• balderdash@lemmy.zipOP
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    15 hours ago

    Right now we live in a dictatorship of the wealthy. The capitalists control productive forces, decide how the majority of us spend our time, and lobby governments in their own interests. On the other hand, the workers, the people that labored to create everything we need, are given a fraction of the value of what they produce in the form of wages. In other words, every person that survives on their wages is exploited by necessity. We are institutionally coerced to sell our labor (i.e., make money for the capitalist) or fall into abject destitution.

    Centrists obviously don’t see the dictatorship. We live in a time where the rule of the wealthy is as normal as the divine right of kings once was. Accordingly, centrists may be sensible enough to see the following trends as problems, but they tend to think of them as entirely disconnected:

    • Stagnating wages (despite rising productivity)
    • The wealth gap
    • Corporate offshoring
    • Periodic recessions
    • Perpetual aggressive wars
    • Millions around the globe living in abject poverty
    • Literal slavery abroad to produce cheaper consumer goods
    • Literal slavery domestically in prisons
    • Skyrocketing cost of living (food, shelter, gas, education, healthcare, childcare, etc)
    • Functional monopolies (despite anti-monopoly laws)
    • Politicians in the pockets of billionaires
    • Climate change (despite decades of warning from scientists)

    Marxist theory can explain all of these problems, and in many cases predicted them before they happened. But if the billionaires can convince people like you that a better economic system is synonymous with authoritarianism, and that continuing capitalist wealth extraction is the reasonable “center” position, then they can prevent the workers from banding together against the ruling class.