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When we explain to other people how our capitalist system works and they recoil in horror
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this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
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- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
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- Better and fewer working hours.
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Why does everyone think the only alternative to capitalism is communism?
American brains have been shaped into 2-lane highways.
Because of successful anti-anarchist propaganda, an overwhelming majority of Americans think anarchy means no rules whatsoever.
That's just Americans. They can only think of 2 options; this or that. Democrat or Republican. Capitalism or Communism. Good or evil. Simple binary choices.
There are countries in Europe which are ruled by a coalition of 3 or 4 political parties. Very few Americans would be comfortable with something so complicated.
My wife and I talk about this alot, we think it has alot to do with the religious Christian and Catholic institutions which this country is founded on. Literally everything turns into binary good and evil shit, if you look closely you see how most American brains and people do this without even realizing. It is righteousness essentially, every American thinks they are doing the "good" thing or part of the "good" group and then others are "bad."
It is serious American brainrot
But a lot of people answer along ideological lines on purpose. It saves you from being griefed by others who are just extremists and will call you bigot or whatever. That’s why people being polled will say whatever, and vote whatever makes sense to them. Then others are surprised by the outcome. Ideological extremism has killed people’s critical thinking capacities.
Because people who don't understand what words mean label every possible post-capitalist system as communism even though they're as different from each other as they are from capitalism.
This is a communist sub
Capitalism has its benefits. Namely, the rapid economic growth afforded through exploitation of natural resources by unemployed labor mixed with cash-rich / debt-friendly entrepreneurs. You don't want an economic system that loses the benefits of industrialization and domestic improvement.
On the flip side, capitalism also has a huge problem of wealth distribution. Bottlenecks within the flow of revenue create huge pools of malinvestment, squandered natural resources on vanity projects, and a strong incentive for public sector militarization / police violence as a tool to maintain the disproportionate wealth distribution.
We need a system in which individuals can still cooperatively administer an economy with an eye towards long term economic prosperity, but one in which the surpluses aren't horded or wasted by a rigid hierarchy of generationally wealthy lenders and carnival barker entrepreneurs. Communism provides a roadmap for redistributing titles and incomes across entire populations, while still socially reproducing a bureaucracy capable of managing industrial-scale and national-scale projects.
Capitalism has zero benefits whatsoever, you have American brainrot and have been propagandized to death
Even Marx didn't believe that. Capitalism is an outgrowth of industrialization, repetitively turning low-surplus undeveloped real estate into high-surplus improved real estate. If you're not generating and then reinvesting your surplus, you're not going to move past a feudal agrarian economy into a post-scarcity socialist state.
This is, at absolute worst, British/German brainrot. The Americans fetishized the idea of capitalism and hid from its excesses with westward migration. But the Old World scholars were shoved into the maw and out the anus of it a century earlier.
You are privileged beyond belief. Capitalism is based on slavery and genocide coupled with the military industrial complex. It is fucked, nothing good about it
Feudalism is based on slavery and genocide. Capitalism is based on industrial development yielding a compounding rate of return.
Its a historical stage of economic development every society ultimately passes through. Again, go back and read Das Kapital. Go pick up a copy of Piketty's Capitalism in the 21st Century. Get a book on Lenin's NEP or Dengism or the modernization of Castro's Cuba. Even the most staunch leftist cannot escape the materialist need to industrialize.
Capitalism or communism the greedy and power hungry will weasel there way up. The only thing that will save us is a vigilant electorate.
Communism is a society that has done away with classes, money and the state. That means there isn't any position to weasel up to. On the way there we do need to be careful tho, not everyone calling themselves a communist truly wants to abolish classes and the state, some are quite happy to cling to power
Because capitalism is a communist concept to begin with. Communism invented capitalism. Communism is a direct response specifically to capitalism. One might legitimately label anything that follows from the analysis and criticism of Marx's concept of capitalism as a school of communism.
Whether you believe in it or not, it's like being shocked that all the treatments for vertebral subluxation are chiropractic.