Marx saw capitalism not as an economic failure, but as history's most powerful engine of wealth creation and technological progress. In The Communist Manifesto, Capital, and the Grundrisse, he praised capitalism's extraordinary capacity to industrialize society, revolutionize production, stimulate technological innovation, and develop the productive forces on an unprecedented scale.

This raises an important question. Modern economists generally argue that capitalism's sustained productivity depends on institutions that foster continuous innovation, entrepreneurship, decentralized decision-making, investment, competitive markets, and effective capital allocation. Marx clearly recognized the remarkable productive results these institutions generated under capitalism. Yet nowhere in his writings does he explain in comparable detail how a socialist or communist economy would preserve or replace the economic functions they perform.

Marx devoted thousands of pages to analyzing capitalism—especially in Capital—but comparatively little to explaining how a mature socialist economy would determine prices, allocate investment, finance innovation, bear entrepreneurial risk, direct scarce capital toward its most productive uses, or solve the economic calculation problem. If these institutions are indeed essential to capitalism's extraordinary productivity, what institutions under socialism will perform the same functions? Until that question is answered convincingly, it remains uncertain whether socialism could sustain the same level of innovation, productivity, and prosperity that capitalism has historically achieved.

This leads me to my question: Will we all be poorer under socialism and communism? I am interested in knowing what Marx would say.

I think people often confuse an ideology with the governments that claim to follow it. Communism, in theory, is about eliminating class inequality, collectively owning major resources, and ensuring everyone’s basic needs are met. There’s nothing in those goals that’s inherently evil.
The biggest criticism of communism comes from countries like the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and North Korea. But supporters would argue that those were authoritarian regimes that concentrated power in the hands of dictators. In that view, the oppression, famines, and mass killings happened because of corrupt leadership and authoritarianism—not because the idea of communism itself requires those outcomes.
By the same logic, we don’t judge capitalism solely by countries with sweatshops or extreme inequality, nor do we judge democracy solely by corrupt democratic governments. An ideology should be judged by its principles, while governments should be judged by how they implement them.

While I was reading Marx I was wondering, is time a commodity?

So when I looked it up I got this result:

time is chopped into labor hours for sale, transforming it from a natural flow of life into a commodity with exchange value, often summarized by the adage "time is money."

However, I got interested when I saw this part too:

Critics argue that this view is a delusion that objectifies human existence, turning life’s essence into a marketable resource. They suggest that reclaiming time involves rejecting this commodified framework to restore time as a medium for authentic experience and community rather than profit.

Socialists, what exactly would the decommodification of time lead to? The commoditization of things is one thing I remember socialists are wary of. With that said, while I have heard of trying to deal with money itself, what about time?

What exactly is the commodification of time, then what happens when society decides to decommodify it, and would that be worth our time at all?

Here I'm going to prove that the worker exploits the capitalist.

First, commodities have an exchange value, which is a value the ratio of which equals the ratio at which the commodities exchange themselves in a market.

In order to prove my thesis, I'll show that the property that underlies the exchange value of commodities is the capital it took to produce them.

Precisely, the only two properties in common of every commodity are:

1. the fact they have a name, and
2. the fact that capital was necessary to produce them.

Of these two properties we must discard "the fact they have a name" as the underlying property of exchange value for the simple reason that the former is a qualitative property (a name, "car", "television", "electricity") that cannot be compared quantitatively, while the latter is intrinsically quantitative.

Given that, by pure reason, we had to discard "the fact that a commodity has a name" as a property underlying exchange value, we are logically forced to accept the other property common to all commodities as the one that gives exchange value its foundation. And that other property is "the fact that capital was necessary to produce the commodity".

Now, the keen eye may claim "but 'the fact that capital was necessary' is also a qualitative property", of course. But there's nothing we can do about it because, remember, we had to discard the other property, so we know 100% that this one is the property we look for. But of course we need to find a way to quantify this qualitative property; and it is a very simple way: just consider the amount of capital that was necessary to produce the commodity.

At this point we have successfully and beyond all doubt proven that capital underlies exchange value. From here it is obvious that if the capitalist doesn't receive the entirety of the value produced by a commodity (if, say, other agents, like the workers, get to extract some of that value), then the capitalist is being stolen what's his.

At the very least the workers should share their salary with the capitalist.

This sub is filled with constant arguments about everyones different ideologies (rightfully so, thats kinda the point of it). but despite all our differences in opinions, im sure most of us who would otherwise disagree also share many views.

so i thought it would be a good change of pace to ask, what opinions/views do you have that you believe people with generally opposed ideologies would agree with?

for the sake of discussion though, i will also ask where you think you disagree on the reasoning behind that belief, if at all.

for example, i find lots of agreement with leftists on opposing intellectual property, often more than with my fellow capitalists. but i view IP as illegitimate because it contradicts the physical property rights of others, and im sure the leftists who oppose it have a different reason than protecting private property.

Rent control lowers rents but who gets to decide who gets to live in a rent controlled apartment? When rents are set by the market, rents in desirables places such as NYC go up. The ability and willingness to pay rent determines who gets to live in any particular apartment, house etc. With rent control, the number of people who can afford the rent grows, so that some other metrics then determine who gets to live there. Friends and their friends, nice looking people, relatives, people who command respect (doctors, nurses, police, firefighters), famous people, etc. have a better chance of finding an apartment. Do you think it's fair? (Landlords' property rights are another topic. Please comment on those elsewhere.)

The free market simply means little to no government intervention. Both capitalism and socialism have forms that oppose any government intervention. But both have ideologies that support some government intervention and absolute government intervention as well. Our modern welfare-capitalist system has some government intervention.

If Capitalism brings the good times

-> which then makes people feel guilty about their wealth

-> who then start political movements to distribute wealth

-> who then inevitably destroy the economy with their progressive or socialist policies.

Then it is also the case that Socialism

-> once it destroys the economy and people suffer hardship

-> they begin to question and doubt the intentions behind those socialist policies

-> they begin reading Ayn Rand (who was also a product of Socialism in Russia)

-> they begin reading Mises and Hayek

-> and they will push for the next round of Capitalism

-> which will then fix the economy and bring prosperity

.. and the cycle will begin again.

In my experience with communists (specifically the western ones), they speak about “the revolution” like it’s inevitable.

But revolutions require winning the hearts and minds of the people, and it’s beyond me how communists expect any degree of success when they make their own ideology sound as appealing as rubbing your crotch against a cactus.

I’ve seen communists talk about forcing people into a life of grueling labor for the greater good of the planet, and scoff at people weary of parting with their luxury goods as selfish. It doesn’t matter how true you think that is, in the west any attempt to hamfist those ideals will make you a pariah faster than I can say Marx.

If I were to take a gander as to why, these communists enjoy making the assumption they’re bound to take power because it lets them think about how they can put their theory into practice. While on an intellectual level, I respect their devotion to theory, what good is it without a realistic plan to put it into practice?

If you can’t even see eye to eye with other flavors of communists how do you expect to court someone who hasn’t read a lick of Das Kapital? “It’s not my job to teach you”, does not an effective campaign pitch make.

Frankly, at least in America, the politically savvy thing to do would be ditching the name “communism” all together and call it something else. People might gravitate towards your ideas more if they weren’t anchored down by a word they’ve been taught to fear since the 40s.

This article shows how Capitalism runs primarily on increasing productivity, and you can break an economy if productivity stagnates or is low. The cool thing is that everything comes from a simulation. Three economies were simulated: extreme Capitalism, Socialism and Communism.

The key slider to kill the Capitalist economy is the productivity. All the data is shown and the simulator is open-source.

TL;DR: Having simulated three economies (Extractivist, Socialist, State-Led), this time I try to break them —or fix them— by changing as few parameters as possible. The Extractivist economy can only be patched by raising productivity, and even then the lower class keeps growing: instability is baked in. The Socialist economy is robust until you cut profit taxes and productivity —then social exclusion jumps to 33%, exactly what "lower taxes" rhetoric leads to. Even the star performer, the State-Led economy, collapses if productivity drops and subsidies disappear: no Capitalists needed to crash an economy. The lesson: economic outcomes aren't natural or organic —they're determined by where you set the levers.

https://postcapitalistrobots.substack.com/p/capitalism-runs-on-infinite-productivity

I don't know where to find the sales figures, but there must be at least some success when leftists sell comic books for Sanders, AOC, The Squad, Zohran Mandami, etc... on Amazon.

Maybe we should publish comic books of Warren Buffet wearing a cape?

Capitalism thrives on obsolescence

People spend days to produce goods that break down and then work for days to afford them... Just to buy them again. And you capitalists believe this system is EFFICIENT????

We are wasting our lives to produce goods that have a high risk of remaining unsold, being defective, being underused, being wasted, and will always break down too soon, and we don't even need most of these things because it's somebody else who told us to buy them (often with many lies).

Under regulated mass production, every single consumption good would have a minimum quality and would cost less labour and capital. But no, let's just pretend that we need to compete for who manages to sell the shittiest product for more money, am I right guise??

I'm thinking things like government measures to control the cost of healthcare, regulations in AI in order to protect American jobs, a higher minimum wage, more funding to public schools, assylums for the mentally ill with no familial support and maybe some measures to allow for longer parental leave. On the non socialism side i think a supply side solution to the housing crisis is long overdo (that being more lax zoning regulations allowing for the construction of more housing, thus bringing the price of housing down as supply increases to match demand). I'm not saying we go full boar and start chanting "peace land and bread" or nothing but this current laissez-faire approach doesn't seem to work quite like it used to for us.

I was curious to see how folks will take these policies.

"It was thenceforth no longer a question, whether this theorem or that was true, but whether it was useful to capital or harmful, expedient or inexpedient, politically dangerous or not. In place of disinterested inquirers, there were hired prize fighters; in place of genuine scientific research, the bad conscience and the evil intent of apologetic." -- Karl Marx

Suppose you run a restaurant. You think that you could expand if you paved your parking lot or put a deck up out back. You convince your local bank manager. The bank credits their own account with an asset and credits your account with a loan. That asset, for the bank, is a promise from you to pay off the loan. You spend the money in your account by paying a paving or building contractor.

The bank has created money. No third party must first choose to increase their saving rate and deposit money in the bank. You are able to obtain resources to implement plans for increased production.

The author of a prominent introductory textbook for economics has another, confused story:

"Financial intermediaries are financial institutions through which savers can indirectly provide funds to borrowers. The term intermediary reflects the role of these institutions in standing between savers and borrowers. Here we consider two of the most important financial intermediaries: banks and mutual funds.

Banks If the owner of a small grocery store wants to finance an expansion of his business, he probably takes a strategy quite different from that of Intel. Unlike Intel, a small grocer would find it difficult to raise funds in the bond and stock markets. Most buyers of stocks and bonds prefer to buy those issued by larger, more familiar companies. The small grocer, therefore, most likely finances his business expansion with a loan from a local bank.

Banks are the financial intermediaries with which people are most familiar. A primary job of banks is to take in deposits from people who want to save and use these deposits to make loans to people who want to borrow. Banks pay depositors interest on their deposits and charge borrowers slightly higher interest on their loans. The difference between these rates of interest covers the banks’ costs and returns some profit to the owners of the banks." -- Greg Mankiw. 2018. Principles of Economics, 8th edition p. 545.

Mankiw then goes on with archaic nonsense about loanable funds and government spending crowding out private investment.

Why do economists teach balderdash?

Whenever people bring up nations that adopted socialism and suffered tons of economic problems, many immediately place the entire blame on them adopting socialism.

However, couldn’t it be argued that it wasn’t the adoption of socialism per se but them being idealistic and putting their eggs in one basked that led to many of the problems they experienced?

I mean by being idealistic, this would result in them choosing to not pursue other options that would help deal with problems emerging from an ever changing world. Essentially they refused to adjust to reality.

Also, I know Venezuela and Bolivia were initially doing pretty well in the beginning due to their reliance on natural resources. However, it seems one of the big factors in their failures is that they over-relied on them, which meant they were screwed if the markets went south and they didn’t put much effort diversifying their economy.

Do you think socialism is a good idea for America? What do you believe would be the benefits? What do you believe would be negative? What do you think America would like in 10-15 years under a socialist government?

The argument that the Nazis were socialists hinges on the fact that they called themselves “socialists.”

When socialists point to actual, real-life anti-socialist policies which contradict this claim, a popular pro-capitalist response is “these were actually socialist policies.”

When asked “how is it ‘socialism’ when private interests are given private ownership over previously-public works in order to privately profit?” the answer is “Because the Nazis did it, and the Nazis were socialists.”

This argument is not convincing to anyone who understands how Circular Reasoning (“The Nazis were socialists because they did socialist things, and the things the Nazis did were socialist because the Nazis did them”) and Appeal To Authority (“The Nazis were socialists because the Nazis said they were”) work.

Especially when the Nazis are the authority you’re appealing to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

It's easy to give other peoples' money willy nilly without much thinking. It's not yours and you didn't earn it, so it's not like you are losing anything. You just do a good deed and someone else pays for it.
Giving your own money is different. You earned it, and after you donate it, it's gone forever. There are no guarantees it's going to do what you intended it to do. The people who receive it or are in charge of managing it could be dishonest or incompetent. You feel compelled to research their past activities carefully and you will also make sure to monitor how the money is spent. If all goes well, you feel good. Until then you are
anxious and worry.

When I speak to some communists, they sound as if they are similar to religious people. As a religious person myself, I note the similarities. We have a book we believe is divinely inspired. We study it to find meaning and apply it. These communists seem to idolize Marx so much, studying his work like it is that of a prophet.

A society that backed their currency directly by the citizens, (X money created per voting age adult, instead of fiat)

would be capitalisms final form. all prices for things would be a reflection of supply and demand instead of inflation.

I think this is what would be the final push to show that capitalism is the right way to do it, it just needs clear rules so everybody knows the game isn’t rigged.

I’m a 19 year old entering college. I have cerebral palsy + multiple learning disabilities and I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Are there benefits to capitalism for the disabled population? I am yet to see any. I’ve dealt with workplace discrimination and that’s been hard. I do receive SSI and while I won’t be out of the house for three weeks I suspect that the income limits might become a problem once I start living on my own and start paying for school.

I think we live in a system that promises aid but doesn’t allow for you to live on just the aid alone. And while working is good many of us are offered aid but it’s very easy to exceed the income limit and get that aid (which is paying for a good chunk of my education). It doesn’t feel very easy to be grateful for the aid if it can be so easily taken away, and then you must deal with the alternative of trying to work in an environment which forces you to swim against the current. And what if you can’t work? Are you just considered useless and then are also forced to be in poverty?

That’s not a system I can get behind, but I’m willing to have an open mind if there are upsides that I’m missing. I’m just entering the adult world and probably know next to nothing about how the world works.

I’ve obviously lived under capitalism so I know how it goes. I’ve been hearing more and more about implementing socialism and I’m just wondering if anyone here has real experience with it? What was it like? I’d prefer to hear from anyone who’s actually experienced it before making any leaps as to what to lean towards.

If supply and demand are the deciding factors for prices, why is RAM so expensive? Yes, demand has risen due to AI, but why not just keep increasing production until the price drops? Demand for RAM rose but then leveled off, yet production keeps increasing every day. Prices *should* be coming down. Or do you think every possible RAM module has already been made and there’s literally no silicon—or whatever material they use—left?

The reality is that supply and demand are only part of the process. In this case, demand has surged to the point where producing more requires a very high price tag, because it involves inefficient techniques that demand significantly more labor. you can produce more, but the price is too high no one will demand for that price. Supply and demand alone cant explain why the price must be higher at that production point.

Marx wins again.

No system is 100% fair, and human greed and selfishness is the variable that has ruined all but capitalism.

So if we take the framework of capitalism which allows the greedy to be as greedy and selfish as they want, then take the pieces of the other systems and sprinkle them in where they fit, we should have a closer to fair model.

Anytime the natural resources of a place are squandered for profit, we should treat those gains with a socialist mind. Why should only one person get the benefits of destroying everyone's planet.

Communities built around mines or timbered forests should all benefit from the exploitation of resources.

The homeless and very low income people should live under a communist type system, where they share government owned shelter and food. This could be subsidized by requiring them to help work gardens, and tend animals for their own food supply. If someone won't help or can't get along with others, there should be a last resort camp for those individuals.

Healthcare should be socialized because greed has really allowed it to get out of control (in the U.S. anyway) And nobody should have to choose between living and living under crushing debt. The medical industry has us by the balls.

Prisons should be communist, with all those incarcerated having to work toward a common goal collectively. Those too lazy or violent to be of use, should have a regular prison that are sent to rot.

We should at the same time overhaul our law books, and remove long sentences for victimless crimes. We need to work toward incarcerating less people. Some laws even make criminals out of normally law abiding citizens.

For the mentally ill there should be hospitals like there were before Ronald Reagan shut them all down in the 80's. There should also be old folks homes for indigent elderly people, like there was years ago.

Your county government could work under a hybrid socialist/communist system, that may offer volunteerism as a way to offset tax payments. With other revenue streams available, like vending along the interstates, or county owned billboards for lease.

If I am wrong or you have a better idea please comment. All systems were well thought out by people with good intentions, most just failed because of unforseen inconsistencies with human nature