.

It looks like we've started on the wrong foot.

[ZeroNowhere]

Eh, it mostly comes from the fact that reducing communism to meaning 'equality' makes it a lot tamer, and implies that it simply means reformism (whether to state capitalism or a mere welfare state), which is why it's quite helpful. However, socialism isn't equal wages, it's the abolition of wages, and it really doesn't matter if one person is a hermit who doesn't work and only takes their basic necessities, and another works a lot and consumes a lot too. I mean, in the initial stage of socialism, there would be labour credits (unless it is democratically decided to jump straight to the higher stage of socialism, which I don't see as particularly plausible, but whatever), where people would be allowed to take from the social product according to their work done (though this would apply to luxuries, while basic necessities (food, water, energy, appliances, houses, etc) would be free, at least to a certain amount). However, these labour credits would not be money, or wages (you can't have wages without capitalism, as wages are a social relation), etc. So yes, while one person could have more stuff than somebody else, that doesn't at all make socialism impossible.


All you commies, with all your rules and labels and definitions and nit-picking, and your contemporaneous belief in a collective society where no man is subjugated to another man? That's dreaming man. Once you label something, someone somewhere will find a way to subjugate it.
I see words.


20acresandadonkey is the most down to earth person on this forum. Regardless of his politics.
Ride the sky!

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

What makes this lecturer think that equality as such has anything to do with communism?

Here is Marx:


But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.

But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby....

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

....

Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labor power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one. Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again?


Critique of the Gotha Program (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm)

[Stranger Than Paradise]

What makes this lecturer think that equality as such has anything to do with communism?

Here is Marx:



Critique of the Gotha Program (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm)

I was a little surprised to see Marx say: "In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor"

But at the end of the sentence he said after it hasd vanished. But I was thinking what? He wants THAT.

[Lynx]

A snippet from pop-culture:
http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html

An (unwarranted) analysis:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2455/is_4_35/ai_91040892/

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Bakunin-Kropotkin:



I was a little surprised to see Marx say: "In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor"

But at the end of the sentence he said after it hasd vanished. But I was thinking what? He wants THAT.


Well, here is the sentence:


In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished;

Hence, I am not too sure what you are complaining about.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

Bakunin-Kropotkin:



Well, here is the sentence:



Hence, I am not too sure what you are complaining about.

Ok. I was saying I saw what he had wrote before I saw the end of the sentence where he said vanished.

[mikelepore]

The lecturer is implying that people who believe more in trying to save money will be those who later have more money, and those who refuse to save their money will be those who will later lack money.

But the opposite is true. The wealthy person isn't in that situation by never having bought unnecessary luxuries. On the contrary, the wealthy person is the same person who spends a lot of money on luxuries, and yet a large amount of money remains the form of savings. The poor person is the same person who tries most diligently to save money whenever possible, and yet that savings has to be spent repeatedly to buy necessities of life.

IF they were born with equal property inheritances, and IF they had equal incomes during their lives, THEN the person who endeavors more seriously to save money would probably be the person who accumulates more savings.