It’s more insidious than teaching us to “hate” Marxism. They teach us “oh, it’s lovely in theory but because of that darn human nature that makes all of us so greedy it can never work in practice.”
I remember hearing this line in a video.
Saying it's human nature to be greedy while they live in a capitalist society is like saying it's human nature to drown while they are held under water.
Right!?!?!?
Humans are so greedy by nature so they will ruin that system. So don't fall for it! Now, allow me to introduce you to capitalism.
🤦
They also use bad faith arguments, misleading information, disinformation, and intimidation to enforce their anti-worker agenda.
I work in flexographic printing as a QA and I get to see the numbers in our database. A print/lamination job for a million and a half impressions of frozen chicken nugget bags will gross $350,000. We do that in a day and a half while the other press and laminator is also doing other jobs. One of our presses costs $3.5m. we could literally be buying a new one every goddamn month. Press operators are at $25/hr for 5-6 12hr shifts every week. I make $17/hr for an admittedly really easy job(except when we're really busy).
Our roof leaks everywhere. The eye wash stations are all broken. They only just fixed the AC because they're expecting people to quit just after the latest round of BS. They just installed a crazy number of cameras and are now installing a turnstile because they think people are stealing hours. They owe literally all of us back pay for the pay half year because the clock system isn't tracking lunch properly.
Our big boss owns a whole damn building in Manhattan. We could all be doing really well if this guy wasn't just a leech in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars every year. The only reason we can't make more money is because we don't have the financial freedom to leave or stand our ground. We have no union. None of us will ever have the chance to invest in our own equipment. Our wages are a leash, not a return on value produced.
Marx's critique of capitalism is spot on. It's his proposed solution that is problematic
Why?
All transitions to a new system are temporarily vulnerable to becoming one party, or one person dictatorships.
(there's a video on YouTube called "rules for rulers" that explains this more).
This is the correct answer. Anyone that disagrees should go read the communist manifesto and come back to see if they still disagree.
The issues are with his solutions. He correctly calls out all the issues with capitalism. Just nails them.
But his ideas about how to solve it by abolishing land rights and the entire inheritance system is problematic, as the OP says.
Not that it couldn't work in a vacuum, but it's not a realistic solution to our problem.
A much more well considered approach of proposed solutions can be found in the book: Utopia for realists.
The Communist Manifesto was a pamphlet written within the context of Marx's time, and the Material Conditions that came with them. They were not meant to be the solution, but a solution, and for his time period.
Reading the Communist Manifesto as a means to say Marx's ideas are problematic by stripping them from their context and slapping them onto modern times is a disservice to Marxism.
Marxism is a frame of analysis, a philosophical method via Dialectical Materialism, and a tool for looking at how to improve whatever situation you are in. As such, further reading of Marx beyond the Manifesto is a requirement to understand what Marxists of today advocate for.
I’d say capital it exploited for surplus value, and the laborer and capitalist split that surplus.
Capital is made up of dead labor and raw materials, it isn't something shared by the Capitalist and Worker. Instead, it's vampiric in the sense that ownership by the Capitalist allows said Capitalist to exploit living labor.
Commodities trend towards being sold at their values, not below or above, over time, yet profit is still taken. This is due to the laborer working for more hours than they are paid. Ie, if they create 50 dollars of Value in 4 hours, yet recieve 50 dollars for 8 hours labor, then they are working 4 hours for themselves and 4 hours for the Capitalist.
Reading Wage Labor and Capital followed by Value, Price and Profit can help explain this further, in much more detail.
They agree to trade the surplus value they create in order to have a job, and receive a ratio of that surplus value instead. This is because they know they haven't the capital, nor the preparation to do otherwise.
If they owned the means of production, they probably wouldn't work so hard as they'd have a relatively larger slice of the pie.
This means the "efficiency of Capitalism" comes from the exploitation of workers. It it only because the full surplus value is kept from them, and they have a knowledge that they can be fired, or have their lives made difficult by "superiors" that they can be worked so hard (aka "efficiently").
Finding a better balance or third way structure, would require finding a way to motivate people, whilst also rewarding them AND not exploiting them.
Perhaps workers could be arranged to keep each other in check. Perhaps there's some other structures that facilitate freedom, a lack of alienation or exploration, whilst retaining motivation... That's what's needed... Comfortable, unalienated labor, that is desirable, and efficiently structured.
Gee, do I have a set of works for you!
The workers in Mondragon corporations would like to have a word.
IDK why you got downvoted. Is it coz you are not actively promoting communism as silver bullet? But rather pointing out fact that all known approaches have issues
This is because they haven’t the capital or preparation to do so.
I would argue this isn’t the whole picture which is a significant flaw in the argument. There’s a lot of people who if they had the capital or the preparation would destroy the value they were given.
That is why you have democratic control and not just everyone has a tiny sliver of capital with no rules
