Anon is right on the Marx.

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

Bold words from a 4chan chud

> 4chan user
> lib

Pick one.

I do agree that anon's take is bullshit.

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

Never made any financial contributions, I assume OP means, completely missing the mark about Marx being anticapitalist. Ignoring the obvious: We still talk about Karl Marx, even make unprompted greentexts about him, proving a social contribution

Oh, Russia and North Korea did really made some leaps - look at them now, such great places to leave!

He didn't oppose religion that much, definitely not in "a reddit atheist" way, opium has been commonly used in medicine as a painkiller those days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people

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?

Lemmites just be spouting buzzwords at this point.

Liberalism is the philosophy of capitalism, the guy in OP is definitionly a lib.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tldr, he is saying religion is a human response to inhuman conditions.

You think the workers own the means of production in North Korea? Cause I'm pretty sure that's glorious leader who does

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.

Working a job is not neccessarily making a contribution to society, not a good contribution oftentimes to be sure.

He was also wealthy to begin with, as was Engels. But his books and writings are a contribution in any case even if he didn't get rich off them as OP suggests here.

His books and writings are a contribution anyway. Plus he was already wealthy so idk if mooching off his family is accurate at all.

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:

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.

And as I said in my first reply: https://aussie.zone/comment/23631616

How ironic that China/Russia/North Korea etc instead decided to leap on it and realise that it sucks instead

or tldr: I'm sure capitalism will collapse any day now 🤣

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)

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

China has billionaires and private property. Is that not capitalist enough?

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 🥲

despite not having the plundered wealth of the global south

yeah, they plundered all the lands they were supposed to liberate from the russian empire instead

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:

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]

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 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?

if there is to be talk about philosophy, there should be less trifling with the label “atheism” (which reminds one of children, assuring everyone who is ready to listen to them that they are not afraid of the bogy man), and that instead the content of philosophy should be brought to the people.

--Karl Marx, Letter to Arnold Ruge, 1842

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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)

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?

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.

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.

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".

Okay then, surprise me, what beliefs would a man posses that would lead him to calling himself a liberal leftist?

Indeed, its why Australia's main conservative party (middle right) are called The Liberals

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":

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.

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.

Yes, and I think me arguing "meet people where they are" or "speak to be understood" better fits what you're saying than the guy digging his heels in over the definition of liberal

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?

I'm sorry but you completelly misunderstand the idea of liberalism.

If we're going with that route of thinking and we only focus on privatization, then being a liberal starts at "I'm extremely fucking enthusiastic about privatizing EVERYTHING", not "yeah, it's ok to have some things private i guess idk"

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.

Congrats, you are most likely NOT a liberal.

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.

Oh yeah, such a disagreeable thing for non-liberals, huh? Very controversial, we socialists want to have EVERYTHING public, NO EXCEPTIONS! No, actually no.

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.

Yup, that's definitely not a thing a liberal would say.

Who's calling them that? No, that would be libertarians.

Behold: https://mander.xyz/comment/27919524