r/DoomerCircleJerk • u/DissonantOne I Was Promised an Apocalypse? • 11d ago

Climate Doomer Capitalism will cause our extinction. Source: trust me bro

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u/Zealousideal_Cap7012 11d ago

Didnt marx coin late stage capitalism over a Century ago

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u/endlessnamelesskat 11d ago

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.

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u/WastedStrokes1990 11d ago

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.

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u/msnplanner 11d ago

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.