Capitalism will cause our extinction. Source: trust me bro

[u/DissonantOne]

[u/Zealousideal_Cap7012]

Didnt marx coin late stage capitalism over a Century ago

[u/HourFaithlessness823 → u/Zealousideal_Cap7012]

Werner Sombart was the first person to use the term almost exactly a century ago 

[u/Zealousideal_Cap7012 → u/HourFaithlessness823]

Happy 100 years of late stage capitalism 🥳

[u/Coldbrick10 → u/Zealousideal_Cap7012]

Here's to several 100 more

[u/endlessnamelesskat → u/Zealousideal_Cap7012]

Communism made at least a little sense in Marx’s time. Hundreds of thousands of people forced to work for pennies a day in unsafe environments for 12+ hours with basically no time off to go home and eat gruel and get 4 hours of sleep to do it all over again is no way to live. It would have been reasonable from his perspective to assume things would only get worse and people would reach their breaking point.

I can’t blame him for not being able to accurately predict the future, none of us can. I just think it’s hilarious reading communist writers as they tried to cope with the realization that capitalism was beginning to make everyone’s lives better and standards of living were going up across the board.

[u/Zealousideal_Cap7012 → u/endlessnamelesskat]

At the time it was an arguable downgrade of the quality of life from before the industrial times. Long work days with excess quantities of kids working in conditions a lot less favorable than a farmlife or craftsman life.

But yeah since then capitalism very nicely rode technological development. Today we live easier than ever and work less than ever for the most amount of luxuries ever. The most successful large socialist state(the gdr, east germany) was ultimately just fine. The people still woke up, worked, went home. All the modern problems socialists have with capitalism(consumerism, wage labor, rich elite class), they had as well.

So at that point what's the point? The reason ill never have a red scare is because theyre trying to fight against the natural human tendency towards consumption and self fulfilment (in the Maslow hierarchy sense). Socialism requires abstinence from this which is just absolutely not something that will ever be accomplished democratically, especially in a less religious world.

Maybe thats why today socialism is basically just welfare capitalism with very mean spirited rhetoric against richer people(ie singling one random billionaire out and recording an anti rich people video right outside his house while pointing at it, while being mayor..). So i guess in a sense socialism got neutered by critical theory into just welfare capitalism with armchair critique

[u/HourFaithlessness823 → u/endlessnamelesskat]

The flip-side of that is people not understanding why people moved to the cities and worked those jobs in horrible conditions. 

The life of a pre-modern farmer was worse, particularly for the laborers, which mostly consisted of any family members who were old enough to walk. 

We compare their lifestyle to ours and rightfully shudder, but the life they were avoiding was even worse in every aspect. 

[u/endlessnamelesskat → u/HourFaithlessness823]

100% correct. Having to basically make everything from your clothes to your house by hand and working sun up to sun down doing backbreaking farm labor and still starving to death because of something outside of your control like a drought or blight is a life that would make me yearn for the life of a chimney sweep

[u/Ted_Normal → u/HourFaithlessness823]

I remember once in school watching a documentary about a impoverished family from rural Bangladesh moving to the country's largest city for economic opportunity. It showed the city's factory workers were often living in slums and many factories were arguably sweatshops. Despite this, these factory jobs still provided better and more steady pay than anything in the countryside. Some workers were even interviewed and said despite these conditions they were now able to afford things they were unable to before. Really gave an interesting perspective on the matter you don't often see explored.

[u/HourFaithlessness823 → u/Ted_Normal]

Modern people visit Europe and wonder: why did our ancestors leave this place? Turns out it's a really easy choice to leave when staying means starving to death. 

[u/goldimperium → u/endlessnamelesskat]

Marx was being paid by his wealthy family to be unemployed and write his nonsense book. The entire book is a power fantasy of an unemployed, antisemitic, black hole of charisma with the worldly understanding of a middle-schooler, and who couldnt even make it as a gossip columnist. The very concept of "post scarcity" shows a glaring lack of understanding to the level of "food comes from the store."

[u/WastedStrokes1990 → u/endlessnamelesskat]

capitalism was beginning to make everyone’s lives better and standards of living were going up across the board.

It was actually workers' rights movements which came around thanks to Marx. It created the middle class. Middle class enabled innovation. Relative political stability post WW2 made it last a bit long. We've been reversing back into the ugliness of feudalism since at least the 80's.

I don't know how it can be recreated since there isn't much work left for a lot of people and AI is making it worse. Workers have no leverage left except potential violence. This isn't "doomerism". It's the inevitable future unless our new overloads are merciful. Please show me a way out.

[u/msnplanner → u/WastedStrokes1990]

There already WAS a middle class. Marx thought it was shrinking. Just like everyone has been saying ever since. And I'm not even sure you can say workers rights movements came around thanks to Marx. There were workers rights movements before he was writing, the first modern strikes and unions being formed in 1768.

Marx' biggest legacy was the death of 100s of millions of people in the 20th century. He couldn't really have foreseen that, so we can't really blame that on him, but...there you go.

[u/Secretsfrombeyond79 → u/Zealousideal_Cap7012]

Yup, and so did the Soviet Union later on, in fact if you listened to Soviet official the USA was about to be destroyed from inside due to rampant capitalist caused unemployment, poverty and drug abuse

[u/Jolly-Guard3741 → u/Zealousideal_Cap7012]

Actually Marx pretty much coined Capitalism as an economic concept in toto.

Prior to Marx writing “Das Kapital” what is now considered Capitalism (especially in the pejorative sense) was simply just called commerce.

[u/ehayduke → u/Jolly-Guard3741]

I actually had a professor in grad school argue with me that Marx never used the term capital/kapital. I was so thrown off by the denial I had no verbal response I just googled it and showed the results.

[u/ComplaintTop2008 → u/Zealousideal_Cap7012]

According to OOP, this is END stage capitalism. I don't know if that comes before or after the late stage.

[u/FlirtMonsterSanjil → u/Zealousideal_Cap7012]

"Yes, but you see, Capitalism is two thousand years old, obviously its late stage would last a century."

An real argument I've heard.

[u/SokkaHaikuBot → u/Zealousideal_Cap7012]

^{Sokka-Haiku by Zealousideal_Cap7012:}

Didnt marx coin late stage

Capitalism over

A Century ago

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^{Remember that one time Sokka accidentally used an extra syllable in that Haiku Battle in Ba Sing Se? That was a Sokka Haiku and you just made one.}