this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
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One of the things it serves that is helpful is challenging the pro-capitalist narrative that capitalism has been a force for good in the world. If someone's immediate conclusion from the belief that pre-capitalist peoples were not all worse off is "destroy factories", that's a problem of binary thinking and not being presented with enough context of where problems derive from, not a problem with looking at quality of life before capitalism. Industrialization and capitalism, for example, are not inherently the same thing, even if they have developed alongside a lot. Trade and capitalism are not the same thing; capitalism is just a particular form of relation there.
I would say it's a pretty important distinction to address at times because some people have been propagandized to conflate things like invention with capitalism, as if they are one and the same. The takeaway of the argument in my view isn't "go backwards in technological development", it's "better understand just how badly capitalism is hurting people and how much better life could be if it was gone and all the development we have was put to use in a humane, communal system."
In comparison to feudalism capitalism has been a positive change.
Demonize capitalism all you like but feudalism was way worse for innovation.
Monarchs and lords have nothing to gain by changing things because they have no local threats to their power. The only time they want to innovate is when their position is threatened from the outside.
Capitalists are constantly looking for an edge to use because they are always in competition. They are never secure in their position because there is always a threat right there.
Frankly I'm confused that someone calling themselves a communist hasn't read the manifesto.
"The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify."
I never said demonising capitalism was bad (I said "do it all you like"). I am saying that romanticising feudalism is worse.
A strange way to word it then, is all I can say. In my experience, that kind of wording would imply being bothered by the so-called demonization, as in, being defensive, which matched with your defensiveness of capitalism and innovation. In any case, nothing in what I have said anywhere in this thread romanticizes feudalism and you are welcome to quote my own words at me if you believe otherwise. But it is a reality that the capitalist narrative has a tendency to portray history as linear, with capitalism as inherently an improvement. And it is not inherently so, and it would be contradictory and confusing, especially to people who have no understanding of communism, if there were some communist push that it inherently is (one does not need to hand it to capitalism, even if indirectly). What is, I think safe to say, well understood among marxist-leninist and similar is that having a working class, or socialist, state to transition away from non-communist systems toward communism is valuable and important, and that these states cannot afford to be idealized projects that skip over the constraints of current conditions at home and abroad. So China, for example, has a system that has some characteristics of capitalism, but it is heavily controlled by the dictatorship of the working class. It is this controlled communist vanguard system that is behind lifting 800 million people out of poverty, out of a feudalist system, and propelled into significant global influence through mutually beneficial ties with other countries—not capitalism. I choose to use them as an example because it is one that is at times labeled "state capitalism", as if it's just "capitalism with regulation" and not something distinctly different; and if viewed as a form of capitalism, it could be confused with an example of capitalism being "better than what came before."
This feels like the rough equivalent of quoting the bible at some to win a religious argument. I'm not sure what that passage is supposed to even have to do with what we're talking about. I see no value judgment in it about quality of life and invention's relationship to it. I can only take a guess you're going for the line about "constantly revolutionising the instruments of production", but this is not a god speaking, for one, and again, it is not clear that it is talking about the kind of thing I'm talking about.
Beyond what I've already said, I'm not sure how to proceed here because the most good faith interpretation I can come to with the information I have on hand is that I see the kind of position you're taking in your replies to me as essentially romanticizing capitalism, if not worse. And you're viewing it as some kind of denial of how bad feudalism was, which has nothing to do with what I'm trying to accomplish here in messaging; if that's misrepresenting you, feel free to tell me. I'm just trying to make sense of what page we are on vs. think we are on and am having to do a fair amount of guesswork in responding to what I think might be relevant. The forum format makes it hard to do a simpler back and forth.
The problem I am having with your messaging is that it is steeped in idealism and not in historical materialism. "people have been propagandized to conflate things like invention with capitalism, as if they are one and the same" The overlap of capitalism and the rise in living standards etc. are historically intertwined and you cant undo that.
Trying to separate capitalism and the progress made under it is not possible in a materialist lenses. Dealing in hypotheticals is idealism and not effective agitprop. You don't counter capitalist propaganda by comparing it with feudalism. If you want to counter the myth that communism stops innovation you can do that with one word "sputnik."
Capitalism was a step forward, in the right direction even. But we didn't move on from it yet. We need to move forward and asking whether we are worse off now than before capitalism is not how to encourage people to move forward that encourages them to go back.
Yeah, they have. Trying to twist "historical materialism" as a buzzword to defend the lens that has been pushed on you by a predominantly capitalist world doesn't change this fact.
K, tell that to someone who is being exploited for cheap prison labor in the US. Or any number of other examples of exploitation, especially in some of the more exploited (by imperialism/capitalism) countries in the world. It's not idealism to push back on poor attempts to universalize concepts that do more harm in messaging than good.
If capitalism was fundamentally a rise in living standards, we would not be talking about it as so fundamentally exploitative! Many people don't benefit from it, that's like kind of one of the most important points of criticizing it in the first place. You know who is usually the one going to people and giving them some insistent spiel about how capitalism is actually an improvement somehow and ya know, it could be worse? Capitalists. So forgive me for wondering where your priorities are at here.
No, no, no. History is not linear and things are not automatically universal just cause some people with the predominant status quo lens say that they are. This is not how anything works. Aspects of things in the past can actually be better and be something to model after. The whole notion of communism itself is in part based on communal societal structures of the past. Marx, Lenin, and others like them did not pull the concept out of thin air and "invent" organizing communally. What they did was observe the systems they were dealing with in a scientific manner, as well as historically, and then try to work out through a mixture of theory and practice what would get the outcome they wanted to be. The modern notions of communism are meant to be a kind of merging of the benefits of industrialization and technology, and the political/social/economic structure of something communal. They just don't idealize it as something you will achieve by being nice to the dominant power structure and hoping it allows you to do your thing. The notion that the past is inherently worse overall I'm certain has some ties not just to capitalism, but also to colonialism and its lens of civil and savage, its lens of "primitive" indigenous societies that were doing a lot better off than they were portrayed.
None of this is saying "return to the past, romanticize it, think only in binary terms!" It's saying something is not inherently worse in all aspects because it came before. It's saying if you find yourself using talking points that sound way too close to what the capitalists are using, maybe that should give you pause. I cannot with the audacity of telling me I'm being idealist in this situation, while talking about history like it's an RPG skill progression ladder.
I don't know what in the world is going on with the train of thought that thinks historical materialism means saying capitalism was good for the world. That is effectively what you are arguing when you say "the rise in living standards etc. are historically intertwined and you cant undo that". Meanwhile, climate change is threatening to upend the entire species. But sure, let's have the priority be that nobody dare ever think any pullback on industrial excess could ever be necessary. Who needs the Amazon rainforest, right, as long as we have Amazon the service. Everything is linear progress overall, even if it threatens to make the planet unlivable for humans. History is over, right. Never mind the ecosystem. We'll push our way through it with sheer force of rugged individualist linear history will.
Utterly exhausting.
Fine go try to get liberals that they should become communists by telling them that feudalism was better than capitalism.
What? you are agreeing with me but also calling me a capitalist boot licker? How does that work?
I'm not trying to say anything new. I am trying to explain why what the other user was saying is wrong.
I was saying that whoever accused communists of not reading the manifesto, is full of it. No one is unfairly demonizing capitalism.
Again you aren't saying anything that disagrees with any of my comments.
I don't understand what the purpose of your comments is. You express hostility against me while agreeing with me. Its confusing.
I was/am suspicious of you saying that capitalism is demonized by amemorablename was demonizing capitalism. But I did re-read your post, and I understand your concern of romanticizing feudalism.
Edit: I apologize for jumping the gun and being a dick. I think I misread your message/misread your intent, earlier.
Doesn't Marx have some things to say about how capitalism was historically progressive compared to feudalism?
The answer to "capitalism was an improvement over feudalism" isn't to argue the point. The answer is that just as capitalism was an improvement over feudalism, so is communism an improvement over capitalism.