Many don’t even do it intentionally, they just don’t grasp concepts like Historical and Dialectical Materialism, which requires reading lengthy books to fully grasp. They may be anti-Capitalist at heart, but without a solid understanding of theory they play into bourgeois hands.
There’s also the fact that the ideas held by society are a reflection of the Mode of Production.
It doesnt even require that much reading of such subjects. All it takes is to not be brainwashed by media and politicians.
Critical thought and self awareness is all it takes
Usually it’s my friend Cowbee here who tells people to read things, but here I will:
https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
“Brainwashing” is a reactionary myth (that originally comes from orientalist stories of Chinese hypnosis that were used to explain-away defectors in the Korean war) that is used to position the believer in a position superior to the masses (“sheeple”), and which only knows how to treat the latter condescendingly as blind followers of this or that, which is not how you do mass organizing if you want to succeed.
Should be mandatory reading, thanks for posting it!
I’m sorry, but I entirely disagree. Dialectical and Historical Materialism are incredibly far-removed from standard American discourse and takes quite a bit to understand, oversimplifying it is dangerous. If all it took to be a Marxist-Leninist was critical thought and self-awareness, the US would have had a proletarian revolution already.
Pretty sure they’d take everything you just wrote and say, “that sounds like critical race theory, which Jesus said was bad.”
Sure. The de-industrialization of America has been devastating for class awareness.
What de industrialization?
US is second largest industrial output and it has been rising.
Unless you mean jobs after NAFTA and code changes… Which is true but manufacturing employment is on the rise post covid reforms
The US shifted the vast majority of its production overseas, which is why it’s seen as a “service economy.”
US did offshore no doubt but it was not a vast majority. You can check the numbers, there was some decline in employment but US has high tech factories and industrial base is now growing quickly even with job growth since covid.
The reason it is largely a service economy is due to growth in service sector after industrialization. Once people got all their needs with goods met, they started buying service.
Think about all the food joints we have now for example. This is fairly recent thing. Sure food out always existed but not like this.
Also, people have god walkers, people buy insurance etc all this is kinda recent in big picture thing
I am aware of the process, the US produces the vast majority of its commodities oversees before “finishing” or “assembling” in the US. It’s Imperialism in action, where it hyper-exploits the Global South for super-profits.
Right but we started this here with claim that US de industrialized which I saying is not accurate and it is a common misconception thrown around.
It’s not because they think they can be billionaires, it’s because they’ve been taught (and in a minority of cases this is true) that they are better off going after the crumbs that billionaires leave them than trying some other system.
Living in denial is easy to continue doing and widely encouraged, while being very hard to overcome.
I think you know why. Is this a real question or are you just fishing?
Pretty sure its fishing.
I genuinely want to know from those that defend them.
Lack of successful alternatives? It’s easy to find flaws with capitalism but every other system has its share of problems too.
Socialism is the successful successor to Capitalism. Socialism isn’t an idea you implement, but a consequence of markets coalescing into monopolist syndicates that make themselves ripe for public ownership and planning.
This is the case only if you believe in Marx
Marx has the best content on the topic, shit is so good it triggers daddy owners to this lol
I kinda like Marx sooo…
I would say I like some dead guy… But his work is foundational for any self respecting adult imho
With out Understanding these concepts you are ain’t fucking operating
Also, elites study him closely and a lot of the regime behavior is actually designed to suppress workers based on his writings.
Ohh the irony.
What do you disagree with here? The idea that markets trend towards monopolist syndicates, naturally centralizing production? Or the idea that the Proletariat should sieze these syndicates and plan production democratically and centrally?
I’m not really disagreeing with you to be honest. I’m only saying that your views are the central idea of Marxism. Only Marxists believe in the conflict theory. I’m not a Marxist, but i do think socialism is the next most likely economic stage considering the current capitalist landscape. Whether it is the best path is what i don’t know.
I’m a Marxist-Leninist, correct, but the point of Marxism is that it doesn’t matter what individuals believe, Capitalism itself paves the way for Socialism just like Feudalism paved the way for Capitalism.
Hmm i don’t know about that. Saying that this one theory explains social change is kinda restrictive. There are other valid ideas that aren’t the conflict theory that might also result in social change. Think of idealist theories such as Hegel’s dialectical process which involves a thesis and antithesis. These theses eventually contradict each other to form a synthesis which eventually becomes its own thesis and vice versa.
I just like to keep an open mind about this stuff, as i don’t think social change boils down to just one theory.
Idealism is wrong, though, so focusing on it is useless IMO.
I find this reply very strange because it’s the core point of Marxism that it’s dialectical but materialist. It has a lot of forebears, but Hegel is the most direct and obvious of them.
This new German philosophy culminated in the Hegelian system. In this system — and herein is its great merit — for the first time the whole world, natural, historical, intellectual, is represented as a process — i.e., as in constant motion, change, transformation, development; and the attempt is made to trace out the internal connection that makes a continuous whole of all this movement and development. From this point of view, the history of mankind no longer appeared as a wild whirl of senseless deeds of violence, all equally condemnable at the judgment seat of mature philosophic reason and which are best forgotten as quickly as possible, but as the process of evolution of man himself. It was now the task of the intellect to follow the gradual march of this process through all its devious ways, and to trace out the inner law running through all its apparently accidental phenomena.
That the Hegelian system did not solve the problem it propounded is here immaterial. Its epoch-making merit was that it propounded the problem. This problem is one that no single individual will ever be able to solve. Although Hegel was — with Saint-Simon — the most encyclopaedic mind of his time, yet he was limited, first, by the necessary limited extent of his own knowledge and, second, by the limited extent and depth of the knowledge and conceptions of his age. To these limits, a third must be added; Hegel was an idealist. To him, the thoughts within his brain were not the more or less abstract pictures of actual things and processes, but, conversely, things and their evolution were only the realized pictures of the “Idea”, existing somewhere from eternity before the world was. This way of thinking turned everything upside down, and completely reversed the actual connection of things in the world. Correctly and ingeniously as many groups of facts were grasped by Hegel, yet, for the reasons just given, there is much that is botched, artificial, labored, in a word, wrong in point of detail. The Hegelian system, in itself, was a colossal miscarriage — but it was also the last of its kind.
It was suffering, in fact, from an internal and incurable contradiction. Upon the one hand, its essential proposition was the conception that human history is a process of evolution, which, by its very nature, cannot find its intellectual final term in the discovery of any so-called absolute truth. But, on the other hand, it laid claim to being the very essence of this absolute truth. A system of natural and historical knowledge, embracing everything, and final for all time, is a contradiction to the fundamental law of dialectic reasoning.
– Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
i don’t think social change boils down to just one theory.
If we believe that the universe fundamentally makes sense, then it must stem from that that it can all be explained on the same terms. Furthermore, within a domain, the extent to which a theory is unable to explain some part of that domain is the extent to which it either fails or is in-utero just a component of a larger theory whose other parts can cover those other areas. Not only can social change boil down to one theory, if you believe we live in an interconnected, logical world, it must boil down to one theory. Obviously there are many competitors for that title, and none of them are yet developed enough to properly claim it, but it is a legitimate and even a necessary title.
Edit: Sorry for piling on about the dialectics part, I see Cowbee did go over it later. fwiw I think he didn’t represent materialism fairly, but part of why I included the Engels quote is because I think he does represent Hegelian idealism and its fundamental problem (How can this dialectic of humans – material beings – take place in the world of ideas?) fairly.
People will find ways to accrue wealth and power even if you change the rules of the game. Sometimes people on this platform make it sound like socialism or communism can solve our problems. but it’s not that simple.
You’re right, Marxists don’t describe a Utopia but the natural progression of the Mode of Production.
Many reasons. One major factor imho is the belief or illusion to be living in a meritocracy. Which would mean, that someone who’s rich has to have earned it and therefore criticism must stem from envy or jealousy. The same belief fuels the ideology of thinking of poor people to just be lazy leeches on society.
Brainwashed since birth. GI Joe had the American Express slogan in an episode (“never leave home without it.”). Alvin and the Chipmunks had a story about the Berlin Wall propagandizing communism. All the bad guys in Cobra have accents.
This shit is vile and it was on my morning cartoons.
Some people think they are part of the club, rest don’t know better
They feel they will make that money someday.
Regulation is stripping freedom from people. We want freedom, we can’t regulate people.
I think that’s an argument.
Except without regulation businesses will do what they want and that usually isn’t the best thing for society.
We need a well regulated capitalistic society
Exactly. But the people I favor of billionaires don’t care.
because they prefer to dream of themselves as billionaires in potentia. it’s hard to admit you’ve been duped, especially when society gives you so many targets to punch down on.
or, as futurama put it, link
Because communism ≠ utopia. I only hate on shitty billionaires and ones that used shady methods to amass their wealth.
ones that used shady methods to amass their wealth.
Can you provide an example of one who didn’t?
I guess there some celebrities now in that club… But I can’t even get behind these regime whores. They have no solidarity with the people from which they leech
Blaming individuals produced by the system and not the system itself is strange. That’s like saying the IDF isn’t the problem, the soldiers are.
That’s a fair critique. I don’t like the capitalism we currently practice. I prefer a blend of socialism and capitalism - a social democracy if you will. I don’t hate large corporations per se. I do hate those who commoditize basic necessities such as healthcare and housing. This is where i believe there should be no privatisation.
Social Democracy isn’t a blend of Capitalism and Socialism, it’s Capitalism with social safety nets.
Either way, what you describe maintains accumulation and monopolization, which results in more privitization and disparity, which we see in the Nordic Countries. There are no static systems.
So what does a blend of capitalism and socialism look like to you? I’m saying that sectors which can lead to unfair control over necessary resources should be solely controlled by the government.
And you say monopolization. Monopolization of what exactly? I don’t think you care too much for the monopolization of the gaming industry or the video streaming industry do you?
Also, you emphasize wealth concentration. What exactly do you dislike about it? Especially considering that under a social democracy wealth is only at that point luxury since there is welfare available.
So what does a blend of capitalism and socialism look like to you? I’m saying that sectors which can lead to unfair control over necessary resources should be solely controlled by the government.
There isn’t really such thing as a “blend,” systems are either controlled by the bourgeoisie or proletariat. A socialist country with a large market sector is still socialist, a Capitalist country with a large public sector is still Capitalist. I recommend reading Socialism Developed China, not Capitalism.
And you say monopolization. Monopolization of what exactly? I don’t think you care too much for the monopolization of the gaming industry or the video streaming industry do you?
Monopolization paves the way for socialization. Large, monopolist syndicates make themselves open to central planning and democratic control.
Also, you emphasize wealth concentration. What exactly do you dislike about it? Especially considering that under a social democracy wealth is only at that point luxury since there is welfare available.
Wealth concentration leads to influence, which results in further privitization and erosion of social safety nets, like we see in the declining Nordic Countries.
Interesting. I still disagree with the impossibility of “blends”, but i will take a look at that book you recommended. Thank you for the conversation.
No problem! Let me know if you have any questions.
I don’t know if billionaires are the product of capitalism per se. Billionaires are people who have found out how to exploit the current system the best. In a socialistic society there are plenty of opportunities for corruption and exploitation of the working class. The rules are just a bit different. Billionaires definitely will defend capitalism since it’s how they’re currently winning the game, but they’ll adapt as soon as they need to as well. That or the winners will be a different group of people. Either way, the most powerful will always look for ways to consolidate even more power.
I suggest you read Marx, I can make some recommendations if you like.
Can you name a billionaire who doesn’t match that description?
How about celebrities and not shitty CEOs. I’m generalizing towards multimillionaires as well as there aren’t that many billionaires. Unless the hate is specifically towards billionaires which I don’t think is the case.
However, i would put money on the off chance that there is at least one billionaire who wasn’t shady about their wealth accumulation - think Steve Jobs. Unless you consider holding companies to be shady.
How about celebrities and not shitty CEOs. I’m generalizing towards multimillionaires as well as there aren’t that many billionaires. Unless the hate is specifically towards billionaires which I don’t think is the case.
I just took what you put out there. Generally, I’m skeptical that celebrities will really withstand scrutiny, since they tend to be supported by production crew and lesser-paid artists (whether in music or movies) who get regularly screwed over. Perhaps you can make an okay argument with athletes despite them also being held up by the pipeline from the notoriously exploitative college sports industry, playing in stadiums that are mostly damaging to the city, doing merchandising produced from sweatshops, etc.
But I don’t really care about those arguments. The reason I don’t care is that the conversation is based on an obscurantist metric, that being income. Any decent anti-capitalist is not mainly concerned with how much money someone gets or has, but their relationship to the means of production. That is, they are concerned with whether this person subsists by owning or subsists by working. You displayed what I would consider a good intuition by shifting from CEOs (who generally subsist by owning) to celebrities (who at least kind of subsist by working). It seems somewhat plausible to me that there would be very wealthy athletes, say, in a socialist state, because their job requires a lot of work and, at the top levels, having the talent to accomplish what they can accomplish is rare!
However, i would put money on the off chance that there is at least one billionaire who wasn’t shady about their wealth accumulation
If a machine produces a thousand cubes but also produces at least one octahedron, what would you describe the function of the machine as being?
think Steve Jobs.
When I think of Steve Jobs, I think of someone who put a lot of money and dedication into PR.
As a starting point if you believe that, here’s an article that lightly goes over some of his controversies (ignore points 4 and 10). And here’s one that I think is somewhat more interesting that incidentally demonstrates how dependent he was on exploitation of the third world.
Unless you consider holding companies to be shady.
Owning a company is just a legal status, it’s what you do with it that matters. If what you do with it just happens to be amassing more wealth than many, many people could obtain in a lifetime of labor, you probably didn’t get there with clean hands.
I want to say that i appreciate your nuance on the subject. You have raised many good points, and i will take a lot of what you have said into consideration in my future discussions on the topic.
I also want to give kudos on your shift from focus on income to more the relationship with that income which i agree can create problems especially when it comes to power imbalances. The overfocus on the income is as you put it “obscurantist”.
If a machine produces a thousand cubes but also produces at least one octahedron, what would you describe the function of the machine as being?
You raise a very good point here as well. One which makes sense with your analogy.
I’ve also gone through the articles you posted, and there’s some pretty eye-opening stuff in there.
I guess this is in some ways an admittal of defeat. I do not know whether i completely subscribe to a “communism is the next best”. I think i still need to educate myself more on this topic.
I’m happy I could be helpful!
I guess this is in some ways an admittal of defeat
There’s no need to claim defeat or victory, we’re just talking; Success in communication is determined by the extent to which we are able to understand each other, and I think we did alright.
I think i still need to educate myself more on this topic.
I can’t claim to represent any perspective but my own, but the text that really helped me to begin to see things differently was Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Feel free to DM me/necropost here if there’s anything I can help with.
Thanks man. I’ll be sure to hit you up if i need help with anything!
Why give the regime whores a pass? They play a role within the system to pacify the plebs. They are not by any stretch on the peasant team.
Sure some deff stood tall. Carlin is an example I can stand behind but rest of them esp modern ones are just pathetic sell out.
Seeing Jon cena and one of the clown ba players apologizing to China for $$$
Fucking disgusting
Lack of good examples of countries that are successful without being capitalist?
Pretty ubiquitously non-capitalist countries have a pretty poor track record.
I often hear the phrase, capitalism is terrible, but it’s the least bad of the terrible options.
As an aside, I’m arguing here for capitalism, not billionaires. Supporting capitalism isn’t an endorsement of a complete lack of controls and safeguards.
Lack of good examples of countries that are successful without being capitalist?
There are many. The USSR, PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, etc. Have all drastically improved on previous conditions, achieving large increases in life expectancy, democratization, literacy rates, access to healthcare, housing, education, and more. Read Blackshirts and Reds.
Pretty ubiquitously non-capitalist countries have a pretty poor track record.
This is false. What are you specifically tracking? Freedom for the bourgeoisie?
I often hear the phrase, capitalism is terrible, but it’s the least bad of the terrible options.
The phrase is typically used to describe democracy, not Capitalism.
As an aside, I’m arguing here for capitalism, not billionaires. Supporting capitalism isn’t an endorsement of a complete lack of controls and safeguards.
It doesn’t matter what you support, the Superstructure, ie laws and safeguards, comes primarily from the Base, ie the Mode of Production.
Markets move themselves regardless of people’s will towards centralized syndicates, monopolies over production. These make themselves ripe for siezure and central planning, markets themselves prepare the proletariat for running a socialized economy as they coalesce over time. This is why Marx says the bourgeoisie produces “above all else, its own gravediggers.” There is no maintaining Capitalism, it eliminates itself over time.
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I’m confused, do you think the USSR’s economy was powered by starvation of ethnic minorities, and through this magic starvation power industrialization could occur? What point are you trying to make?
I cant tell if this for real…
But so we are clear… USSR had undesirable minority farmers who didn’t like collectivization.
They need hard currency to buy tooling and equipment to industrialize.
They took all crops from these farmers, sold it on International markets and kicked industrialization into high gear…
Millions died. So yes USSR industrial at expense of millions of lives. I don’t think there is much dispute here.
Do you think Kulaks were an ethnicity, and not a bourgeois class? Collectivization of agriculture was poorly done, yes, but it wasn’t what powered industrialization. This is a misanalysis of the USSR.
Weren’t they ukrainian?
I don’t think kazakhs were ever called kulaks, not sure tho
Collectivization of agriculture was poorly done,
And here comes genocide apologia … Again
You’re conflating disparate factors. Ukraine was the breadbasket of the USSR, that doesn’t mean there was a targeted famine towards them.
Kulaks were a group of bourgeois farmers that opposed collectivization. Many of these Kulaks burned their own crops and killed their livestock to avoid handing it over to the Red Army and the Communists.
The famine in Ukraine and parts of Russia was a separate but linked matter. The Kulak resistance to collectivization was multiplied by drought, flood, and pests, making an already low harvest spiral into crisis. The idea that it was an intentional famine and therefore a genocide actually originated in Volkischer Beobatcher, a Nazi news outlet, before spreading to the west. It isn’t “genocide apologia,” it was a horrible tragedy caused by a combination of human and environmental factors.
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Many people do not grasp the sheer size of the disparity between the truly wealthy and everyone else.
They really think billionaires are like them, the only difference is that someone else goes to Walmart for them
Billionaires are like everyone else. That’s the reason I don’t look up to any. They’re just as human as I am. No amount of money can ever make them anything else or anything more. They have access to an absurd degree, and they can afford far, FAR more, but they will never escape their base human nature. Almost anyone can be a billionaire. Some current billionaires prove that every moment they open their mouths.
Or they take capitalism as good and freedom as an axiom.
Most people will take “freedom” as an axiom, but how “freedom” is defined varies a lot. In a society where the commons are pretty much fully enclosed and you are homeless, the petite-bourgeois may very well be free, but you really aren’t.
I believe your comments is just a paraphrase of: “They are being stupid”
In my opinion this is a very toxic way of thinking and does not try to understand the arguments “the other side” presents.
I don’t think it’s that bad-faith. I myself still find it positively mind-blowing to comprehend when the data is right in front of me.
Someone might equate wealth to hard work, but it hasn’t really hit them, the real literal difference between 1 million dollars, and 1 billion, and then the news is talking about “trillionaires.”
There’s just no way to earn a billion dollars, to yourself, through honest work and by not exploiting others. And I think a lot of folks really don’t realize this. They know that’s a lot, but they might change their mind and realize how outrageous it is, when you present them with something like:
“Joe, you could get 3 more promotions and work 80 hours a week for 13 lifetimes and still not earn that much. Do you really think this is just petty jealousy at play?”
They might just change their mind.
But a lot of folks grew up in a time or place where people who ran the company started at the bottom, and it really needs to hit them hard that this just isn’t reality anymore.
Well it’s similar to what Churchill said about democracy… it’s a bad system but it’s better than all the others.
If you can put ideology aside and think in terms of economics, in many industries capitalism offers an efficient way of determining the an optimal price and quantity to produce considering the costs and value something brings. And it’s something that allows for industries to function without an excessive amount of centralized planning which will often get things wrong.
But it’s like a machine in a many ways. And like any machine it requires maintenance. Things like trust-busting, progessive taxation, regulations, and occasional stimulus are necessary to keep it running smoothly.
But once you bring ideology into it, it all becomes a shitshow. Some will argue capitalism is a perfect machine and any kind of maintenance on the machine will ruin it’s perfection. Others take any kind of maintenance on the machine as a sign the machine will inevitably fail and needs to be replaced entirely. But then we go back to the beginning where other systems have been tried and they’re worse. Charlatans, grifters, ideologues abound pushing people in every direct except for simply taking reasonable measures to keep the machine running smoothly. There’s an almost religious devotion towards arguing the either the machine is perfect or the machine is doomed to failure and not only should be replaced they should accelerate the failure so it can be replaced sooner.
Zealots from all sides demonize the mechanics that are simply keeping things running. A lot of emotional nonsense about this thing. But to an economist, it’s just a machine with both strengths and weaknesses. The functioning of the machine is well understood, and the other machines that have been tried didn’t really work.
I think decentralization of power is a nice feature too. Billionaires are power centers outside of the government, judiciary, or military. They exist as a result of lax control on the markets by the government. In countries without capitalism and property rights, the billionaires are the government and the judiciary and the military. So, even though it might seem like nationalizing their wealth would decrease inequality, if there aren’t good safeguards for decentralizing government power, it would result in a less equal society.
Part of the existence of billionaires is the ability to actually determine which money is theirs. In autocratic governments, you can’t really say who owns what because you never know what the government might decide to take.
I don’t defend billionaires, I think power should be spread more fairly, but eliminating them via the government needs to be done wisely in order to maintain decentralization.
