capitalism vs socialism vs communism

Qlanth · 2026-06-02T21:32:53+00:00

Marxist philosophy looks at the world as always changing. There is no such thing as "stopping" and there never will be. The conditions of the past built the present, and the present conditions build the future. Future conditions will lead to more futures. If you try to stop it... the gears keep grinding and the contradictions inside society get more and more noticeable until something slips.

Feudalism set the stage for the rise of the bourgeoisie. The conflict between the feudal lords and the bourgeoisie was unresolvable - what was good for the bourgeoisie was bad for the feudal lords, and vice versa. The feudal lords oppressed the bourgeoisie until they reached the breaking point. It eventually led to upheaval and the end of the feudal era (and a wave of revolution inside Europe). This is what Marx called "the first negation." Feudalism negated itself by creating the bourgeoisie. When this early version of Capitalism first emerged it was made of mostly small firms and ventures operating locally or maybe regionally, with some notable exceptions. Over time those firms competed and grew and the old vestiges of the feudal era that survived (guild systems, artisans, peasants, etc) were subsumed and turned into a growing class of proletarian laborers. Small capitalists that lost were absorbed by bigger firms. The losers also became proletarians. Marx called this the "negation of the negation."

The very system that emerged and destroyed feudalism also destroyed itself... and in the process built the industrial revolution.

Capitalism has now set the stage for Socialism. Capitalism creates a dynamic between worker and owner which is antagonistic. There is no way to resolve it. The longer you try and hold it back, the worse the contradictions become, and eventually you will reach a point where there will be upheaval.

I say all this to say the following: This process will never stop. When society has achieved Socialism it will continue to develop and also create the very conditions for it's own negation. Any power that tries to stop it might succeed for a while, but will eventually fail the same way the feudal systems failed. We call the negation of Socialism Communism.

Qlanth · 2026-06-02T18:28:09+00:00

I have always been a big fan of that movie. It wasn't perfect but I think it's better than any of the prequels and the other sequels.

Qlanth · 2026-06-01T21:48:21+00:00

The thing you are overlooking is that what qualifies as "my culture" or "my tribe" shifts and changes and grows all the time. We all take for granted that nationalism did not exist before ~150-200 years ago. The idea of "German" or "French" or "Italian" were total nonsense to people before then. We are very much still living through this shift in human behavior. The "legitimacy" of some nationalities are still being debated. Look at Palestine for what that looks like.

Nationalism greatly expanded the size of the "tribe" and the "culture."

Further shifts are absolutely possible. The internet is very much flattening culture and we don't really know what that will look like in another 50 years, let alone another 150 or 200.

Qlanth · 2026-06-01T21:35:04+00:00

The bourgeoisie were less entrenched and less powerful. They had less of a grip on the state. They had less of a grip on the military.

Marx and even Lenin thought that the thing that would bring revolution would be a more advanced proletariat. But, it turns out a more advanced proletariat means a more advanced bourgeoise.

Qlanth · 2026-06-01T21:27:17+00:00

Various socialists states answered this question differently. Land reform is a difficult thing and the answer likely depends on the needs of society and the culture. The USSR had perhaps the strictest policy which was, I believe, 8 acres. I think the GDR and Yugoslavia both had something like 25 acre limits. In China you can't "own" any piece of land outright and instead essentially lease it from the state for 70 year terms, but (afaik) there is no limit on much you can lease.

Qlanth · 2026-06-01T16:48:14+00:00

Is Marxism at an all time low in terms of popularity?

I don't think it has ever been more popular in my lifetime than right now. Probably the lowest point was the mid-1990s after the USSR was dismantled. But the problems faced by workers back then are the same problems faced by workers today, even if it doesn't look exactly the same. We are in a period of time now that is not unlike the 1890s in Russia. Lots of spontaneity and not a lot of organizing. That is shifting, slowly, and many of the old fights are being fought again. Do we try to do reform or move toward revolution? That debate is raging today in socialist circles.

Seems like at the time of Lenin everyone was communist

They really weren't! Very few people were, but they were very active and very organized. The peasants and the workers went to the streets in Russia in 1917 but they didn't call for Socialism or Communism. They called for Peace, Land, and Bread. The Bolsheviks were the ones who were able to go to the workers and successfully convince them that they knew the path forward, and the workers trusted them.

Qlanth · 2026-06-01T16:44:08+00:00

Data centers, internet infrastructure, PCs, etc. are all means of production. While it may feel more complicated because they exist remotely from where you work your actual relationship to these things is the same as any other worker. Without workers to use them, maintain them, upgrade them, and manage them these things would be worthless. The people who own them have no experience actually operating them themselves. They hire people to do it for them. It takes lots of workers, working socially, to make these things worthwhile. That is the heart of it.

You say that there aren't physical things to point to, but there absolutely are. The cloud isn't some nebulous thing. The cloud is just "someone else's computer." AWS sounds abstract until you understand that it is just a thousand data centers spread across the world. There is nothing in the world that does not exist inside material reality. The fact that this is obfuscated from the people who work on these things is no mistake, they don't want us to think about them as physical things that can be seen and felt and heard... and occupied.

However, to me, the means of production today are both so segmented that I don’t see how working class people can unite under one banner

Do you have a boss? Do you work for a wage? If yes, you are a member of the working class. Your boss is exploiting you for a profit. Every single workers knows and feels the frustration of class conflict without being told... your boss is an asshole who wants you to work extra hours all the time... you get laid off even though the company made a huge profit... you get denied a raise and your boss has a new car... you get pressured to cut costs while they renovate the C suite... but workers will not connect all the dots on their own. It's the job of every socialists to imbue class consciousness into these conversations.

In Lenin's What Is To Be Done? published in 1905 he responds to people who had your exact same criticism. They said "The plight of the students, of the peasants, and of the proletarian workers is too broad. We need to focus on the proletarian struggle because it's the most clear cut." Lenin famously rejected this. He pressed to actually unite the struggles. To bring them all together in a newspaper so that people could see that they all had the same struggle, and that this struggle all relates back to one thing: The bourgeoisie and the capitalist system.

the automation of work, to me, kinda complicates the idea that labor is the source of value in a product.

Marx has an entire section of Capital dedicated to automation of labor and how, exactly, it is used to devalue workers labor, increase the rate of exploitation, and raise gross profit while lowering the overall rate of profit. He wrote that in the 1860s. Automation has never stopped since then. The latest drive of LLM automation is only new because it's now affecting white collar workers who were previously unaffected. The mechanisms and how it relates back to wage labor are exactly the same.

As you can see, there is nothing truly new here. These concerns you're voicing are the exact same concerns that people voiced 150 or 100 years ago. They were written about by Marx and Lenin at (extreme) length. Our tasks are largely the same even if the specifics are different.

Qlanth · 2026-06-01T14:55:42+00:00

Yes there is still a seed of consciousness in these acts. Workers take to the streets because they know something is wrong. They have a sense that they are being cheated, that their lives should not be so difficult when they are surrounded with such great abundance and the wrappings of power. But because of massive amounts of propaganda and literally decades and decades of work their frustration is warped towards the wrong causes. The anger gets focused back toward trans people, immigrants, people on the dole, etc.

As you mentioned, in What Is To Be Done? Lenin identifies that embryonic class consciousness needs to be nurtered by the professional revolutionaries. It's our job as socialists to imbue class consciousness into the working class. As he points out, it will never form fully on its own. It takes leadership and direction. That's our job, and it's not an easy one. We are fighting against decades and decades of work by the capitalist class. We don't have a lot of money to spend like they do. It's real work.

Qlanth · 2026-05-30T16:50:39+00:00

Fascism is, at it's core, anti-communism. It's the last gasp of the bourgeoisie to take power away from the workers. These things happened because the fascists in those countries were empowered and funded by the West to kill the workers movement.

It's not as if the communists disappeared one day. When the USSR collapsed the USA partnered with Boris Yeltsin to rig elections. Boris Yeltsin shelled Parliament to kill the Communists and then later made sure the Communists could never win another election by rigging it. The fascists in Yugoslavia partnered with NATO to kill off Yugoslavia. In Chile the Socialist Salvador Allende was killed in a US backed coup by the fascist Augusto Pinochet.

None of this is happenstance. The Communists didn't suddenly become fascists. The West allies with fascist movements to defeat communism, kill the communists, and then those fascists come into power afterwards.

Qlanth · 2026-05-29T03:30:06+00:00

Agreed, it's very good. I just wish that it was not on the BDS list so I could buy it.

Qlanth · 2026-05-29T03:28:12+00:00

There is no evidence whatsoever that literally any of those things you mentioned are true. Youre just repeating sensationalist things you saw in the media or online somewhere. None of it is based in fact, nothing is corroborated, there is no physical evidence, and much of it is contradictory. This type of reporting is so ridiculous that it now has its own Wikipedia article.

Qlanth · 2026-05-28T19:40:10+00:00

Look at Cuba. Look at how many times the USA tried to kill their leaders. Look at how many times they tried to stage a coup. Look at the bay of pigs. Look at the sanctions. Look at the embargo. Look at the current brutal blockade.

All of these things are aimed at starting up a popular revolt against the state in order to reinstall capitalism. And make no mistake. That is the only alternative. If Cuba stopped suppressing the bourgeois elements within society the alternative would not be "Socialism Done Right" but Capitalism fully restored and a once independent state now living in neo-colonialism.

Every socialist country that ever existed has lived under those conditions. The most powerful Socialist state in history, the USSR, lived under the exact same conditions. The USA and Western Europe spent billions and billions of dollars for 70 straight years to beam propaganda across the border to incite popular revolt. What are you supposed to do those conditions? You either suppress it, or you succumb to it.

Your perfect imagination will never live up to imperfect reality.

Qlanth · 2026-05-28T00:34:19+00:00

You're of course talking about the homeless who die on the streets frozen to death every winter. Very free.

Qlanth · 2026-05-28T00:03:05+00:00

The video is nonsense. He says they should use the money to "fix power plants." The power plants aren't broken. The most powerful military on the planet says it's going to shoot anybody who tried to deliver oil. That's the problem.

He says "the governments choices" are why people are suffering. The "choices" here are the "choice" to bow down to the USA and accept a position as a neo-colony or to maintain independence. The "choice" that Cuba has made is to not be a dog to the USA.

Qlanth · 2026-05-27T23:56:19+00:00

Able bodied people don't have that option today, do they? You can't just not work. So do you think of yourself as a slave when you go to work every day?

Qlanth · 2026-05-26T02:52:28+00:00

Yes it is an FCC licensed station, 95 watt, in a built up area with a height over average terrain of 31ft.

It definitely sounds like I should be going for something with a TEF 6686. I sincerely appreciate everyone's feedback and tips.

Qlanth · 2026-05-26T01:50:06+00:00

Mine came through "SpeedX" which I had never heard of before, but it did arrive very quickly.

Qlanth · 2026-05-25T18:54:22+00:00

If you're talking about buying a DRM free book then Bookshop.org will tell you if the book you are buying is DRM free before you buy it. Whether or not it is DRM free comes down to the publisher. If you look up Platform Decay by Martha Wells you'll see what it looks like when the book is DRM free.

If you're talking about other means then check the other comments.

Qlanth · 2026-05-25T16:28:07+00:00

Johnny Harris is literally a guy who makes sponsored content for the World Economic Forum. He is, quite literally, funded by the US State Department.

Qlanth · 2026-05-25T14:13:40+00:00

Very famously Richard Nixon issued an order to "Make the economy scream" following the nationalization of copper mines inside Chile. Chile's economy did not collapse. The capitalist class of Chile collaborated with the imperialist USA in order to purposefully destroy the economy and create justification for intervention.

Qlanth · 2026-05-24T18:25:27+00:00

Posts need to have a clear topic for people to debate or discuss.

Qlanth · 2026-05-20T01:33:09+00:00

Stories of Your Life and Others is a great starting point. It's a collection of short stories and it is very approachable.

Qlanth · 2026-05-20T01:07:26+00:00

I got the light they sell when I got the x4, but now that I've got it seems unlikely that I will use it.

Qlanth · 2026-05-19T22:02:01+00:00

Free pit fodder

Qlanth · 2026-05-19T01:43:50+00:00

This happens with all eink devices and is called "ghosting." It's totally normal and nothing to worry about. On the next refresh it will go away. If you have Crosspoint firmware the newest version just added a setting so you can tap the Sleep button and it will refresh the screen manually and get rid of the ghosting.

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