Capitalist bootlickers love the "heroic founder" myth. Mention that labor creates all value, and they immediately cry: "B-but the founder’s risk! He took all the debt while workers risk nothing!"

Let’s dismantle this bootlicker logic with their favorite scenario:

Steve spends four years broke in a garage, maxing out cards and sleeping on the floor to design a semiconductor prototype.

In Year 5, the venture secures outside capital, builds a facility, and hires Greg.

Greg’s job is facility support?watering lobby plants and restocking breakroom paper towels for $22 an hour with zero personal liability.

Bootlickers look at this and say: "Steve solved the physics bottleneck and risked his life’s savings! Greg is just restocking Bounty, so Steve deserves 15% equity in a billion-dollar firm while Greg only gets an hourly wage."

Pure bourgeois brainrot. Steve's past suffering doesn't grant him a permanent lien on future collective labor. "Risk" and personal debt are capitalist constructs used to legitimize ownership hierarchy.

Meanwhile, Greg’s maintenance labor literally sustains the physical environment required for production to occur.

The moment a firm scales beyond one person, it becomes a collective effort. The idea that Steve’s early R&D entitles him to permanent control while Greg is denied an equal equity stake and voting share is just wage slavery masquerading as merit.

Greg built the operational reality, Greg deserves equal ownership.

Joseph Stalin, "The Possibility of Building Socialism in Our Country" 1926

The congress held that the working class, in alliance with the labouring peasantry, can deal the finishing blow to the capitalists of our country and build a socialist society, even if there is no victorious revolution in the West to come to its aid. The opposition, on the contrary, held that we cannot deal the finishing blow to our capitalists and build a socialist society until the workers are victorious in the West. Well, as the victory of the revolution in the West is rather late in coming, nothing remains for us to do, apparently, but to loaf around. The congress held, and said so in its resolution on the report of the Central Committee, that these views of the opposition implied disbelief in victory over our capitalists.

Stalin is obviously not hostile in any way to revolution occurring worldwide.

[...] we are capable of completely building a socialist society by our own efforts and without the victory of the revolution in the West, but that, by itself alone, our country cannot guarantee itself against encroachments by international capital—for that the victory of the revolution in several Western countries is needed. The possibility of completely building socialism in our country is one thing, the possibility of guaranteeing our country against encroachments by international capital is another.

...But what do you do when it doesn't? Just simply wait around for other countries to have a revolution instead of creating Socialism?

[...] what if this support does not develop into a victory of the revolution in the West? If there is no such victory in the West, can we build a socialist society and complete the building of it? The congress answered that we can. Otherwise, there would have been no point in our taking power in October 1917. If we had not counted on giving the finishing blow to our capitalists, everyone will say that we had no business to take power in October 1917.

Building Socialism within the confines of material reality isn't counter-revolutionary. On the contrary, it is counter-revolutionary to say that revolution should not have occurred simply because, like the uneven economic development of Capitalism across the world, so too is there uneven political development of class consciousness across the world.

Karl Marx, "The German Ideology"

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.

Hi reddit friends,

As the title states i am planning on reading Das Kapital volume 1 for the first time, and i am looking for people to share in this experience since it's supposed to be more fulfilling and opens-up the possibility for discussion.

I was wondering if anyone would be willing to join in a shared reading experience.

Thank you for reading my post.

So, two of the biggest things I have been trying to understand since starting this book is dialectics and materialism. Dialectics seems to have different meanings depending on who uses the term, but from what I understand about Marxism it incorporates the Hegelian use of the word dialectic where a thesis and antithesis will reach a synthesis and looks at history and how material conditions effects society. That kind of leads into historical materialism and how the way a society produces its material needs shades its social structures.

I understood these ideas more when Engels talks about how most of recent history, is a history of class struggles and that the warring classes are a product of the modes of production. More things I really grasped were how the capitalistic mode of production isn't compatible with the mode of exchange as products will accumulate and cause commerce to reach a stand still as well as the idea that transforming joint-stock companies state owned companies doesn't rid these businesses of their capitalistic nature since the state is inherently a capitalistic machine. The reason I'm listing all these out is to make sure my understanding is right so please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

Despite my understanding of these points, I feel like I left a lot of meat on the bones of this book. There were times I really couldn't understand a page or two at a time. I took this book really slow and reread a lot but I feel like I still failed to grasp some of the concepts that Engels was talking about. I was wondering if anyone had any tips for understanding Marxists writings better. I plan on reading the Communist Manifesto, The Principles of Communism, The Part Played by Labour in the Transition From Ape to Man, and The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State and I want to understand these books to the best of my ability. I definitely want to go back and reread this book but I want to prepare myself a little more before I do so please give me any tips.

Hello! I have read wage labour and capital and also price value and profit. I need some help understanding how two passages are not contradictory in Capitol volume 1.

The first passage seems to make complete sense and go along with what I’ve been reading so far but then the second one (starting with “a close scrutiny”) seems to completely flip it on its head. Maybe I’m missing something. Please help! Thank you!

lately i have been hearing more often in politcal media (in the netherlands mostly) that the truth might be one of the main problems for the left to gain traction in politics (speaking about the EU).

The idea around this is that in our nature as leftists we want to drive politics in a facts and numbers based truths. But meanwhile the right is lying about basically everything and twisting facts around and still they seem to keep the majority of the voters in their camp.

Now the question i have been thinking about is, is it time to change ways and start using more right wing tactics to get voters behind you to then push a more socialist agenda ? i am curious to hear opinions around this.

How much will it take me to read it, can i understand it without any big background in economics and do you think it will change my mind on capitalism?

I'm looking for books written by people that actually experienced imperialism or colonialism or that actually organized armed struggle or class struggle but, like, Not Lenin, but people that lived and fought more recently. Like Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Ghassan Kanafani, Malcolm X.

I'm pretty new to marxism and was unfortunately really eurocentric until a year ago. I'm really interested in imperialism, I think its the biggest threat and I want to learn to understand anti imperialism, organizing and all that.

Do yall have any recommendations?

I'm Not primarily looking for economic and political Theorie thats Like really broad, but more Like the actual experience.

Thank you so much

This is more of a philosophy-adjacent question, but I think it is a legit question

I think there's a concept in contemporary philosophy called the Promethean shame in that people are increasingly becoming self-aware of just how much better the machines and artifacts that they've created really do and so thus perform better than them on average. It creates a mismatch of human priorities, I think, in the sense that for thousands of years we couldn't just be sitting down on the floor contemplating about the latest philosophical inquiry or imaginary ideas of the universe. Thus the work actually had to be put in. And I think the whole you have to "earn your living" thing might just be a sedative for the neuro-evolutionary hardwiring of "literally working hard to put food on the table"

But is struggle really the only thing incentivizing the average person here?

I ask because I really wonder if people are more existentially terrified of the existential rightmare of becoming permanently useless than having their needs ever met for sure.

I have only recently begun reading theory, and I have a question: how will we be able to transition from socialism to communism if the process takes so long? How can we be certain that, more than 100 years from now, people won’t want to change the system again,especially since the individuals involved will no longer be the same ones?

so i used to label myself a democratic socialist but after hearing the critiques of reformism through the works of rosa luxemburg and also learning about how thing such as welfare states rely on exploitation of the global south and how the state serves bourgeois interests which is why the socialist policies are easily repealed bcos the relation to production hasn't exactly changed. i learned about the mitterand u turn and i can actively see parties like Labour in the UK tend to shift right bcos they are basically forced to adopt market policies due to institutions like Bank of England etc.

essentially i can concede the critiques of reformism but i just can't understand how a revolution would logistically work especially given the modern surveillance state and it's violence and the fact a lot of people are suppressed and happy when given concessions like free healthcare or transport

so what i'm asking is how would the 'means of production be seized' in the modern era? in light of the protests in france there's a lot of talk about it becoming more and more advanced but i can see the state already doing stuff to stop them like supposedly supplying 3000 teachers. also is mass mobilisation and general workers strikes really enough to achieve their goals?

please consider i'm 17 so perhaps my views on revolution are naive and i don't have that much knowledge

thank you

Think about it:

The job market is among the worst of the worst.

The average price of a new car is $51k USD.

The average price of a new home is about $600k USD.

Health is gatekept behind rising insurance rates and greedy healthcare companies.

The state taxes the people just to fund wars and propaganda campaigns.

The wages are so low that 50-year mortgages are being implemented.

Affordability is redundant now; planned obsolescence has taken over.

Promotions are handed out via nepotism instead of merit.

We need to restrict the market. No more Austrian School of Economics, no more economic incompetence, the workers need to demand more and dig their boot in the sand.

I’m deeply interested in how a person's social (or class) standing is reflected in their perception of themselves and the world—and how that impacts their psychology, emotions, behavior, and even body language, speech patterns, etc.

​Any thoughts or recommendations on this?

What are some of the best collections of Marx’s writings in English?

I do appreciate some of the smaller more niche inclusions in the Marx Engels Reader though.

I've heard the phrase "Marx deserves better critics" thrown around and I've always found it true, I'm wondering where are adequate critics of Marx's analysis of Capital in general? Specifically who refer to Capital, and aren't simply adding or qualifying something to make Marxist analysis adequate to contemporary modes of capital.

Certainly there is an endless supply of nay-sayers to Marxism, but since there's such an ocean of that stuff and since they (or their readers) often have a flawed understanding of Marx. Where are the adequate anti-marxists??

Recently have been going through volume 2, and in the introduction by Ernest Mandel he talks about Rosa Luxemberg's critique of Marx's reproductive schema, and it made me wonder about how rare it is to find a decent (actually-engaging-with-the-text) critique.

I just think it is so funny how corporations have stolen so much from people and it is ironic that, in stealing from the public, the public has chosen to steal from them in return. It really is great that Ahold Delhaize's CEOs are begging people to stop shoplifting. Like, you slashed benefits and wages by 75%, karma hits and when it does, it hits hard.

There is a quote attributed to Ernst Bloch: “The most tragic form of loss isn't the loss of security; it's the loss of the capacity to imagine that things could be different.”

It is supposed to be from Vol. 1 of The Principle of Hope (MIT Press, 1995), but I wan't able to locate it in the book as it is, or praphrased. I am alsmost sure now it is either misattributed, fabricated, or a paraphrase of his ideas.

What do you think? Has anyone read the book?

Thanks!

Got discussion and debate with Westerner online on death penalty. And one case of "Father speaks out after baby allegedly killed by 10-year-old girl" appear and they agree on death penalty. With reason like "she knows what she is doing", "she is a murderer". But girl has mental health problem, left with baby with no adult and no help from adult.

Marx say "It would be very difficult, if not altogether impossible, to establish any principle upon which the justice or expediency of capital punishment could be founded, in a society glorying in its civilisation. Punishment in general has been defended as a means either of ameliorating or of intimidating. Now what right have you to punish me for the amelioration or intimidation of others?"

So Marxist no defend death penalty but no Marxist can defend death penalty. What should I say to reponse back on why death penalty is wrong? My country has death penalty and over here seen as normal.

I have been studying the history of China and Maoism, but I’m blank in terms of how China opperates currently. What are their moves towards or away from socialism, what are their plans etc.

Would love to get any recommendations on what to read or watch to become more on-the-know