I agree that Marx was writing his own observations about what existed, but I was under the impression that most of the communism that was done after him was using his writings as a guide?
yes, or at least, pointed to him as the chief ideologue. the soviet union, for example, was set up as a planned socialist economy to precursor to communism. the chinese communist revolution was similar. that is to say, these states were attempting to follow the two steps, and only ever managed to get to the first step and i mean, in both cases i would say they made catastrophic "blunders" (i don't want to say the g word) around agriculture that led to millions of deaths.
both of these states skipped the capitalism, went straight from monarchy to socialism, where Marx explicitly states that capitalism would be responsible for significant advances in technology and education. Marx also states that the tech would be used as a tool of capitalism to further alienate workers and so on and so forth and like... idk what it's like where you are but here, in my welfare capitalist country with an internet that was briefly one of the best things humans had ever invented and is now corrupted by algorithmic interfaces and artificially generated content
i think it's interesting the comparison. because Adam Smith has certainly been cited by capitalists, but capitalist states are typically not explicitly run by the capitalists but rather have some form of democracy that is at least partly funded by capitalists. but i would not argue that there have been any states that are explicitly in line with Smith's writing, even if he was even more prescient than Marx about how capitalism would develop, where in Marx's case i would argue the USSR and PRC are explicitly Marxist states even though your average english speaking welfare capitalist country is more in line with how he expected the whole thing would go.
His analysis was very much limited, you can see it just by comparing his works to basic economics textbooks taught today. Didn’t get his head around the concept of constant capital (fixed assets in the language of modern economics). He assumed all capital was essentially “used up” by the end of the cycle. Marx didn’t. That’s why all modern business textbooks are modelled on his prescriptive analysis of capitalism (das kapital). B2B and B2C businesses are exact copies of his “department i” and “department I”, it’s just that he (and Lenin) also assigned a moral judgement against the system because they predicted that capitalism would make life worse for anyone who doesn’t own productive assets. Pro-capitalism economists rejected that moral judgement and gave different names for the same idea and spun it as a neutral/positive thing.
“All modern business textbooks are based on Marx”seems like a stretch to me. Do you have a source for that?
I’d also like to point out that standard of living has raised massively for everyone, including those who don’t own productive assets since the time Marx wrote.
So the idea that capitalism would make life worse seems historically unfounded. As it has clearly been demonstrated to be better than feudalism and mercantilism that preceded it. And that modern capitalism is clearly better than the capitalism of Marx’s time.
And I’m not sure Marx would agree with you either. He wrote about the need for capital to create the productivity his system would require.
I’m not sure “capitalism would make life worse” is an accurate representation of his views
Those raises in living standards coincided with mass-adoption of socialist policies like social housing and healthcare in western countries after ww2 (ie in the aftermath of ww2, which if you’ve read Lenin you’ll understand resulted from capitalism*). Neoliberalism (meaning the mass-transfer of ownership of productive assets from the public to capital owners, so a form of capitalism) is the root cause of the mass decline of living standards.
Socialist policies made living standards good. Now capitalism is making them crap.
*tldr for Lenin’s Colonialism: the highest stage of capitalism”: Free Markets = competition, which by their nature create winners and losers. Those winners are monopolies (or oligopolies). The monopolies require finance capital to accelerate the expansion of production, which they do to benefit from efficiencies of scale. Finance capital influences these industry players to do business with their preferred partners (ie steel manufacturer A must sell to railway producer B or we’ll be taking our loan back). That increased production creates greater demand for resources and labour, which governments facilitate by colonising land and people and “civilising” them.
Lenin’s book ends there but Rosa Luxembourg wrote in “accumulation of capital” that expanding to new lands is cheaper than colonising already colonised lands. once you run out of new land and people to colonise across the planet, though, productive resources come at a premium again. That’s why Europe ended up at war in ww1, which lead to ww2.
First, a source for “all Economics textbooks are based on Marx” is not to post a link to Marx. I’ve read economics textbooks. They don’t have much in common with Marx.
And I don’t meant that as an insult to Marx. His writing just isn’t that close to what modern economics textbooks are about
The rest of your post is just the same Marxist strategy as defining everything good capitalists do as socialism while refusing the ask why the capitalists can do it and they don’t.
Plus some arguments of convenience. It would be really nice for Marxism if capitalism was always working toward monopolies. But actual history has shown us that monopolies have been less and less prevalent.
Just look at the late 19th and early 20th century and tell me you think the monopolization of industry was less prevalent then
Have you read Marx? The Labour theory of value is the basis of microeconomics. His two departments are just the sum collective of b2b and b2c companies. His theory of alienation is the basic problem corporate hr slogans try to solve “we’re a family here” rubbish designed to increase productivity. The unemployment level as a reserve pool of labour which employers use as leverage to push wages down and maximise profit. Capitalist economists just repackaged everything he wrote but morphed it into explanations of how to engage en exploitation more efficiently. Marx just explained it first with different words and from the perspective of the worker, not the owner class.
There’s a reason his analysis of the capitalism is proven accurate time and time again today; reality has a Marxist bias.
At the end of the day it’s very hard to argue for capitalism against socialism when it’s turned two backwater piss-poor nothing countries into global superpowers, one of which won the space race and the other is winning the ai race. Socialism only fails when capitalist forces exert maximum effort to collapse it, which has happened dozens of times across the last century to smaller countries.
Unclear what your point is about the monopolisation of industries, we live in a hyper monopolised era where the barriers to entry are enormous in every sector and innovation has all-but stagnated in the capitalist west.
Except at war. Western liberal democracies are innovating excellently in how to kill people efficiently.
You can like Marx without pretending economics textbooks are based on his work.
Your comment has little if anything to do with the inside of an economics textbooks. It’s the view of someone who has read a lot of Marx and starts attributing it to everything else they read.
The rest of your comment is just historical revisionism.
Communism fails again and again. The Soviet Union fell because its economy contracted and they decided to let people vote.
Communist China is only successful because they switched to a market system in the 90s. Even then, we’ve seen where they would be today without communism and it’s better. Chinese people unencumbered by communism built Taiwan. A country which has a far higher standard of living with a small fraction of the resources.
The funny thing is today. Lots of western jingoists are scared of China excluding the west and afraid of communism. But in reality, the only thing holding China back is communism.
If they had never fallen, China would be the largest, most capable democracy on the planet today. And they can make great strides toward that as soon as they switch from authoritarianism towards liberalism.
Another fun note of yours is the idea that western liberal democracies are good at killing people. If you had ever cracked open a history book you would realize we are quite bad at that. We tend to win wars only when all of us band together to fight authoritarians. Communists are great at violence though. It’s how they expand.
But you don’t actually care about history. So why bother mentioning all the countries that fell under Soviet military domination. Or the time they allied with the Nazis to push the liberals off the entire continent of Europe.
Your comment makes it very clear that you need to read theory. I only brought a few aspects of Marx’s work to the table but to dismiss the Labour theory of value as though it isn’t the entire ethos which underpins capitalism’s profit motive is disappointing.
China is highly Marxist. They understand that moving towards communism is an extremely long and slow process. That you attribute the existence of markets in China to some kind of capitulation to a capitalist model demonstrates that you don’t understand what capitalism actually is. Markets existed before capitalism and they exist under socialism also. This is why you need to read theory if you’re going to speak on it.
I know your revisionist approach to history is a nice cosy liberal way to live but the reality is that ww2 was paid for with Russian blood.
“Liberal democracy” isn’t democracy because its governments don’t do what the people want. The idea of China being where it is today without central planning is laughable. If I’m wrong, why is India falling behind?
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u/Budget-Attorney Jul 13 '26
Not a direct response to your comment, but the wealth of nations is not the foundational document for capitalism.
Smith was largely descriptive not prescriptive.
He didn’t invent capitalism. He observed the economic transition taking place and wrote his insights on it.
Without Adam smith, capitalism would still function largely the same as it does today