Autism, exploitation and Capitalism

[FireIceTalon]

No prescience required. Just the ability to reason.

I don't know, I think making bold claims about future historical development is closer to the realm of prescience, than actual reasoning.

Marx and Engels reasoned that a classless and stateless society was possible (but not inevitable), and they based this reasoning on a extremely rigorous and decades-long empirical research of the historical development of society, in particular capitalism and its workings, that became one of the most cohesive frameworks to be applied in multiple disciplines. I would say they were in a much better position to be making more bold claims than you or I, but even with this vast understanding they had, they still knew better not to. The Marxist framework, generally speaking, is anti-deterministic and is really used to understand and analyze things than it is to predict them.

Um lol, they already have coexisted in similar ways.

In small numbers. The only reason they work is because the people in them want them to. It doesn't work when you throw in all the people that abhor communism.

Let me explain in better detail, I probably wasn't coherent enough in my previous reply.

It isn't simply a matter of liking or disliking a given social order. Otherwise, capitalism would have been gone long ago because there are a ton of people who hate it. We can only wish the legitimacy of a system rested on something so simple as human emotion, but things are quite more complicated in reality.

Material conditions change whether people like it or not, it is something beyond their control as technology and productive forces of society ever develop more and they come into conflict with relations of production. For instance, most monarchs opposed revolution or even gradual social change because they wanted to continue what they thought was their divine right to rule, and today, they would hate the rule of law system, the (theoretical) checks and balances on political power, voting, the use of science and technology, and separation of church and state in many capitalist societies, amongst other things.

But alas, history was not on their side; the social conditions were ripe for a fundamental transformation in the mode of production. That is why there were so many revolutions, political and social enlightenment movements, and social unrest in the mid 17th-19th centuries. Monarchs, members of the aristocratic/land-owning ruling class, and churches rejected the development of capitalism as the new order of things because they saw industrialization as a threat to their status and power, and did everything they could to resist it. But now that capitalism has long established itself the last couple hundred years as the dominant social order, you aren't going to find too many people who want to go back to feudalism (and understandably so), regardless of their political ideology. But even if they did want to, it's not gonna happen because the institutions, productive forces and current level of technology in society aren't congruent to an feudalist organization of humans anymore - that is why capitalism came to be in the first place, even if it did require some human agency to make it happen.

It wasn't so much that people woke up one day and said "hey, we want capitalism, down with feudalism!". It was a change in the material conditions, and as capitalism and its institutions developed, only then did peoples conception of society and the world at large begin to change; they understood their existence in a fundamentally different way than those who lived under feudalism and monarchies did. This is what Marx precisely meant when he stated "it is not the consciousness of humans that determines their social being, but it is their social being that determines their consciousness".

The same would be true of the transition from capitalism to socialism (and eventually communism), and it would be a struggle between those who want to restore the old capitalist order and the revolutionaries just as it was in the transition from feudal society to industrialism. This isn't to say communism is inevitable, because if it were no human agency would be required and we would just let back and let history unfold, but ofc that isn't how history works. Most social change in general, requires a degree of human agency. Marx once stated "Men make history, but not on their terms under self-selected circumstances - they make it based already existing conditions given and transmitted from the past", and this has proven to be entirely true. Communism isn't something to be established because we "like" it, but because it is in the objective interests of the proletariat and because the material conditions for it made possible. Alot of people abhor capitalism, but for now, we are forced to live in it. That being said, realization of an eventual communist society is still a possibility - we have the technological and economic capacity for it now, whereas 300 years ago we didn't. If we thought communism to be impossible, and that capitalism could be reformed to everyones benefit, we would just settle for social democracy. But even if you ignore class struggle (which you can't, but lets pretend for the moment you can), that still doesn't take into consideration that capitalism is environmentally and economically unsustainable. I could be the biggest gazillionare capitalist tycoon in the world, and I would still say (or at least know) that that the present order of things cannot continue unabated. It's impossible. Unless of course, we plan to start colonizing other planets, because that is what we would eventually need to do to comply with the capitalist law-of-motion of 'continuous economic growth and expansion', and that still further doesn't take into consideration that we would probably destroy THIS planet in the process. I don't forsee us being able to do that though. I think building a communist society HERE is a more realistic outcome or alternative, and CERTAINLY, its a much easier one to accomplish.

Sorry that was long.

Likewise I don't think you, or anyone else, should ever stop trying to fight for a better society and government. But again, I think your time and energy could be far better used to fight battles you can actually win, instead of the ones that nobody ever will.

I'm not entirely against shorter term goals, in fact I generally favor them. The ultimate goal of communists is the overthrow of capitalism, but we fight for gains within the capitalist system also, i.e. higher wages, better working conditions, maternity/fraternity leave, free healthcare/education, etc, anything really that improves the lives of working and poor people and especially the most vulnerable of them (minorities, women, disabled, and other oppressed identities). Communists disagree on whether this is a good or bad thing, since some feel that fighting for shorter term goals makes workers complacent {if they get their way} and less likely to fight for more lofty goals. Others though, feel achieving short term goals helps to foster 'class consciousness' and that workers will see they can struggle for more gains. I tend to belong in the latter camp, but even if I'm wrong, I think it would be extremely selfish and mean spirited not to improve peoples lives in the meantime for the sake of focusing entirely on larger, harder to obtain goals. The counter-argument from the former camp is that dependency on a welfare state is in itself dehumanizing for the worker since it illuminates their alienation from the value they produce, and as a consequence their inability to determine their own life and destiny - since he/she is limited to pursuing activities that are predicated upon those of the ruling class. It's a pretty solid argument, but I remain of the opinion that workers should fight for their immediate interests. Either way, while i think winning short term gains is great, it still isn't the final goal by any means. They are a means rather than an end.

Anyways, I can understand the skepticism of a communist society ever happening. It has been pounded into our heads so much, in every sphere of society, and for so long by the ruling class, that we've kinda come to accept it as truth. We are taught from a very young age anti-communist ideas and that capitalism and competition are the natural order of things, etc; that these things are 'conventional wisdom'. And like so many others who grew up in bourgeois society and was exposed to all its influences, there was a time, quite a long time at that, when I believed most of it. Roughly the first 33 years of my life. No longer though.

For me, and those who are like minded, capitalism is about as natural as crystal meth, and what many would call 'conventional wisdom', we would call sheer lunacy. We have become entirely disillusioned with the present order of things. Through reading and understanding its history, how the system objectively works through observation of ongoing struggles and conflicts around every corner of the world, and through our own experiences, struggles, hardships and grievances under it....I cannot help but to be anything EXCEPT a communist at this point. For me, to be anything else would be entirely irrational. I am forever class conscious. There is no turning back for us.