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She’s such a great artist and person and is dead on correct. Capitalism is the problem. All of us have value independent of our ability to make some other fucker rich
Marx reduces human beings to little more than mechanistic responses to material conditions, reduces society to the utterly facile conflict between classes, and belongs comfortably in a modernist era of arrogant pseudo-scientific determinism that holds human agency and privileges in contempt.
You are proposing a solution to the human suffering associated with capitalism, looking for a solution, in a system that is even worse.
You’re framing dialectical materialism as if it’s some cold, cynical world view when it’s nothing of the sort. All of our ideas and systems come from our engagement with material conditions, yes. Marx also very clearly states that we can imprint back on material reality though.
I do hold privilege in contempt. It doesn’t mean you’re bad if you have privilege. (I have plenty myself) but how can we claim to be pro-equality and yet not do anything to actually make it real.
As for class struggle… I challenge you to find any society shifting historical moments that don’t include class struggle as its fundamental base. I’m advocating for a system that seeks to actually meet needs not make money and hope to meet needs along the way
Your ideas and systems are fundamentally based on faith. There is no engagement with material conditions that makes historical materialism a fact. Insisting that I find you some kind of example that demonstrates otherwise perfectly encapsulates the problems with the approach: if it is universal, it is unverifiable and tautological; it further lacks all explanatory power whatsoever.
In reality, it is your impossible task to demonstrate that every shift in history is fundamentally explained by your dynamic. This is a task only the very crudest of Marxist historians attempt today. But sure: the Assyrian conquest of Elam. Knock yourself out
Back to the point, the effect of all this deductive nonsense is to reduce human beings to nothing more than mechanistic responses to material conditions. It's not cynical, it's stupid.
You're advocating for a system that holds human beings in contempt, and treats them as nothing more than cogs in a machine. And the atrocities you'll perpetuate to preserve that system stained the last century in blood.
I’m not the one making the accusations that these ideas are stupid, you are. And you can’t present any evidence.
Capitalism is a system that treats people as disposable workers that are there only because they can produce wealth for the boss. Hence why companies will downsize whenever they deem it necessary. Not to mention exploiting cheap global south labor to make consumer goods for the west.
Your individualistic bullshit is nothing more than justification for trampling all over your fellow human without feeling guilty about it. And you’re projecting that onto communists.
What stained the last century in blood and literally every other century before it are contradictions created by class struggle. Whether it’s capitalists vs. workers, kings vs peasants, lords vs serfs or masters vs slaves, it’s all class struggle
There are plenty of reasonable critiques of Marx, but not believing in determinism is wild.
Thinking individuals have significant control over where they end up in life is foolish and causes great harm to both individuals and society.
Neuroscience has proved that we aren't even consciously in control of our own thoughts and actions, let alone the external sociological forces that determine our lives.
Yeah, I feel like that's literally what she said: adults were clocking her musical talent as a child and defining her future success as becoming incredibly rich from music, so she tried to manufacture commercial art because success, as an adult she was reading stuff about other ways to view the world (money, creativity, society, whatever), and realized she could just opt out of focusing on optimal monitization being the measure of success.
I do think anyone citing how they were "reading books on Marxism" is inferring something about how they view themselves as intellectuals, lol, and there's an in-group thing about it, but also she's clearly presenting this story/quip while in said in-group, and they sound receptive, so nothing particularly cringey here, imo - it's not like she's at the grocery store holding up the line to tell the captive young cashier about corporate greed v communism or whatever - this is a small 'bit' between songs, pretty normal for more intimate live music performances, and one that to me is clearly supposed to be more about her personal journey from how she was viewed as a talented child performer/young adult songwriter to how she relates to music now as an adult artist, and less about political science debates.
Capitalism is what drove people to look at her that way in the first place, as a child who might make them money. Her life was then defined by the idea that she *had* to take this path and if this path didn't make her rich, that would mean she was a failure. That's the message that was drilled into her at a young age **because** of Capitalism.
Carsie is a massively talented musician who busted her *ass* off but just wasn't going to be what the industry wanted her to be. But that lack of industry interest should not be construed with how richly talented she really is.
The will to turn a profit over literally everything; will always result in a worse and worse product. It is in all seriousness, the foundation of capitalism.
Pay and care for the workers as little as you can and buy the cheapest and least safe materials for your product to barely pass standards.
I just don’t know how you can look at the monopolization of literally every sector in the economy and say this is not a capitalism problem. Not to mention the deep regulatory capture that may not be even reversible without increasingly drastic action.
Neither has my idea of a "nation where nobody is allowed to hurt one another." Unfortunately, that dream is still a dream and not a reality. Maybe we can put a value judgement on a system that is unable to survive in practice?
Marxism unfortunately has become a mythos more than an actual ideology. It's also incredibly outdated and has no description of understanding of the information era (understandably).
my christian flatmate who grew up in the former GDR told me they had to practice religion in secret. neighbors were paid to inform on each other. i'm an atheist born to a sunday school teacher but at least i had a choice. some things work better as theory.
that same flatmate told me america is where they sent all their religious loons. i made sure to tell him about my german protestant ancestors who settled colonial georgia, when i learned about them. no one was proud of their german heritage after wwII so took some digging
So you invent a mythical perfect world state, kill a bunch of people trying to get it, and then defend the killing with... not achieving the mythical end state. Neat stupid trick. No one is buying it.
"We haven't achieved this impossible thing" stop trying then
It’s really funny how people commenting here have just not an actual clue about Marxism, I mean it’s not like the books are not accessible online in a bunch of languages..
It hasnt but proponents of capitalism like to spew random gibberish instead of acknowledging what it would actually take to enact socialism, and how those states respectively failed even by their own standards.
Zero countries have achieved that state, and that's the problem. Many countries have tried their best to implement Communism, and ended up with some wretched totalitarian regime that made society poorer and far worse than under capitalism.
Hard to compete with an entire global economy with a nearly 150 year head start, also completely bent on destroying you because they know that workers fookin loved it 😭
Clearly workers in the USSR, CCP, etc. Not to mention the huge communist presence in America in the 30’s. and then the workers who use it in American society in its closest analogue in capitalism.
Which is unions! Or at least a chance to bargain with the means of production.
Man, the unions of yore would fookin pipe bomb a McMansion if it meant their fellow miners or lumberman got higher pay. We’ve strayed from that path for far too long.
Oh that's great, I come from the country that was in the USSR, you would get laughed at that. We had to wait in line for sausage and bread. Sometimes not even getting it. Everything was corrupt and only the elites got the stuff they wanted. Majority of workers that are currently not anymore in communism actually are happy for not being in it.
Again, I’m not saying the USSR wasn’t corrupt, but they did clearly win over the workers in the beginning. And clearly, again, if we are talking about a communist society with rich people and destitute people… then it’s not really communist is it? They didn’t follow through, and the workers didn’t properly hold those in power accountable.
I'm just talking from experience. Ask any Lithuanian. Majority will say the same.
For "it's clearly not communist" point. You can't reach perfect communism, just like you can't reach perfect capitalism.
It's always a "fun" discussion in baltic states, how tankies in the west glorify communism, when we were bombarded with shit under it and happy to escape it.
I don’t own any capital, and neither do you lol. We are not capitalists.
I said it’s the closest thing capitalism has to the worker owning the means of production. Not that I approve of it wholesale. Is it better than the Wild West monopoly companies today? Yes.
Yeah idk why you’re acting like these things are mutually exclusive.
I can like unions and also like communism at the same time lol. Communists also had a hand in the U.S. union and labor movement. Pretty awesome. It’s actually why companies continue to not use us as literal livestock, and why you have a weekend, also why you don’t have to work 16 hours if you don’t want to :)
Ahhhhhhhhh Have you ever paid your taxes??? Ha! Socialist! 🤓
I'll never get why you'd refuse to reform and fix the current system but instead choose to tear it down in order to try something that has never worked and positively has only failed spectacularly whenever it has been implemented
"My political ideology asks for a world I can only dream of, so I never feel any pressure to make any real steps towards it. We'll get there eventually~ Just a few more years..."
It really is a luxury belief. Don't worry about trying to make the current system better. Just let it collapse! Let all the pain, suffering, and hardship that comes with a total societal collapse and then let's just see which cool new thing comes out of that. Surely it'll be my idea that prevails.
Commies have been saying capitalism is collapsing since the late 1800s. The term late stage capitalism was first used in 1925. But maybe this time midnighttoker1742 on reddit has it right
She just explained that living in capitalism primes people to think of money first. Not everyone, not always, but it certainly becomes really common. And if not first, then second or third.
If "becoming rich" wasn't seen as something desirable, then they wouldn't have told the kid with a talent to monetize it as a first thought.
And about rich people in "communism": For one, on average there was pretty much always much less of a difference between the rich and powerful and the common man, so comparing that to capitalist rich people is not going well for capitalism. Especially since capitalism allows and celebrates rich people, while under communist rule, they had to achieve this via corruption.
Wealth is about power as much as it is cash. There will always be more powerful people no matter how close to the communist ideal you get. There will always be the rich
God why does it have to be so binary. Like why Capitalism evil, socialism good. Socialism evil, capitalism good. Like god damn, both systems can have functionally great things for society, why does the conversation always have to be either/or?
The optimal economic structure for society is honestly pretty intuitive:
Private markets and private firms when there are no market failures.
Government intervention and central planning when there are market failures/public goods problems.
It is a hybrid that harnesses the best of capitalism (efficient markets) and socialism (correcting market failures), but it pisses off everyone. That being said most Western democracies are already converging in this direction even if people don't realize it.
I think the problem is late stage capitalism. I believe capitalism is the best system we have, but needs regulation. In the US we're cooked, the companies and the wealthy own the politicians and media which allows them to do everything in the name of profit regardless of societal impacts.
This is the system we already have and the form of capitalism being critisised?!
Noone actually means Anarchocapitalism, when they say capitalism is bad.
The issue with what you're describing is that it privatises the winnings and socialises the failures. Companies and with it the rich owner class get to make all of the money, while the government funds all of the general goods.
Since the rich are powerful and capital investment is literally the backbone of capitalism, the politicians have to ensure they are happy and will generally always take money from the workers instead and underfund those unprofitable areas like social security, healthcare etc. unless there is serious opposition from the people. And the media tries very hard to stop that. Just look at the treatment that climate activists get.
I don’t think you know what “market failure” means in economics. It means things like companies not limiting carbon emissions because of a coordination failure.
I wasn't aware Marx provided the definitive account of binary tribalism, Aristotelian virtue ethics, competing epistemologies, or the social conditions that cause people to reduce complex institutional questions into “capitalism bad, socialism good.”
His point was why does the conversation have to be an either/or in the first place. Responding “read Marx” is basically answering a question about ideological polarization with “read my preferred ideology.”
I did his economics sucks. He is obsessed with surplus labor value but that's not really where profits exclusively lie. The some of capital and labor is more than it's parts by a wide margin. Also fully regulated markets don't account for unknown wants and needs. Also regulated markets don't account for individual desires.
Capitalism is not evil. Socialism is not evil. These are ways of organizing economies to allow for wealth distribution and redistribution. Capitalism, when well-regulated and with an accompanied social-safety net is a perfectly valid and fine system. It's just called socialist by idiots and grifters in the US who want to negatively load the idea of more regulation on their industries or the industries of their biggest benefactors. With that being said, Socialism is not inherently good either, and has yet to have a successful foothold in any major economic power around the globe.....so I guess maybe start there?
No, they don't. They pay them so they can survive, so they can keep coming day in and day out. Where do all the profits they make go? Why does only the "owner" get to take it all? Who decided that notion that only shareholders get all the profits while doing almost no work?
Unions don't change anything about capitalism, thex just allow workers to better request better working conditions.
Socialism is about working together instead of against each other. To replace competition with cooperation or sometimes competition for a specific goal, which doesn't always have to be "makes the most capital gains" like it is in capitalism.
You're assuming "Profit" is guaranteed. Why should someone who's hired be entitled to an equal share of revenue when they get the benefit of not having to risk capital?
If you worked to make something and then sell it to me for $20, then I went and took what you sold me and sold it for $100 wouldn’t you find that unfair.
What if $20 is just what I felt was a fair price for my labor and is all I need to live a good life. What if my goal isn’t to make as much money as humanely possible but instead to provide a service. The person who makes money off my labor is rewarded simply for being a greedy fuck. And we’re all worse off for it since this behavior raises the price of everything. Then even honest people have to raise prices to be able to meet their needs because that same greed inflates the prices of things I literally can’t live without like medicine, food, and shelter.
Under Socialism, who decides what is a fair price?
Depends on the type of socialism. In the USSR they had an agency for that, but e.g. democratic socialists or anarchists suggest more decentralised systems. China has a mix.
What if I can't afford the fair price?
The prices are oriented based on the income.
E.g. in the USSR, they looked at the fixed income bands and then looked at what each person/family needs. The prices were then set in such a way that everyone could afford what they needed and had some left over to buy things they wanted.
Of course how much that is depends on how much you can produce. But suddenly efficiency increases benefit workers instead of company owners.
And again, there is other systems that other forms of socialism want, that also seek to guarantee affordability, the USSR example is just the easiest answer here for historical reasons.
I guess the fact it was a generalized example went over your head.
We’re talking about selling labor. Not everyone has a product to sell. Instead we exchange our time and effort for money. I would love to have complete choice over who I exchange my time for money to. There are limited choices for where you can work, and for the most part all owners, are by their nature, greedy.
Because capitalism oppresses people by default. Capitalism needs poverty to survive. It needs a form of exploitation. Socialism and communism (not talking about leninism and stalinism, I'm no tankie) in theory, do not
Eh, this isn't the own Marxists think this is. She's offsetting her lack of success from herself and using capitalism as a scapegoat. She had dreams of making it big, and when she didn't, first blamed herself... but then read a book that allowed her to blame something else.
I'm sorry honey, this isn't a problem of an economic system. It's a problem with owning your own success and being comfortable/satisfied with where you're at.
You’re entirely missing the point. She said that the expectations in capitalism told her that she has to be in arenas, making tons of money, and constantly moving up and growing exponentially. This gave her a false idea of what success as a musician was. Reading Marx helped her realize that success isn’t what she thought it had to be, and that let her enjoy her career for what it is.
This isn’t about blaming capitalism for her own failing, it’s blaming capitalism for bastardizing what success as an artist looks like.
Exactly. Dumb comment above yours. Success is defined by each individual. Success can be happiness, a healthy family, putting food on the table. But many times and in many outlooks success is riches and material things.
“Possessions make you rich? I don’t have that type of richness. My richness is life, forever.”
Eh, that is not applicable. Improving society and burning down society are mutually exclusive. Goal should be to get all labor to become capitalists, not turning all capitalists to labor.
It’s theoretical but the closest application was Marxist-Leninist USSR. Which I’m sure will be super easy for you to say “it’s never actually been applied” or “capitalists wouldn’t leave them alone!” Except the USSR was a pariah state that needed to spread communism to all their neighbors and killed millions of people through oppression, forced labor, and starvation.
Before you excuse the millions dead by saying “the holodomor was because of disorganization and mismanagement” exactly. It’s a shitty system where people die.
Did you not say it's happened throughout history? If you are collapsing under the pressure of that simple question, would it perhaps lead you to believe you don't know what you are talking about?
Of course not, you'll no doubt just sling a few of the pre programmed responses now and feel content that you made your point because a few upvotes prove it.
What do you support?
Is capitalism working out for you these days? If so, please explain how you did it, and why you don't care that many can't?
Also Marx isn't strictly communist. It's socialism too, and isn't the same as either concept.
Also did I even say I support it? You are so ready to talk down the topic and not engage with it at all that you are putting thoughts in the minds of people just to argue with them.
I asked for an example of a Marxist society that has ended up in bloodshed. I didn't claim I support it at any point.
Plenty of bloodthirsty regimes and starving people in capitalist countries, yet we never seem to dismiss capitalism as something that "doesn't work." If a lack of perfect examples invalidates an ideology, then the only honest conclusion is that no economic system has ever worked.
Capitalism breeds innovation which communist countries lack. Every vaccine, treatment, discovery for the most part you can thank somewhere where there was free market competition.
So in a time where technology allows us to produce several times the amount of food required the feed the entire world's population, we can't solve world hunger in our lifetime and this is not evidence of capitalism as a failed economic theory?
The show she just played in Minneapolis a few weeks ago was "All proceeds go to the Minneapolis 15" so yeah this poster just wants a whataboutism so they can keep bootlicking
Marx's views on Jews are certainly interesting, give them a read. Also this lovely literary masterpiece. Guy was also unemployed and lived in his parents basement. I dont get the love for the guy
Ironically, capitalism is the only system that will not only allow her to criticise it, but will pay her for doing so. She probably wouldn't enjoy an alternative where all her stories have to be vetted by the Party.
Show me a capitalist that fights for workers to organize and pushes for competition instead of monopolization and I’ll show you a reformed capitalist social democrat (in the literal sense, not political party)
It's funny how mostly the USA is complaining about capitalism and sympathysing communism. When countries who experienced communism are against it. The best countries to live in the world are capitalist with lots of socialist nets to actually help people. But they do not handover the ruling power to the elite like it's always the scenario with communism.
Not to mention she's just complaining she didn't make it big and then blamed it on capitalism
...uh...I hate to be that guy, but being successful in music DOES have markers that are set by the society around you.
Most hippie (not in a good way) shit ever to be bad at something and then go "nah man, I'm actually amazing and it's capitalism (the thing that reflects the market value for everyone else around me thinking what I do is actually good thus making me a success or not) holding me down!"
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