He analyzed capitalism (and religion), and his model predicted regular worsening crises when the market couldn’t expand further, leading to its eventual abolition.
He was employed as a journalist and published books on history and economics.
I swear libs just make stuff up that sounds right and then believe the shit they fantasized
nobody cares about facts or details. they only care about marx = communism.
he was a better economist than he was a political theorist. but his economic works are long, boring, and technical, and his political works are far shorter and dramatic, so that’s all the average undergraduate cares about.
Why would you say he’s a bad political theorist? If we measure the success of a political theory by its ability to take, hold and exercise power Marxism is one of the most successful political ideologies in the world. Sure it never “beat” liberal capitalism but it came the closest of any other theory to challenging it.
Or are you doubting it’s accuracy more then its success?
A political theory being popular doesn’t mean it’s a good or inherently sound theory. For example, fascists have made the “immigrants are ruining our country” theory very common in the mainstream and people have latched on to it to explain their lived experience. Fascism is “challenging” classical liberalism pretty successfully. That doesn’t make it logically sound or a viable strategy.
The problem I have with Marx discussions are people cherry picking across his work. Some of it is philosophical, some is economic analysis and some is aspirational politics. Usually along the lines of “his theoretical economic framework is mostly sound in X case, therefore his political prognosis is correct”.
Marx was living in a certain time with certain quantifiable constraints and a specific lived perspective, writing on contemporary economic conditions. When I point that out I’m always met with “Well he didn’t need to know about [modern human cognitive research / studies on the specific limitations of earth’s resources / the scalability of technical surveillance & media distribution] to project its effects”.
I vehemently assert that our modern perspective fundamentally outmodes some of his base arguments.
As an example, Marx’s theory has important pieces built around his concept of Gattungswesen and it’s role in alienation of labor. The friction of that alienation can be traced to forces used to pacify labor. His work views it as something that, while malleable with biological aspects, is fundamental to the human experience.
That makes sense from a perspective of the mid 19th century, where phrenology was still a cutting edge science and opium was a crude panecea for most behavioral illness. But in the 21st century we’ve mapped the human genome & are delving into gene editing, are gaining an ever deeper biochemical understanding of the human brain, refining models of addiction, and incrementally advancing pharmaceutical treatment of neuroses. Humans are looking more and more like a solvable biological problem.
Marx assumes that one clear reason we cannot reach a stable society under capitalism is the sheer weight of labor discontent. But as of 2026, I’m of the opinion that we’re far closer to total pacification than liberation of the working class. If you can prescribe serenity to the ruling class while the masses clamor for biological contentment, your political prognosis wildly changes.
Theorists in Marx’s lineage will try to account for this (or similar arguments) by refining his theory to fit reality. But they do so with the prior bias of intending the inevitable victory of the proletariat. That’s not a sound foundation for constructing a theoretical framework and it makes these debates pointless and frustrating.
Precisely. He’s genius at certain things, but just because of that, doesn’t mean the other things he does are good or legitimate.
Communist manifesto was highly accessible, so are many popular texts that espouse simplistic and idealistic theories about the world, politics or not. That doesn’t mean they are accurate, useful, or pragmatic today, or even at the time of their conception.
Agreed that the issue with Marxists generally is their limited understanding of Marx and their vast over use and generalization of his theories, but that’s not exclusive to Marxists. Lots of followers of theories are complete morons and turn critique and insight into blind belief and rhetoric around which they then justify violence in the name of.
Marx ‘positive’ theory makes many social and psychological assumptions that are just… obviously untrue esp in regard to modern theorizing. At it’s heart he replies on a modification of the ‘noble savage’ myth, that there is some ‘true’ or ‘natural’ state of individual human living that is being ‘oppressed’ by ‘society’ and his political system will ‘liberate’ us from it… which when you start to think about that you see how ridiculous that is. But that conception was deeply popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, because everyone was still queuing off of Hobbes. Modern (post WW2) political theories don’t really by so much into any ‘state of nature’. Their idealizing is more of a calculus assuming society already must and will forever exist.
I am not too familiar with modern marxists re-workings of his theories to try and fit ‘reality’ but from what I’ve seen they still heavily borrow a lot of his assumptions about human nature being one way and ‘society/capitalism’ ‘corrupting’ it. They treat his work and their theories more like as if it were religious revelation, rather than taking a more pragmatic approach or one based in the more modern economic and social science understandings we have, maybe of which are only a generation or two old.
because his political theory is basically an outline. it’s not substantial. the communist manifesto is an 80 page pamphlet. it’s not a 1000 page detailed discourse.
how many people do you know who read Das Kapital? which is primarily an economic critique. you ever notice how communist manifesto doesn’t touch much on economic details and sort of hand waves about them idealistically?
Yes, historically that is the case. Semantics drift over time, though. Even though both liberals and conservatives are classical liberals, only one actually still uses the liberal label. When you don’t acknowledge semantic drift, you alienate others because they can’t follow what you’re saying. If you want to destroy capitalism, you need to make the circle of people bigger, not shoulder people out before they begin.
Phrased another way, you want to move the Overton window leftwards, not contribute to it shrinking to the right.
Nah. We don’t need to surrender the overton window to liberals and let them dictate that the alternative to capitalism is capitalism, except the workers get more crumbs and minorities get conditional protections. Moving the Overton window left of the current rightwing framing requires people to realize how rightwing the current framing is.
Yes… by teaching people. Meaning you need to reach them. If the way you talk is a barrier to being understood, you’re going to reach way less people, my man.
I’m gonna quote scripture, not cause I’m Christian or anything (catholic apostate atheist), but because my sister fell into a Christian cult so this is an example that quickly comes to mind (her “church” had a real goofy interpretation of this that a lot of new American Christian Cults regularly have). 1 Corinthians 14:3-8, where Paul tells the Corinthians, who were holding mass at the time in Hebrew, that they need to speak to be understood. If they hold mass speaking a language that no one outside their church understands, they only lift themselves up. But if they speak to be understood, then they can lift up everyone.
Sorry to say, while using liberal in the way you do is definitely a nice shorthand to be able to identify people who are safe for you to express your views with, it also alienates those who don’t know what the historical term means. Speak Latin, dammit (that was how the catholic church misinterpreted Paul’s teaching in this letter. And the new Christians use it to promote speaking tongues. Aren’t religions great? /s)
I’d also chime in that definition change and can mean very different things in different places. It’s a bit silly how frequently I see other left leaning people, purely online, demonize anyone using liberal as a label.
To me it comes off as a bit manufactured division. It’s far too abundant to see on spaces like Reddit and certain Lemmy instances, yet near complete absent from offline discourse.
No one calls fascist chuds “liberal” anywhere outside of the US, either. And this is literally the first time that I’ve seen anyone call extreme rightwingers “liberal”.
Yes, and as I already said elsewhere, speak to be understood. In the US, I have to account for semantic drift. You don’t, which is great, but 4chan is an American institution.
So, when the comment we’re all replying under drew the comparison between liberal and 4chan, the underlying context was that this was from an American perspective. So I talked about that, instead of talking about all possible contexts. Isn’t language neat?
Yes, Americans are ignorant, but it’s because of our incredibly loud propaganda. I would ask for kindness, but I’m certainly not gonna force it. I get being frustrated by the American-centric-ness that we all sort of drag around with us. I try to be humble, but it’s really hard to know the shit you don’t know, ya know?
It really depends on how you define things; a black and white definition doesn’t account for scenarios where one could logically be both leftist and liberal. So it’s not exactly nonsense.
The terms are not mutually exclusive, you can want more things to be publicly owned or operated but still want some forms of private ownership such as in the case of owning a home.
Do I think corporations should own the land for corporate enterprises or even for apartment buildings? Fuck no, that should be public since the land owners are incompetent and will try to generate a profit on things like hospitals, low income housing, or forcing out all of the good restaurants in the community.
Individual ownership for private use I don’t see a problem with though, such as home ownership, at least for one house. Although I see that as an incentive that should be there to encourage and reward work. Transportation could be mostly solved by a better public transit system that was connected.
Medical care, insurance, social security, childcare expenses, and many more could be covered by taxes, at least taxes on corporations. Yet alone having something like a Universal Basic Income to cover people’s daily expenses. There could be better union protections and such but I feel that’s branching the conversation off a bit much.
He analyzed capitalism (and religion), and his model predicted regular worsening crises when the market couldn’t expand further, leading to its eventual abolition.
How ironic that China/Russia/North Korea etc instead decided to leap on it and realise that it sucks instead
Oligarchical capture of communist states, especially authoritarian ones, is going to recreate capitalism as it concentrates more wealth without more accountability. Plus, capitalist countries don’t play with states with markets they can’t expand into.
Oligarchical capture of communist states, especially authoritarian ones, is going to recreate capitalism as it concentrates more wealth without more accountability
How can it recreate capitalism without a free market? That’s communist not capitalist
The market isn’t free so much as it is anarchistic, according to Marx. That is, production isn’t directed by human need, which is, i think, what you refer to as communism, but by profitability. Stuff doesn’t get made based on whether people need it, it isnt made available to buy so that its available for people who need it, its all based on whether companies can make money.
Another is railroads. Back in the day the government gave land to build them to the rail companies, and used the military to clear and protect the lands so that the rail companies could run them profitably. By the 70’s, passenger and commercial railroads were no longer profitable, and rail companies started going bankrupt, starting with Penn Central, and then cascading to other industries. but they were critical national infrastructure, so the US government first injected subsidies into the businesses (very similar to the “too big to fail” attitude of the 2008 great recession) and then the US Government took over the failed railroads, which created Amtrak for passenger and Conrail for commercial. In 1987, Conrail was sold off to Norfolk Southern and CSX, once the government had fixed up the failing, disintegrating infrastructure, for 1.8 B. A decent return to the taxpayers, but last year CSX generated 3.25 B in profit. Norfolk Southern reported 4.4 billion in income, but paid out a lot in “derailment stabilization” which, despite its mention in financial reports, people are still sick and reporting bad water in East Palestine OH. Also talk to someone who works for a major railroad and you’ll hear about worsening safety conditions due to deregulation. So the company is free to make money, but the people are not free to live in peace, and to raise our children in good health. These trends have been realized in other places, such as New Zealand and UK.
Depending on how you look at it, and this is how I look at it, the market isn’t free because it is controlled by the capitalists. We are allowed to use it in limited ways, like we can sell our labor on it, but when it comes to producing and selling commodities, there are often fees, restrictions, monopolizing factors that prevent people from converting our own work into a good living. In the USA, the government ensures high returns on capital investments for the capitalists. In China the system is at least somewhat blended and contradictory. Imo its very difficult to pin down exactly what the Chinese system actually is. State Capitalist doesn’t really fit, social democracy doesn’t really fit, full communist doesn’t really fit. But in the USA, the “free market” invokes Marx in “On the Question of Free Trade”:
Do not be deluded by the abstract word Freedom. Whose freedom? Not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but freedom of Capital to crush the worker.
sadly capitalism is more than a left wing progressive 5 word meme
There are volumes of books used to describe and explain and understand the intricacies of modern economies, and people who understand it aren’t coming to this shithole that’s for sure
No shit, they tried it, apparently it didn’t go very well:
The Great Leap Forward was an industrialization campaign within China from 1958 to 1962, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). CCP Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to transform the country from an agrarian society into an industrialized society through the formation of people’s communes. The Great Leap Forward led to between 15 and 55 million deaths in mainland China during the 1959–1961 Great Chinese Famine it caused, making it the largest or second-largest famine[1] in human history.[2][3][4][5]
The reforms led to significant economic growth for China within the successive decades; this phenomenon has since been seen as an “economic miracle”.[1][2][4][5]
Juuuuust kidding, they actually stayed true to their communism roots and shunned the free market, international trade, every worker worked to his or her own ability, owned the means of production, never had any issues or disagreements and they lived happily, ever, after. The end 😇
Cool, lets get the kind of capitalism where we plan for how much of each resource and what price industry needs every 5 years, build enough housing rent is <300USD and food like 2 bucks in major cities, I can get an xray, ultrasound, and consult for 12 bucks (this is still too much), and occasionally we take a capitalist out back and shoot them if they get too political or end up responsible for the death of workers.
Russian living standards were comparable to the west under the USSR despite not having the plundered wealth of the global south to prop them up. Modern Russia’s conditions are entirely due to its embrace of capitalism.
Russian chauvanism was an issue with the USSR, but you can’t just pretend they were the same as their western counterparts who had entirely different social and economic pressures determining their actions.
I’m sure all those school and homes were really helpful in 1930s Ukraine. Oh, and can’t forget Poland. And all the indigenous peoples in North Asia were really grateful at still being part of the empire.
The same as their western counterparts? Well, if we go by Nazi collaboration and ethnic cleansing levels, it was pretty damn close. If we go by history rewriting levels, Soviets did so much of it there are even people today that insist they were a net positive. Such as yourself.
You really need to work on your reading comprehension. The collapse of the USSR was a bad thing for every country involved. Have you seen modern Russia?
The Holodomor,[a] also known as the Ukrainian famine,[8][9][b] was a massive man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians
But during his visit, Yeltsin insisted on an impromptu visit to a mid-sized Texan supermarket called Randall’s before heading to the airport. He wanted to see what the average American shopping experience looked like, without tour guides and diplomats to airbrush the experience for him — and what he found shocked him to his core.
“When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people.” — Yeltsin’s autobiography
On the flight home, he apparently said with his head buried in his hands, raging at the lies of Soviet propaganda and how his country was betraying the working class. An aid who was with him on that flight home reckoned it was when the last traces of Bolshevism left him.
They should show this to you kids still in school, this is a miracle of production, the humble supermarket, you don’t think twice about it, but in the USSR this was considered incredible
Have you seen modern Russia?
Yeah I seen it, I seen it trying to take back Ukraine real hard and Ukraine telling the USSR to fuck right off we don’t want your shitty little union, it sucked enough the first time around (see Holodomor)
The Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK)[a] is the ruling party of North Korea. Founded in 1949 from a merger between the Workers’ Party of North Korea and the Workers’ Party of South Korea, the WPK is the oldest active party in Korea. It also controls the Korean People’s Army, North Korea’s armed forces. The WPK is the largest party represented in the Supreme People’s Assembly and coexists with two other legal parties that are completely subservient to the WPK and must accept the WPK’s “leading role” as a condition of their existence. Kim Jong Un is the current party leader, serving as General Secretary of the WPK.
But like I said, here’s a bit of AI for you, feel free to fact check it:
Marx and Engels described communism as the final stage of human society, emerging after:
Capitalism collapses due to its internal contradictions (e.g., class struggle, overproduction).
Marx assumed this would happen naturally in advanced capitalist societies (e.g., Germany, UK) with strong worker movements.
Instead, communism was imposed by force in pre-industrial, agrarian societies (e.g., Russia, China, Cuba) where the conditions Marx described didn’t exist.
He analyzed capitalism (and religion), and his model predicted regular worsening crises when the market couldn’t expand further, leading to its eventual abolition.
He was employed as a journalist and published books on history and economics.
I swear libs just make stuff up that sounds right and then believe the shit they fantasized
nobody cares about facts or details. they only care about marx = communism.
he was a better economist than he was a political theorist. but his economic works are long, boring, and technical, and his political works are far shorter and dramatic, so that’s all the average undergraduate cares about.
Why would you say he’s a bad political theorist? If we measure the success of a political theory by its ability to take, hold and exercise power Marxism is one of the most successful political ideologies in the world. Sure it never “beat” liberal capitalism but it came the closest of any other theory to challenging it.
Or are you doubting it’s accuracy more then its success?
A political theory being popular doesn’t mean it’s a good or inherently sound theory. For example, fascists have made the “immigrants are ruining our country” theory very common in the mainstream and people have latched on to it to explain their lived experience. Fascism is “challenging” classical liberalism pretty successfully. That doesn’t make it logically sound or a viable strategy.
The problem I have with Marx discussions are people cherry picking across his work. Some of it is philosophical, some is economic analysis and some is aspirational politics. Usually along the lines of “his theoretical economic framework is mostly sound in X case, therefore his political prognosis is correct”.
Marx was living in a certain time with certain quantifiable constraints and a specific lived perspective, writing on contemporary economic conditions. When I point that out I’m always met with “Well he didn’t need to know about [modern human cognitive research / studies on the specific limitations of earth’s resources / the scalability of technical surveillance & media distribution] to project its effects”.
I vehemently assert that our modern perspective fundamentally outmodes some of his base arguments.
As an example, Marx’s theory has important pieces built around his concept of Gattungswesen and it’s role in alienation of labor. The friction of that alienation can be traced to forces used to pacify labor. His work views it as something that, while malleable with biological aspects, is fundamental to the human experience.
That makes sense from a perspective of the mid 19th century, where phrenology was still a cutting edge science and opium was a crude panecea for most behavioral illness. But in the 21st century we’ve mapped the human genome & are delving into gene editing, are gaining an ever deeper biochemical understanding of the human brain, refining models of addiction, and incrementally advancing pharmaceutical treatment of neuroses. Humans are looking more and more like a solvable biological problem.
Marx assumes that one clear reason we cannot reach a stable society under capitalism is the sheer weight of labor discontent. But as of 2026, I’m of the opinion that we’re far closer to total pacification than liberation of the working class. If you can prescribe serenity to the ruling class while the masses clamor for biological contentment, your political prognosis wildly changes.
Theorists in Marx’s lineage will try to account for this (or similar arguments) by refining his theory to fit reality. But they do so with the prior bias of intending the inevitable victory of the proletariat. That’s not a sound foundation for constructing a theoretical framework and it makes these debates pointless and frustrating.
Precisely. He’s genius at certain things, but just because of that, doesn’t mean the other things he does are good or legitimate.
Communist manifesto was highly accessible, so are many popular texts that espouse simplistic and idealistic theories about the world, politics or not. That doesn’t mean they are accurate, useful, or pragmatic today, or even at the time of their conception.
Agreed that the issue with Marxists generally is their limited understanding of Marx and their vast over use and generalization of his theories, but that’s not exclusive to Marxists. Lots of followers of theories are complete morons and turn critique and insight into blind belief and rhetoric around which they then justify violence in the name of.
Marx ‘positive’ theory makes many social and psychological assumptions that are just… obviously untrue esp in regard to modern theorizing. At it’s heart he replies on a modification of the ‘noble savage’ myth, that there is some ‘true’ or ‘natural’ state of individual human living that is being ‘oppressed’ by ‘society’ and his political system will ‘liberate’ us from it… which when you start to think about that you see how ridiculous that is. But that conception was deeply popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, because everyone was still queuing off of Hobbes. Modern (post WW2) political theories don’t really by so much into any ‘state of nature’. Their idealizing is more of a calculus assuming society already must and will forever exist.
I am not too familiar with modern marxists re-workings of his theories to try and fit ‘reality’ but from what I’ve seen they still heavily borrow a lot of his assumptions about human nature being one way and ‘society/capitalism’ ‘corrupting’ it. They treat his work and their theories more like as if it were religious revelation, rather than taking a more pragmatic approach or one based in the more modern economic and social science understandings we have, maybe of which are only a generation or two old.
because his political theory is basically an outline. it’s not substantial. the communist manifesto is an 80 page pamphlet. it’s not a 1000 page detailed discourse.
how many people do you know who read Das Kapital? which is primarily an economic critique. you ever notice how communist manifesto doesn’t touch much on economic details and sort of hand waves about them idealistically?
> 4chan user
> lib
Pick one.
I do agree that anon’s take is bullshit.
Lemmites just be spouting buzzwords at this point.
Liberalism is the philosophy of capitalism, the guy in OP is definitionly a lib.
Indeed, its why Australia’s main conservative party (middle right) are called The Liberals
Yes, historically that is the case. Semantics drift over time, though. Even though both liberals and conservatives are classical liberals, only one actually still uses the liberal label. When you don’t acknowledge semantic drift, you alienate others because they can’t follow what you’re saying. If you want to destroy capitalism, you need to make the circle of people bigger, not shoulder people out before they begin.
Phrased another way, you want to move the Overton window leftwards, not contribute to it shrinking to the right.
deleted by creator
Nah. We don’t need to surrender the overton window to liberals and let them dictate that the alternative to capitalism is capitalism, except the workers get more crumbs and minorities get conditional protections. Moving the Overton window left of the current rightwing framing requires people to realize how rightwing the current framing is.
Yes… by teaching people. Meaning you need to reach them. If the way you talk is a barrier to being understood, you’re going to reach way less people, my man.
I’m gonna quote scripture, not cause I’m Christian or anything (catholic apostate atheist), but because my sister fell into a Christian cult so this is an example that quickly comes to mind (her “church” had a real goofy interpretation of this that a lot of new American Christian Cults regularly have). 1 Corinthians 14:3-8, where Paul tells the Corinthians, who were holding mass at the time in Hebrew, that they need to speak to be understood. If they hold mass speaking a language that no one outside their church understands, they only lift themselves up. But if they speak to be understood, then they can lift up everyone.
Sorry to say, while using liberal in the way you do is definitely a nice shorthand to be able to identify people who are safe for you to express your views with, it also alienates those who don’t know what the historical term means. Speak Latin, dammit (that was how the catholic church misinterpreted Paul’s teaching in this letter. And the new Christians use it to promote speaking tongues. Aren’t religions great? /s)
I’d also chime in that definition change and can mean very different things in different places. It’s a bit silly how frequently I see other left leaning people, purely online, demonize anyone using liberal as a label.
To me it comes off as a bit manufactured division. It’s far too abundant to see on spaces like Reddit and certain Lemmy instances, yet near complete absent from offline discourse.
Americans sure love making everything miserably fucking stupid for their own convenience and ignorance.
No, liberals are not leftist ANYWHERE outside the US. And we don’t want that. That’s because that doesn’t make any fucking sense.
No one calls fascist chuds “liberal” anywhere outside of the US, either. And this is literally the first time that I’ve seen anyone call extreme rightwingers “liberal”.
Who’s calling them that? No, that would be libertarians.
Behold: https://mander.xyz/comment/27919524
Yes, and as I already said elsewhere, speak to be understood. In the US, I have to account for semantic drift. You don’t, which is great, but 4chan is an American institution.
So, when the comment we’re all replying under drew the comparison between liberal and 4chan, the underlying context was that this was from an American perspective. So I talked about that, instead of talking about all possible contexts. Isn’t language neat?
Yes, Americans are ignorant, but it’s because of our incredibly loud propaganda. I would ask for kindness, but I’m certainly not gonna force it. I get being frustrated by the American-centric-ness that we all sort of drag around with us. I try to be humble, but it’s really hard to know the shit you don’t know, ya know?
It really depends on how you define things; a black and white definition doesn’t account for scenarios where one could logically be both leftist and liberal. So it’s not exactly nonsense.
Okay then, surprise me, what beliefs would a man posses that would lead him to calling himself a liberal leftist?
The terms are not mutually exclusive, you can want more things to be publicly owned or operated but still want some forms of private ownership such as in the case of owning a home.
Do I think corporations should own the land for corporate enterprises or even for apartment buildings? Fuck no, that should be public since the land owners are incompetent and will try to generate a profit on things like hospitals, low income housing, or forcing out all of the good restaurants in the community.
Individual ownership for private use I don’t see a problem with though, such as home ownership, at least for one house. Although I see that as an incentive that should be there to encourage and reward work. Transportation could be mostly solved by a better public transit system that was connected.
Medical care, insurance, social security, childcare expenses, and many more could be covered by taxes, at least taxes on corporations. Yet alone having something like a Universal Basic Income to cover people’s daily expenses. There could be better union protections and such but I feel that’s branching the conversation off a bit much.
Why when both are accurate
How ironic that China/Russia/North Korea etc instead decided to leap on it and realise that it sucks instead
Oligarchical capture of communist states, especially authoritarian ones, is going to recreate capitalism as it concentrates more wealth without more accountability. Plus, capitalist countries don’t play with states with markets they can’t expand into.
How can it recreate capitalism without a free market? That’s communist not capitalist
The market isn’t free so much as it is anarchistic, according to Marx. That is, production isn’t directed by human need, which is, i think, what you refer to as communism, but by profitability. Stuff doesn’t get made based on whether people need it, it isnt made available to buy so that its available for people who need it, its all based on whether companies can make money.
The USA government does direct production somewhat, but directs it in a way that resources and the means of production (which means “the stuff that is used to make other stuff”) goes to the capitalists, individual and corporate, rather than belonging to the people. For example, in the State of Michigan, Nestle pays about $200 per year to extract millions of gallons of water from lake Michigan, meanwhile many people in surrounding areas dont have access to clean fresh water at all. While Flint is, a decade later, replacing lead lines, and government regulation now requires reporting maps of lead lines in municipalities, Chicago conspicuously is exempt, and around 400,000 households are being supplied leads contaminated water.
Another is railroads. Back in the day the government gave land to build them to the rail companies, and used the military to clear and protect the lands so that the rail companies could run them profitably. By the 70’s, passenger and commercial railroads were no longer profitable, and rail companies started going bankrupt, starting with Penn Central, and then cascading to other industries. but they were critical national infrastructure, so the US government first injected subsidies into the businesses (very similar to the “too big to fail” attitude of the 2008 great recession) and then the US Government took over the failed railroads, which created Amtrak for passenger and Conrail for commercial. In 1987, Conrail was sold off to Norfolk Southern and CSX, once the government had fixed up the failing, disintegrating infrastructure, for 1.8 B. A decent return to the taxpayers, but last year CSX generated 3.25 B in profit. Norfolk Southern reported 4.4 billion in income, but paid out a lot in “derailment stabilization” which, despite its mention in financial reports, people are still sick and reporting bad water in East Palestine OH. Also talk to someone who works for a major railroad and you’ll hear about worsening safety conditions due to deregulation. So the company is free to make money, but the people are not free to live in peace, and to raise our children in good health. These trends have been realized in other places, such as New Zealand and UK.
Depending on how you look at it, and this is how I look at it, the market isn’t free because it is controlled by the capitalists. We are allowed to use it in limited ways, like we can sell our labor on it, but when it comes to producing and selling commodities, there are often fees, restrictions, monopolizing factors that prevent people from converting our own work into a good living. In the USA, the government ensures high returns on capital investments for the capitalists. In China the system is at least somewhat blended and contradictory. Imo its very difficult to pin down exactly what the Chinese system actually is. State Capitalist doesn’t really fit, social democracy doesn’t really fit, full communist doesn’t really fit. But in the USA, the “free market” invokes Marx in “On the Question of Free Trade”:
China has billionaires and private property. Is that not capitalist enough?
sadly capitalism is more than a left wing progressive 5 word meme
There are volumes of books used to describe and explain and understand the intricacies of modern economies, and people who understand it aren’t coming to this shithole that’s for sure
Whatever the fuck is happening in China is definitely further from communism than it is from capitalism, by any measure
No shit, they tried it, apparently it didn’t go very well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
So they decided to switch to a mixed market economy with capitalist elements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_and_opening_up
and apparently things are going pretty well
The reforms led to significant economic growth for China within the successive decades; this phenomenon has since been seen as an “economic miracle”.[1][2][4][5]
Juuuuust kidding, they actually stayed true to their communism roots and shunned the free market, international trade, every worker worked to his or her own ability, owned the means of production, never had any issues or disagreements and they lived happily, ever, after. The end 😇
You think what China is doing is capitalism?
Cool, lets get the kind of capitalism where we plan for how much of each resource and what price industry needs every 5 years, build enough housing rent is <300USD and food like 2 bucks in major cities, I can get an xray, ultrasound, and consult for 12 bucks (this is still too much), and occasionally we take a capitalist out back and shoot them if they get too political or end up responsible for the death of workers.
Oh, Russia and North Korea did really made some leaps - look at them now, such great places to leave!
Russian living standards were comparable to the west under the USSR despite not having the plundered wealth of the global south to prop them up. Modern Russia’s conditions are entirely due to its embrace of capitalism.
yeah, they plundered all the lands they were supposed to liberate from the russian empire instead
Plundered them by building schools and homes.
Russian chauvanism was an issue with the USSR, but you can’t just pretend they were the same as their western counterparts who had entirely different social and economic pressures determining their actions.
I’m sure all those school and homes were really helpful in 1930s Ukraine. Oh, and can’t forget Poland. And all the indigenous peoples in North Asia were really grateful at still being part of the empire.
The same as their western counterparts? Well, if we go by Nazi collaboration and ethnic cleansing levels, it was pretty damn close. If we go by history rewriting levels, Soviets did so much of it there are even people today that insist they were a net positive. Such as yourself.
He’s delusional, take him to the infirmary! 😂
by the way, I know this will be sad for you to hear but the soviet union collapsed! I know I know, it’s sad, only 30 years ago, too soon 🥲
You really need to work on your reading comprehension. The collapse of the USSR was a bad thing for every country involved. Have you seen modern Russia?
Have you seen the USSR?
The Holodomor,[a] also known as the Ukrainian famine,[8][9][b] was a massive man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
https://readmedium.com/how-a-texas-supermarket-helped-defeat-communism-953543403aa9
Sounds fuckin amazing m8
They should show this to you kids still in school, this is a miracle of production, the humble supermarket, you don’t think twice about it, but in the USSR this was considered incredible
Yeah I seen it, I seen it trying to take back Ukraine real hard and Ukraine telling the USSR to fuck right off we don’t want your shitty little union, it sucked enough the first time around (see Holodomor)
I’d like to thank Communism for making me realise how good I have it :)
There’s no Communism in either of the places
There’s no communism in North Korea?
You think the workers own the means of production in North Korea? Cause I’m pretty sure that’s glorious leader who does
You mean this one?
The Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK)[a] is the ruling party of North Korea. Founded in 1949 from a merger between the Workers’ Party of North Korea and the Workers’ Party of South Korea, the WPK is the oldest active party in Korea. It also controls the Korean People’s Army, North Korea’s armed forces. The WPK is the largest party represented in the Supreme People’s Assembly and coexists with two other legal parties that are completely subservient to the WPK and must accept the WPK’s “leading role” as a condition of their existence. Kim Jong Un is the current party leader, serving as General Secretary of the WPK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers'_Party_of_Korea
😅
But like I said, here’s a bit of AI for you, feel free to fact check it:
And as I said in my first reply: https://aussie.zone/comment/23631616
or tldr: I’m sure capitalism will collapse any day now 🤣