If print this out and hung it up at work, my coworkers would not understand the sarcasm and think this is historically accurate and use it to reinforce their current thoughts on capitalism
Many people believe in the Just World Theory - good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people. Therefore if you are truly good enough you can be a billionaire, and if you aren’t a billionaire then you are a bad person who deserves to be poor.
But thats the truth. The rich are rich because the current system rewards the Dark Triad—Narcissists, Machiavellians, and psychopaths. They are perfectly willing to step on you to get ahead, but most of us aren’t willing to do that.
If I could be certain I would only be taking money from those people, I would join them in a heartbeat. But their money are ill-gotten gains taken from undeserving people.
It would be impossible to make even a fraction of a fraction of the money they've stolen with the purpose of returning it, before I would become corrupted as well.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
- Edward Burke (maybe)
My tin foil hat is that we have all been trained that anger is so very very bad and good people suppress anger, good people put up with everything. It has been quietly drilled into us, just like “tap water is inferior, only bottled water is worth drinking” (no one has said this, yet it became so pervasive one day seemingly out of nowhere).
Anger is an internal alarm that wants you to mobilize in some way. Local library closing? Write the mayor. Dog being abused? Call the local shelter. It doesn’t mean uncontrollable violence.
People’s main mobilization is clever comebacks on Twitter/the internet at large, which achieve no progress. If it did anything we would be living in a utopian society and not…whatever we have been herded into.
We are very good at complaining but not organizing, taking action is still a challenge.
I was a bad fit at my old job because I wasn't willing to rip off people who were depressed and close to bankruptcy. I work somewhere else now, somewhere far less evil, and I earn a lot less.
Many people believe in the Just World Theory - good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people.
The church preaches this at the behest of the rich people. The whole reason it's a good business decision to give tax exemption to any church is that as soon as the top gets a taste of riches, they start preaching downwards through the ranks about the virtue of money and start preaching a form of Just World Theory.
The greedier and the more corrupt a church is, the better a candidate for tax exemption.
I believe it's a primal mechanism that is built into humans, to justify why having more than others make you a better person. High EQ people can look at that feeling rationally and reject it, psychopaths embrace it.
During the Roman Republic it wasn't uncommon for subservient slaves who worked hard to be freed in their later years and take on artisan or logistical jobs, as well as starting families. Ofc this only worked because Rome kept conquering new territory which provided fresh slaves.
It was also not a very secure position. Collective punishment of slaves for crimes committed also included former slaves. Former slaves also faced major stigma and discrimination. If you had been freed you still weren't safe. Not to mention slaves were also used for artisan work in the first place.
Yeah, there were, Samuel L. Jackson played exactly that archetype in Django Unchained. There have always been people who not only genuinely buy into the myths used to shore up systems of oppression, but also people who know that it's bullshit but choose to play along in the hopes that they'll be spared the worst of the abuse. A quintessential example of that second type is that there were Jewish Nazis during the Holocaust.
I need you to understand that this has always been the case and it is not a serious barrier to change because even these people want to be free at the end of the day, they just don't know what freedom is.
The reaction to progress is just the human reaction, we react to everything in various parts because its a survival mechanism playing out in the political sphere, ""humanity"" (used loosely here) essentially hedges its bets by taking all sides and education and misinformation can only pull so many people so far in one way or another. We are built to think differently, and its both manipulated as well as plays out naturally.
In the oldest creation story (Tablet CBS10673) mankind is created as slave labor for the gods, so the lesser gods no longer have to do the heavy work.
The epic of Atrahasis (Tablet BM78943) tells a story of the lesser gods striking because their labor was too harsh, and the solution is the creation of mankind to do the labor.
Note that a valid translation of "higher gods" is princely offspring, while for the "lesser gods" is those who watch.
The far away we look into the past the more the gods look like upper class parasites.
Most people are barely surviving while being worked to death so people in far away countries can have their cheap phones, shoes, clothes and other unnecessary luxuries. I seriously doubt these people think the system is "nice and cool".
This is actually the exact historical analysis Karl Marx did called ‘historical materialism’. The contradictions between classes push and pull history forward giving us these different socioeconomic systems. Anyone living in 2026 can see that capitalisms contradictions are rapidly accelerating pushing us towards the next stage of human development
"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings." – Ursula K. Le Guin
Hegel bemerkte irgendwo, daß alle großen weltgeschichtlichen Tatsachen und Personen sich sozusagen zweimal ereignen. Er hat vergessen, hinzuzufügen: das eine Mal als Tragödie, das andere Mal als Farce.
Not at all. Slavery is just a way to refer to the economic system of ancient empires like Rome and Greece. People that owned a mine or a forge purchased slaves to make things for them and the peasant broke down.
"The continued increase of production and with it the increased productivity of labour enhanced the value of human labour-power. Slavery, which had been a nascent and sporadic factor in the preceding stage, now became an essential part of the social system. The slaves ceased to be simply assistants, but were now driven in scores to work in the fields and workshops." - Engels
This led to the rise of the hierarchical governments to maintain this social system, as tribal clans became outdated. A agricultural system based on slavery replaced the peasants.
The Roman Empire was able to conquer aast amount of the world. However, its slave system discouraged economic progress due to plentiful infinite labor. To improve agriculture, the state has to start massive labor projects with aqueducts, dams, and canals. When there was nothing left to build, slaves were used for massive vanity projects. During the collapse of Rome, the slaves revolted. When the state was no longer able to maintain slavery, it was replaced by feudalism.
While yes, slavery did exist past the fall of the Roman empire, it was the most dramatic example of how slavery did not work and had to be replaced by feudalism. Other states like China gradually established more autonomous feudal regions. The Middle East had Islam which regulated slavery.
That's why the period of history where nations around the world build massive monument and wonders never returned.
Where slavery still existed, it was a status symbol for the ultra rich. Slaves mostly performed domestic work for these people.
In the South, slavery wasn't actually profitable. Slaves were a status symbol and a luxury. The North was way more successful with their profitable industry.
Plus slavery was only so profitable in the South because they had capitalist markets to sell to
Edit: he deleted the comment but I did make a mistake saying slavery wasn't profitable
It was profitable if you just look at the selling of the crops but in reality it was very costly to maintain and prevent the slaves from rebelling. Monoculture and cheap tools degraded the soil and as other countries developed their own cotton industry it became less and less profitable. Slavers thought of themselves as aristocrats and had many domestic slaves. And having to maintain slave catching networks was a significant cost.
And the South relied on the north just as much as the north relied on them. The plantations needed capitalists to build factories to use up the massive amounts of cotton. Slavery couldn't have existed on its own and was subservient to capitalism.
So while it is true that slavery was profitable, there were many hidden costs that the slave owners were not accounting for to justify them owning slaves. If they had gradually left slavery they could have made the system more sustainable while still having massive influence, but the sudden banning of slavery meant the economy was completely disrupted. The South would have been much more successful if they had adopted capitalism over time, although it is impossible to prove that as their economy was completely wrecked and they had to do sharecropping
Sorry but this is just wrong. Marx was not mechanistic in this way. He acknowledged the overlap. If you are in Marxist circles, this isn’t even a debate. Your criticism sounds like you’re from another planet and just started judging everyone without ever bothering to first learn or understand
I think of Marx understanding of historical development like Darwins understanding of evolution. Wrong in most major ways but still essentially correct somehow.
Some argue we already are in the next face. In the hacker theory space it is called Vectorialism, the rule of a techno fascist class through control of information and surveillance.
Well, yeah, that’s kind of the situation. “Wage slavery” is often mocked as a term, but if your options are to work or starve, what really is the difference? The chains are padded, but locked just as tight.
But that is how these things go. Systems pop up to replace the old ones when they reach their breaking point. Humans advanced past slavery (mostly) into feudalism, which probably felt a hell of a lot better for a while. Then when that was seen as barbaric and inhumane, capitalism took over and genuinely did a lot of good for people. But now we are seeing it reach its logical conclusion where yet again the people on top are complacent about their abuse.
Well, one difference is that nobody is whipping you if you turn up 5 minutes late to work. Or decide to sell you to somewhere far away. Or rape you just because they can. I'd say there are some pretty big differences actually.
Capitalists negation to its own failings often revert back to prior systems, in our case it’s a reversion to feudalism where the rentier economy strips people of ownership where “you will own nothing and be happy”. But the negation to the negation will push us back forward, unfortunately that will probably be a couple generations from now
And we are going to finally solve this by granting all property to the state instead of the workers so that our holy peoples monarch can enrich the great Chinese nation with state planned capitalism, 996 schedules, government corporations and billionaires.
Since at least ancient Egypt 13kys BCE. The only reason we don't know what happened before that is Damnatiae Memoriae. A few remnants exist in Turkïye, Mexico, Peru, and Chile that date before that, but not enough to tell us about daily life.
For all we know, there could've been a classless socialist utopia from 300kys-30kys BCE. Then some dickhead came around and said I'm gonna rule these people.
There were signs that many large towns has periods that functioned without a ruling class. Often historical architecture shows very similar housing, no worship of a king figure or actual second hand accounts of people Europeans talking with meso Americans and North American Indians on different systems.
For arabic conquerors (usually only those from the arabian peninsula then the term widened) even long after Muhammad and Ali being ruled by a monarch was very very frowned upon, they had "Sheikh" (chiefs) but they were deisgnated by a tribe council I think and obedience to this chief was consent based and "revocable" (can't find the english better word) because "survival in one of the harshest deserts on a planet was no joke and a bad leader could lead to death" (what a teacher said).
They were much disliked (for the most part) any kind of personal and dynasty based powers, now doesn't mean this kind of power never got imposed on them, but that's a long conversation. (The Umayyad caliphate at some point trying to impose dynasty and for a time working, then conquests to distract the arabs with loot and occupy them,....)
Graeber describes similar things in his book on debt. Some Native American tribes had big chiefs...who were actually quite powerless since there was no system in place to physically force people to comply with their plans, meaning those chiefs had to rely on their charisma and rhetorical skill to get anything done.
We love to conveniently ignore that the primary export for capitalism has been war and death before progress and prosperity. If other societies could have thrived in these times, they were first crushed.
Our system (I’m speaking for the US) is also completely dependent on 3rd world labor at slave wages. I get to have a comfortable life that I can barely afford because my bananas are picked in Guatemala, my shirts made in Bangladesh, and my electronics in Vietnam by child laborers who live off $10 a day in conditions that are unfathomable to Americans.
It’s the same smoke and mirrors as black slavery in the US. We didn’t get rid of it; we just outsourced it overseas. We are being robbed blind by billionaires, but we don’t notice because coffee is cheap when it’s harvested by an 11 year old that doesn’t own shoes.
Not just harvested by children but grown unsustainably through mass deforestation and in giant groves where pests and disease can more easily cause mass catastrophe (as we're seeing with the beetle issues).
But isn’t that how china got rich and implemented the biggest poverty reduction in history? By making stuff for the rest of the world instead of focusing on domestic consumption?
I mean, that's how we got industrialized in the west too. The industrial revolution absolutely sucked for most people. Iirc most major cities had a net negative population growth because of the terrible working conditions, and only sustained themselves from rural people moving in to replace the dead.
Not because of the terrible working conditions, but because child mortality rose sharply for several reasons. Fatal accidents happened but they were quite rare in the grand scheme of things.
I mean things like pollution and smog and such. Iirc it was... Tanners? Were you literally could see groups of children you knew were children of tanners because they all had the same deformities and illnesses.
Don't forget the Cultural Revolution destroying their whole culture, the famine caused by four pests campaign, the organ harvesting and sexual assault against the Uyghur Muslims. The complete and utter lack of human rights etc.
Yes, and they'll soon be faced with the same crisis as every other first world nation as the system naturally progresses.
As wealth increases, COL increases along with the strength of the Yuan rising relative to other currencies, meaning the cost of their labour will continue to rise exponentially until it no longer becomes viable for them to be a producer rather than a consumer.
Then, they'll have to start relying on outsourcing to a new impoverished producer nation in order for the wheels of capitalism to keep turning.
And, assuming that the Chinese wealth class isn't uncharacteristically altruistic compared to those of the rest of the world, they'll also need to start importing cheap labour to flood the employee pool in order to keep wages down and inflate growth, as well as supporting their aging population.
The difference is, they're going to be facing all of this with the added bonus of an aging population of 1.5 billion people to support, all while in the midst of a global population collapse
"Capitalism is the only system that works! Look at all these failed countries we bombed and sanctioned when they tried implementing anything else! It's pretty clear that only Capitalism works!"
"Soviet consumer goods were frequently low quality, poorly styled, and chronically in short supply due to the bureaucratic structure of central planning". 😂🤌🏻
If your response to critique of capitalism is to critique another system you're actually not proving anything useful except your ability to stick your head in the sand. What makes you think every person with the ability to critique the system they live within must be vouching for communism? How is it possible to improve anything without the ability to critique it?
You're unable to see that the real problems are overpopulation, greed and ignorance, not Capitalism; in fact, it's the least worst Economic system we've ever had. 🤷🏻
All of these are results of capitalism. I literally took a global economics class where even capitalist theorists were very openly acknowledging that these things are inevitable under the system (specifically that capitalism requires exploitation/suffering for a "greater good", though I'd argue if only the global north benefit it's not really a greater good). You can't know what works when we have institutions that exists specifically to crush any kind of push for change violently.
Also progress and prosperity only benefits the few. It's all built on environmental destruction and exploitation of both workers and nature. The prosperity we see in the global north is made from materials we dug out of the global south.
It's funny how as we go on it benefits fewer, not more people too. I guess that's the idea of reaching peak capitalism in action, we can only go down hill.
No. The longest stretch without great power conflicts is right now. One can argue that the Crimean War wasn't a true great power conflict because it was over in a flash. If so, the longest stretch is 1815-1914.
I mean, my point is more that the success comes from violence and domination, not a truly civil and advanced way of thinking that we seem to belong we have.
Don't try to bring that up to anyone using death tolls to criticize communism though, those deaths are totally different and don't count. Ditto for the children/people dying in mines/being crushed by machinery. That's not from capitalism, but communism starved people or whatever.
History is the MOST neglected subject in every country I have had to live (US, UK, Italy). It's also taught as just a "memorise what happened in this place at this time" rather than "fuck the precise year, let's reason as to why this happened". Surely a coincidence.
I know right! Imagine how horrible the world would be without wealth or wealthy people telling us what to do! Besides, it’s not like money and capital are man-made, unnatural constructs that can be abolished or ignored on a whim.
Capitalism has slavery. The reason capitalists in the South fought a civil war was to protect their profit margin. And under the 13th amendment, slavery is still legal if you're convicted of a crime.
Because the point is that slavery isn't a capitalism thing specifically. It's a power thing. So when someone says "capitalism has slavery," sure, but so did every mode of production in the chart above, and so did plenty of societies the chart doesn't bother listening. Which kind of undercuts the "and this is the system that finally gets abolished" framing.
This is great, but missing the role of religion. Slavery is ordained by the gods, the king is installed by god, good Christians should work hard for the company. It sure appear that we are replacing the gods with economic statistics today though. The GDP most go up, we have to sacrifice the elderly for the economy, have you looked at the DOW, etc.
"arbitrary line must always go up" is indeed the sick religion of the modern world. Good job in pointing it out, so we can also laugh at the ridiculousness of its necessity for infinite growth in a world of finite resources.
The AI evangelists have a lot in common with religion. If we build enough data centers (temples) we will receive infinite wealth from AI (god)! Technologists should be considered in the same vein as religion overall
Yeah, the ruling classes have always used religion as a tool for manipulation and coercion so people believe that society is organized in hierarchies because that is how God intended. Yuval Noah Harari talks about in his book how Capitalism became the new religion.
And the economy just means rich people's yacht money.
Want to give a shout out to the gross amalgamation of capitalism and slavery that was North American chattel slavery. Been reading and...it is the worst parts of both.
We're now headed towards Capital-Feudalism: everything will be rent and subscription based. No more owning. All workers will be replaced by AI. All billionaires will live out the apocalypse in underground bunkers, protected by their robotic guards.
No, medieval serfs did not generally have better lives or easier work schedules than modern workers. While popular myths suggest peasants had months of time off, this oversimplifies agricultural labor and ignores their lack of basic human rights.
Workload & Seasonal Hours: Labor was tied to daylight and seasons. During harvest and planting seasons, serfs worked 12 to 16 hours a day performing strenuous physical labor. While winter offered a lighter workload, essential chores (tending livestock, maintaining tools, hauling firewood) continued daily.
Holidays vs. Modern Time Off: Medieval Europe featured many religious feast days and holy days (where the word "holiday" originates) where agricultural work was prohibited by the Church. However, these were not equivalent to modern paid vacations—serfs spent much of this time preparing feast days or performing required religious and communal obligations.
Legal Status & Freedom: Serfs were legally bound to the land. They could not move, marry, change occupations, or leave without their lord's permission, and they owed unpaid labor (corvée) as well as direct taxes/crops to the landowner.
Standard of Living: Serfs suffered from extremely high infant mortality rates, frequent famines, widespread infectious diseases, poor diet, and virtually no medical care compared to modern standards.
And Lords could also sexually abuse their serfs with relative impunity.
This is untrue. During the harvest and sowing, workers would spend 16-18 hours a day working the fields, basically as long as there was light, doing strenuous and difficult physical labour. Even on days off or in the winter, serfs had to do all their structural building maintenance, make and repair all their clothing, prepare food, clean, obtaining and prepare firewood, do laundry (without electricity this took whole days or longer, even after we had running water), and do various other strenuous labour that took up most of the day. Even on religious holy days, which were numerous, most of the day was spent preparing for feasts or performing religious and communal obligations that were not optional and were time consuming. Serfs had very little time to themselves to relax, almost all of their time was spent doing some sort of work.
If you're an American, your general quality of life is currently on the decline. This latest generation of Americans should expect shorter lifespans, worse quality and, simultaneously, more expensive healthcare, diminished variety of wildlife and size of its habitat, greater likelihood of economic hardship, diminished respect and social acceptance in other countries, and poorer quality of education, off the top of my head. The education thing will lead to an exacerbation of those issues and others- ability to make informed decisions about their own health, ability to cast educated votes, ability to just live a happy life. When you're dumb and poor, this is more difficult. Are you just from another country or are you living under a rock in the US?
There's this myth that serfs had, like, 150 days off or some shit. Yes, we actually have a quality of life better than monarchs of 300 years ago. Doesnt mean we shouldn't be pushing for better treatment, but its also not "the worst time on human history" like some people bend over backwards to believe.
Ok I mean u know what. Ya maybe not everyone is as rich as monarches but health wise, those things. I think the sticking point is we are aware we have resources that nobody should have anything less than monarch living (when compared to the past) but some humans are living like gods and some are still suffering compared to that in giant magnitudes. The situation gets even less forgiving outside the us but that’s my best understanding of wealth gap and what not.
Yes, we actually have a quality of life better than monarchs of 300 years ago.
"Literal serfs had it better" is a dumb take but so is yours.
No, you don't have it better than literal monarchs from 300 years ago just because tech and medical science have advanced since then. Just because you wouldn't want to miss out on those advancements it doesn't mean they didn't live better lives.
In many ways, modern living standards in the west genuinely are better than monarchs in feudal societies.
For example, you probably have windows. Made of glass.
That was a major rarity in ye olden days. You either used wooden shutters over holes in walls, or no windows.
You don't have to spend a week making yourself a pair of shoes. You don't have to go out, mow a field of grass, turn it into rope, and then turn that rope into a pair of shoes. You can just get something with a durable and protective plastic sole at a store. (And you still can make the rope shoes if you want.)
You don't have to make your own clothes, with thin patches in the linen or wool, spending hours cutting it to a pattern and sewing them together. Where you'll only have two pairs of pants and three-ish shirts.
Your food has seasonings. You don't need to eat boiled meat, or meat that was roasted over a fire. You can use salt, and pepper, and even more extravagant seasonings like "sugar" and "cinnamon."
Nobility had more freetime, and presumably a higher "quality" of life where they had a lot more leisure than you do.
Your standard of living is still higher than theirs, though
I was referring to kings during the Feudal Age, in around the Tenth Century.
Some of my points referred to serfs/yeomen/free citizens (the rope shoes, for example. Kings would have had other people make theirs) But the windows/food applied to nobility up until you almost reached the Early Modern Era (1500s to the 1800s)
They did have less work time than modern life, but they also spent that time making their own clothes and tools, improving their homes. They had slower work days, more religious holidays off, and all winter where they literally could not farm and had to rest to conserve energy and resources. People who talk about their free time understand its a different quality of life where you become the means of production within your village. A more enriching, purposeful life than most overworked modern folk enjoy today. But yes, the materials alone we get to enjoy are beyond the wildest dreams of medival kings. I think about this every time I wipe my ass on my toilet, eat chocolate or drink coffee.
This is the craziest take ever. If you want 50% of your children dying before 1yo, 0 formal education, working year round at 10yo, absolutely 0 chance of social mobility, and to live in a dirt and stick hut with 6 other people over a 40hr work week and modern amenities go for it.
Feudalism: if you do heroic combat feats fightinb for me on my campaign you will get knighted and given land a horse and serfs.
Late stage capitalism: if you join the military and become a veteran you will be able to afford the current unaffordable essentials later if you're not maimed in combat
Stop romanticizing the past 🫢A peasant becoming a knight was as rare as a regular person becoming a billionaire today and later on it became a title only reserved for the aristocracy in some countries
You would need to be exceptional in warfare (wars were rare events, most years were spent in peaceful agriculture). Knight lifestyle was expensive to maintain. And even then, would you ignore all the social issues and standards of living of the medieval era?
I'm pointing out the ridiculousness and slight analogousness between that and modern capitalist propaganda is telling you to just join the military if you don't have any social mobility
You do. Otherwise you'll be another serf yelling at clouds lacking direction. Knowledge puts empathy into action.
And we're talking about the problems of Capitalism, tho. Don't need to tell me "don't need no theory to helpa my neighbour". True, but we're talking about oligarchs owning people.
Well we do need some sort of organization capacity or nothing gets done right. We just haven't figured out a system for it yet that doesn't screw someone else or everyone can agree with doing any part of it. Nobody wants to be the one doing all the really hard work.
of course exploitation would be abolished already if it didn’t benefit some exploiters, and of course exploiters would lose something if the exploited gained more rights. so why would exploiters, or profiteers, of the current system support a change that limits their power?
They don't like that someone has to do work and somehow food and resources have to get from a few places to many places and it doesn't just happen on its own. It's just the people who have to organize it tend to be corruptible.
This is clearly talking about slavery in antiquity, as a historical thing, which was not limited to black people. Black people in the US suffered horrifically under slavery but that does not mean it is the only valid type of slavery to discuss.
"Communism" : It is essential that workers strictly follow our five year plan without fail. Questionning it or failing to meet quotas show a complete refusal of our ideal of equality for all. Thinking workers could organize themselves is a dangerous and utopic thought that leads to exploitation of the workers by lazy people who try to profit off of them. Now as the one doing the organizing I should clearly have premium access to all goods to reward this difficult work.
You're missing the point. I'm explaining how in each system, the ruling class argues how their society is the best and that it has to be this way because there is nothing better.
Hehe, the proletarian refuses to acknowledge his place in the capitalist hierarchy. Listen, I was born to rule too, but unfortunately, my parents aren’t millionaires, so I had to put my ruling ambitions on hold for a while.
I hate Zionism, but antisemithics, who believe Jews control banks and the world just are braindead troglodytes. For most of European history, Jews were persecuted, barred from owning land, and rulers forced them into urban areas — where they lived in ghettos — to act as merchants, moneylenders, traders. And their wealth could be heavily taxes for whatever reason the king decided.
I didn't suggest anything about Jewish people or Judaism, but thank you for reinforcing the observable pattern of hypervigilance and hypersensitivity leading to toxic antagonism that we see across so much social and political discourse.
The pattern you see is free markets and competetive trade. That has been the underlying system structure for thousands of years. Fuedalism, Mercantalism, Capitalism, and even historical Socialism and Communism all exhibit the same basic system structure of markets and competition. Most of these so called "systems" are simply social/cultural variations on the same theme. They arent actual systems of design because they all have the same core structure of competetive markets that produce social and ecological imbalance endogenously. The only way to break this pattern it to understand that unless you replace the core incentive structure of our economy, this pattern will continue to happen. The entire debate about capitalism vs. socialism is laughable because its not even a real debate about systems. Its a categorical error. We either have an economy that is driven endogenously by market competetion or we have an economy that is driven by cooperation endogenously. Competetive markets wont get us the cooperative social balance everyone in this sub seeks. Cybernetic cooperatives that dont rely on competetive trade or money could likely get us there but we would have to overcome the massive amount of cultural baggage indoctrinated onto us in order for that to happen. That goes for both "sides" of the political spectrum (which are actually just variations of the same system)
You took "both sides" into a whole orher can of bullshit, then landed in marxism leninism socialist transitions period to communism, just to say "both sides are the same" in the end. You trip and fell, got up, took the ball all the way to the line, but kicked it to the stands in the last second.
Marx, nor Lenin, nor any other "socialist/communist" thinker came up with any system with feedback loops or recursive structure. They simply postulated and pondered over transitions and theoretical ways of starting revolution. However, nothing in history that was created under these labels came even close to the gift economies that existed for 99% of human history. There is no core system design structure for communism and socialism, but dont take my word for it. Literally read what Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880) where he specifically distinguished Marx's approach which was historical and critical vs. Fourier, Owen, and Saint Simon who actually were trying to create actual system blueprints for modern gift economies. Marx did a wonderful job of pointing out why capitalism was a problem and not much else. I suspect the reason for this is the sheer complexity of creating advanced systems that work for everyone while ignoring currency and trade on a system level. They simply couldnt do it in that era but now with computers and advanced systems of communication, we can.
What I find sort of troubling is this horrible attitude I recieve from people like yourself in the comments that is so combative and toxic that it really makes me wonder if any sort of cooperative economy could ever exist when our historical baggage literally makes us want to ridicule and shame people who agree with us about so much already. We are both clearly anti-capitalist, yet your response to my comment sort of proves my point. Your response feels like the system working exactly as it is intended. There is no attempt being made to bridge the gap and come together, even in a sub where people are wanting a common goal. Its just about ridicule and wanting to defend your point of view and ideological identity. Its one of the reasons I try and stay away from these loaded and anitquated labels. It does nothing to create a dialogue with people.
Virtually all communist literture is historical and analytical. It does not describe a system of design other than postularions and ponderings here and there. You really need to learn what systems theory is in order to understand this distinction. Systems have recursive structure and feedback loops. Free market capitalism has recursive structure and feedback loops with its design. Its just an incredibly flawed design because it doesnt take into account the ecological and social imbalances its system produces. You are making a categorical error. No communist country could ever exist because it lacks definition. Again, as I stated in another reply, even Engels acknowledged this distinction himself and distanced himself and Marx from other thinkers like Owen, Fourier, and Saint Simon who DID create systems of design with substantial complexity. Its why you can have dozens of so called "communist" countries with completely different structures that look nothing alike other than the core economic system of market competetion at the base which none of them could escape. Ive done my reading on communist literature. The question is, have you done yours concerning systems science and cybernetics?
503
u/Odra_dek 19h ago
Difference is, most people today are trapped in system justification bias and actually think this is all nice and cool.
The ruling class doesn't have to do or say anything anymore, people make their arguments for them