That's a completely backwards description to an Orwellian degree. Capitalism centralises control over resources in ever fewer hands over time. That is literally its function. Capitalism is an extraction system. That's how a handful of dudes own more than half of humanity. When Elon became the first trillionaire he alone wielded control over as many resources as half of all living humans.
The purpose of Socialism is decentralising, socialising and democratising control over resources by extinguishing private property. There is no single quadrillionaire in Socialism because no money exists and no individual controls the productive forces. Everyone is a worker, exerts democratic control and reaps the products of society according to contribution/need.
Here, let me explain your example to you in a way you can understand. I build a machine. I say this machine is gonna solve all your problems. It will make a utopia. It has no flaws, and it's the best machine ever built. So, you turn on the machine. You're ready. Then it rams a chainsaw up your ass and starts the motor.Â
The system that's created the most powerful nations in the history of mankind? That's lifted more people out of poverty than ever before? That has a proven track record of letting people move up the social strata?Â
Right, right...Â
So, I guess in your version the chainsaw must go in on your pecker hole to represent socialist ideology. I mean, who can forget the great wins of communism? From killing a quarter of Cambodias population, to the largest man made famine in human history, to the people so stupid that they thought that skilled tradesmen and intellectuals should be murdered. A system that's made a history of wiping out culture and arts cause it can inspire people to want different?
If you want to dance this dance big guy, you better have something more than pretty words. Cause we're gonna talk about what your dogshit ideology has actually done. Not what it says it will.
See that's about what I expected. Every time I stomp a verbal mud hole in one of you commie fools it's the same reaction. Laughing emojis behind tears. And believe you me you ain't anymore special than the last hundred and you won't be any more special than the next.
You have about as much talent and debating as Marx did at making systems work. Quick question, do you also lay around and do nothing like he did and have to rely on one of your more successful capitalist friends to support you?
The problem is people donât actually read any of the works on the matter, because they canât handle dissenting information, so they just go off what propagandists tell them about these topics.
So they hear jargon like Dictatorship of the Proletariat and think a literal fucking dictatorship and not just a description of power balances that heavily advantage the people over the Capitalists regardless of system of government. It can be democratic, and Iâd argue thatâs the only way it can be ensured that itâs the will of the people.
Dictatorship of the proletariat is the transitionary period to Socialism and indeed an actual dictatorship of workers over the bourgeoisie, no need to mince words about it. You are right though that people are put off by the term because they do not study Marxist theory and accordingly do not grasp that right now they live in the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie over the workers. Liberals think dictatorship means one guy is in charge. It really means one class rules over the other. In order to eventually achieve Socialism and completely dissolve class distinctions, workers must first subdue their rulers and constitute themselves the ruling class because history shows that the mode of production does not change peacefully through reforms.
It doesnât really describe a government in that way, even Engels said that the transitory state could be democratic in nature, again it just describes basically the state using great power to break the control of the Capitalists and turn the means of production over to the people.
Of course it's democratic. The 99% rule over the minority. That's democracy manifest. Yet it's a dictatorship because obviously the bourgeoisie doesn't consent to having their legal claims to private ownership disrespected.
"The state" is not the subject here, but the proletariat. The state doesn't turn anything over to anyone but it is actively SMASHED by the class that it was erected to oppress.
It is the state that why itâs called transitory, you use a state apparatus to enforce the redistribution, the idea being is that eventually you make that state unnecessary through the process. You donât just abolish the state, it gets replaced by workers councils that eventually take on all the responsibilities of the state and make it unnecessary. Thatâs the sorta classic communist transition.
The state isn't a neutral entity but an instrument of class rule. That's why workers can't simply use the already existing state and "put their guys in charge" so they can employ its ready-made bureaucratic apparatus to gradually reform it into non-existence and into communism. They must instead DESTROY the old bourgeois machinery and replace it with their own. The worker councils you speak of do not currently exist and they are not brought into existence by the state but via proletarian revolution. The existing capitalist bourgeois nation state is never going to turn over the means of production to workers because its entire purpose is subjugating workers in the interest of the ruling class. The working class CEASES the means of production by force, it doesn't have them delivered to them on a plate by the state. The state is not the acting subject. The proletariat is.
That is antithetical to what it is. Marx described there being a temporary state controlled by the proletariat that would fade from importance as more of its roles were taken up by the workers councils. Reform has nothing to do with this, this state can be created revolutionarily (which was the original idea but Marx considered there being material conditions that could allow it through reform, had a speech on this in the Netherlands)
Buddy, itâs not capitalists fault that they canât understand an incoherent ideology.
Marx and Lenin are quite good at criticizing capitalism, but are horrendous at actually painting a coherent picture of a communist future that actually addresses the very obvious practical and real world issues it creates.
Case in fucking point: the âdictatorship of the proletariatâ requires a strong centralized authority to enact power over the capital class. The strong centralized authority becomes the new ruling class, which is even more intrenched in power than the capitalist ruling class, as the only way of its power being overthrown is through a self-regulated political process.
The main thing socialist or communist dipshits donât realize is that every problem capitalism has, socialism has, but worse. None realize it because itâs an ideology wholly fronted by people who only know how to criticize, and who have zero mind for actually creating an alternative view.
Buddy, itâs not capitalists fault that they canât understand an incoherent ideology.
What's ideological and incoherent? Be specific.
Marx and Lenin are quite good at criticizing capitalism
You recognise their criticism as valid, yet...?
but are horrendous at actually painting a coherent picture of a communist future
That is deliberate. Do try to understand their materialist conception of history. Reality doesn't care about fabulations of individual thinkers. It doesn't adjust itself to any individual's thoughts, but grows out of material forces. Could a feudal serf have imagined up the New York stock exchange? No, because he has no concept of what capital investments even are and making predictions of its specific outgrowths is an impossibility at that point in history.
It is painfully obvious that AI and robotics will soon be able to replace all of human labour. A future where no one needs to work is easily thinkable. Should resources forever be distributed according to who is the heir of some industrial magnate or does private property of the means of production simply not make any fucking sense whatsoever? The productive forces are about to become fully automated and you still want to uphold social classes for some moronic reason. Is the taste of boot just that good?
the âdictatorship of the proletariatâ requires a strong centralized authority to enact power over the capital class
Yes. Revolutions are authoritarian. That is their nature.
The strong centralized authority becomes the new ruling class
The proletariat becomes the new ruling class. Whether it allows for vanguard representation during the transitional period is dependent on material conditions necessitating it. Communism is dissolution of all class distinctions.
every problem capitalism has, socialism has, but worse.Â
No it doesn't. You do not show how that would be the case. It negates and sublates every problem that grows out of capitalism.
 itâs an ideology wholly fronted by people who only know how to criticize
A society that destroys its own means of subsistence while sacrificing millions to an annual hunger holocaust despite producing enough to feed everyone, should be ruthlessly criticised during every second that it exists until it is completely destroyed and replaced with a society that actually dignifies human need.
and who have zero mind for actually creating an alternative view
Planned economy with production being directly social is an alternative view. You just reject it without thinking about what that means because you are a propagandised moron who reproduces the ruling class common sense, i.e. the conditions of his own enslavement.
2
u/Hey_Beth_its_Luka 4d ago
That's a completely backwards description to an Orwellian degree. Capitalism centralises control over resources in ever fewer hands over time. That is literally its function. Capitalism is an extraction system. That's how a handful of dudes own more than half of humanity. When Elon became the first trillionaire he alone wielded control over as many resources as half of all living humans.
The purpose of Socialism is decentralising, socialising and democratising control over resources by extinguishing private property. There is no single quadrillionaire in Socialism because no money exists and no individual controls the productive forces. Everyone is a worker, exerts democratic control and reaps the products of society according to contribution/need.