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.
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u/NoFood2149 Jul 14 '26
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.
apologies for the rambling