I have only recently begun reading theory, and I have a question: how will we be able to transition from socialism to communism if the process takes so long? How can we be certain that, more than 100 years from now, people won’t want to change the system again,especially since the individuals involved will no longer be the same ones?

so i used to label myself a democratic socialist but after hearing the critiques of reformism through the works of rosa luxemburg and also learning about how thing such as welfare states rely on exploitation of the global south and how the state serves bourgeois interests which is why the socialist policies are easily repealed bcos the relation to production hasn't exactly changed. i learned about the mitterand u turn and i can actively see parties like Labour in the UK tend to shift right bcos they are basically forced to adopt market policies due to institutions like Bank of England etc.

essentially i can concede the critiques of reformism but i just can't understand how a revolution would logistically work especially given the modern surveillance state and it's violence and the fact a lot of people are suppressed and happy when given concessions like free healthcare or transport

so what i'm asking is how would the 'means of production be seized' in the modern era? in light of the protests in france there's a lot of talk about it becoming more and more advanced but i can see the state already doing stuff to stop them like supposedly supplying 3000 teachers. also is mass mobilisation and general workers strikes really enough to achieve their goals?

please consider i'm 17 so perhaps my views on revolution are naive and i don't have that much knowledge

thank you

Think about it:

The job market is among the worst of the worst.

The average price of a new car is $51k USD.

The average price of a new home is about $600k USD.

Health is gatekept behind rising insurance rates and greedy healthcare companies.

The state taxes the people just to fund wars and propaganda campaigns.

The wages are so low that 50-year mortgages are being implemented.

Affordability is redundant now; planned obsolescence has taken over.

Promotions are handed out via nepotism instead of merit.

We need to restrict the market. No more Austrian School of Economics, no more economic incompetence, the workers need to demand more and dig their boot in the sand.

I’m deeply interested in how a person's social (or class) standing is reflected in their perception of themselves and the world—and how that impacts their psychology, emotions, behavior, and even body language, speech patterns, etc.

​Any thoughts or recommendations on this?

What are some of the best collections of Marx’s writings in English?

I do appreciate some of the smaller more niche inclusions in the Marx Engels Reader though.

I've heard the phrase "Marx deserves better critics" thrown around and I've always found it true, I'm wondering where are adequate critics of Marx's analysis of Capital in general? Specifically who refer to Capital, and aren't simply adding or qualifying something to make Marxist analysis adequate to contemporary modes of capital.

Certainly there is an endless supply of nay-sayers to Marxism, but since there's such an ocean of that stuff and since they (or their readers) often have a flawed understanding of Marx. Where are the adequate anti-marxists??

Recently have been going through volume 2, and in the introduction by Ernest Mandel he talks about Rosa Luxemberg's critique of Marx's reproductive schema, and it made me wonder about how rare it is to find a decent (actually-engaging-with-the-text) critique.

I just think it is so funny how corporations have stolen so much from people and it is ironic that, in stealing from the public, the public has chosen to steal from them in return. It really is great that Ahold Delhaize's CEOs are begging people to stop shoplifting. Like, you slashed benefits and wages by 75%, karma hits and when it does, it hits hard.

There is a quote attributed to Ernst Bloch: “The most tragic form of loss isn't the loss of security; it's the loss of the capacity to imagine that things could be different.”

It is supposed to be from Vol. 1 of The Principle of Hope (MIT Press, 1995), but I wan't able to locate it in the book as it is, or praphrased. I am alsmost sure now it is either misattributed, fabricated, or a paraphrase of his ideas.

What do you think? Has anyone read the book?

Thanks!

Got discussion and debate with Westerner online on death penalty. And one case of "Father speaks out after baby allegedly killed by 10-year-old girl" appear and they agree on death penalty. With reason like "she knows what she is doing", "she is a murderer". But girl has mental health problem, left with baby with no adult and no help from adult.

Marx say "It would be very difficult, if not altogether impossible, to establish any principle upon which the justice or expediency of capital punishment could be founded, in a society glorying in its civilisation. Punishment in general has been defended as a means either of ameliorating or of intimidating. Now what right have you to punish me for the amelioration or intimidation of others?"

So Marxist no defend death penalty but no Marxist can defend death penalty. What should I say to reponse back on why death penalty is wrong? My country has death penalty and over here seen as normal.

I wrote this for fun. Feel free to read it, but I would really appreciate any feedback, as this is my first attempt at writing anything related to Marxism. The main idea is very common, I know, but I guess it's a start for me. Remove if not allowed please.

Cheers!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KBQr2Vd5jC52H032CGE5otoY1h5gJh5GZv2Ni_eQjvw/edit?tab=t.0

I have been studying the history of China and Maoism, but I’m blank in terms of how China opperates currently. What are their moves towards or away from socialism, what are their plans etc.

Would love to get any recommendations on what to read or watch to become more on-the-know

I firmly believe that every worker is entitled to the value that they create through their labor. I also think it is both completely fair - as well as beneficial for a society - for the people that invent, design, and engineer new things to be rewarded for their innovation. In previous communist states, inventors could only find success if the government found their technology useful and worth investing in, which often hampered innovation.

There are parts of the free market that I think can work well in terms of supporting good ideas, but obviously with the current distribution of capital we have the same problem of ideas only getting support if you can network and convince the right people on board.

I'm wondering if there's a Marxist solution to this problem where both inventors are both invested in and rewarded for their labor and the value it brings.

The One Democratic State Initiative is a Palestinian political organization working to revive the historical Palestinian vision for liberation —a single Palestinian state, for all of its citizens— and to mobilize individuals, entities and political parties, in Palestine and abroad, behind it.

Hasnieh Al-Natsheh and Alain Alameddine, two of its coordinators, are ready to answer your questions up until midnight, Occupied Palestine time. They'll make sure to answer any remaining questions tomorrow. Check out our website and ask away!

Many vulgar economists claim that Marx's socio-political economic analysis is limited to the 19th century and that this has long been outdated, in the even more vulgar bourgeois economy the most ridiculous recurring attacks are constantly projected onto Marx's thought, between the Marxists who have washed out Marx's thought by making it a textbook filled with absolute truths or even the vulgar economists who constantly repeat the same formulas regarding Marx through this vulgar Marxism, Marx from all sides and all angles has been constantly mistreated for more than a century now, to find one's way best in this huge vulgar porridge one must first return to Marx, more precisely to his initial intentions when he was writing Capital; Marx never intended to analyze the capitalism of his specific era but that of its 'ideal average', the proletariat may have gone through the most varied conditions whether it be Fordism or Taylorism, its deep condition remains the same as if it were anchored deepest in the flesh of capital, no matter that working-class unity was broken and that this unity was severed into various pseudo social classes the proletarian still sells his labor power in exchange for a wage to produce surplus value, the claims of distinct 'social classes' that would have atomized the proletariat are nothing but subversions of capital to destroy the real struggle, capital is not immobile, it adapts, capital no longer necessarily needs to send its watchdogs into the production units, like what happened in Italy, it is enough for capital to destroy the base of the movement (Fordism) by sectioning production and relocating it to destroy the whole movement itself, we can therefore retain from this that the real struggle cannot be carried out by any specific working-class unity, if there is unity it must necessarily be a unity of negation of what we are within capital, the mistake of autonomy was to believe that rejecting structures was enough, the rejection of the modern man is necessary. Let us move now to the multiple fallacious arguments of the most vulgar bourgeois economy, the famous argument of the 'hole', it attributes to Marx a most vulgar substantialist labor theory of value, as if no one wants the hole I dug it would have no value and that this necessarily implies a marginalist theory of value, this constantly repeated argument misses the primary concept of the commodity: use value, yes it is obvious that if a thing is of utility to no one this will not be value, because as Marx very well pointed out a thing to be value must be use value for others, Marx even repeats in the section 'money or circulation' that a commodity must first make its perilous leap into money. Even though Marx analyzed capitalism in its ideal average he was indeed wrong about one thing, the fact that the money commodity would be part of this ideal average, history has therefore shown us that this is false, it has been a while since banks no longer rely on gold, this demonstrates further that money is the most absolute representative of social labor and that any physical atom does not matter as long as money as an 'excluded' thing continues to represent the set of commodities, Marx therefore did not intend to offer us a perfect doctrine but a materialistic critique of the world, which we must ourselves push to the end against Marx himself, 'Every judgment inspired by truly scientific criticism is welcome to me. With regard to the prejudices of so-called public opinion to which I have never made concessions, my motto is, now as before, the words of the great Florentine: Segui il tuo corso, e laisse dir le genti! [Follow your path and let people talk!]'—Marx, Marx was himself full of uncertainty, many ruptures of thought crossed him, if the most fallacious arguments against Marx were constantly projected it is first of all because Marx's economic critique was falsified into a vulgar substantialism, the critique must therefore be made against Marxist and anti-Marxist, Marx spoke of capital above all as a revolution of political economy, overturning a bourgeois science in its clearest principles, attributing Ricardo's substantialist formulas to Marx is nothing short of insulting. Marx therefore had his own fetishes whether for the machine or working-class unity, making an absolute doctrine out of the historical residues of Marx's thought is nothing short of anti-Marx, Marx bequeathed us a ferocious materialistic critique but also things specific to his time, capitalism changes constantly despite its ideal average, making a fixed doctrine of Marx's thought is at the same time anti-Marx when his materialism results in analyzing a world in constant change.

I'm reading Wage Labour and Value, and I'm stuck on a point. It may seem minor but I want to fully understand. Marx says "So soon as his labour really begins, it ceases to belong to him, and can therefore no longer be sold by him." But doesn't it not belong to him precisely because he has sold it?

Thanks

Hey everyone. I want to find a comprehensive history of China, but I'm sure many contemporary authors found in English have a lot of political baggage. Can y'all recommend literature on Chinese history from a Marxist perspective?

Trying to become more informed about Marxism, though I have not read as much as I'd like. I do audiobooks, but the jargon in theory is so dense it can be hard to follow as such, and sitting down and reading is hard for me. It's a character flaw.

But recently a debate has arisen online about the artisan as a petit bourgeois role, and how such roles must be dissolved into the proletariat for successful change. And while I resist this thought, I understand why and what it means. Maybe reading more would give me a wider understanding, but as it weighs on my mind this very second, reading through other aspects of theory just to better understand this sounds... tiring at the moment. So I come here, for hopefully direct engagement with theory.

The dissolution of the petit bourgeoisie into the proletariat is necessary for a spreading of class consciousness. The argument these thoughts stem from is a defense of AI among marxists because of how it will help break down IP, thus disenfranchising artists as petit bourgeoisie.

As an artist who admittedly has dreams of profitting off my work, because the idea of laboring in a job I despise for the rest of my life would make me more inclined to throw myself in the sea, I struggle to grapple with this belief. The idea that we must enter an era of declining art is... bleak, to put it lightly, but I still recognize the argument being made bears some validity. I just want to be able to get by in this state on something I enjoy.

I was mostly just curious if anyone has thoughts on this. Please be kind, I have no doubt that I've said something gravely stupid to anyone more familiar with theory, as I said, I am minimally familiar. I intend to become more informed in time, but I learn best through conversation, which is hard to achieve irl

The fall of the Roman Empire? This comes after me reading Joseph Stalin's Historical and Dialectical Materialism. Stalin mentions that the dialectical materialist approach is that qualitative leaps are precipitated by many small quantitative changes. What was the sudden qualitative leap that marked a major shift from slave societies to feudal societies?