I agree almost with everything you said here! And it sure looks like you know a lot about Marx and his philosophy! I would only be a bit more pessimistic in general, and a bit less harsh on the capitalist system. As Marx himself points out, there has never been a system that is able to produce so much value than the capitalist system. And it happened to be the case that no other system ever on the face of the earth was able to raise so many people out of poverty and create wealth more rapidly, than the capitalist system. This is of course not to say that the system does not have flaws. Like you mentioned, it does disposes people, alienate people and does tend to devalue the labour of people i.e. the more wealth, the lower the value of the labour. However, I do believe that what you mention about millions dying and war and so on, is independent of the system that you live in. I am quite pessimistic here. We do not need capitalism to destroy ourselves. As I see it, most wars, crises and death spring from human corruption, greed and our unlimited stupidity, whether this is in capitalism, communism or any other system. But this is not inherent in the system itself. We can use money as an excuse to kill, we can use the utopia as a reason to kill, we can use religion as a reason to kill and so on. We are quite creative when it comes to ending our neighbors lives... At the end of the day we simply have to work to survive. And maybe we could take the capitalist system as the starting point since we know it is very powerful when looking at the creation of wealth. But then it is maybe more productive to talk about what we can do to prevent as much corruption as possible, and how we can best help those who are dispossessed. I do believe that the philosophy of Marx had a greater influence, at least in Europe where I live, on the system than he gets credit for. We have in most countries a well organised social system with affordable healthcare, minimum income, financial help and so on. Therefore, I would argue that we do not live in the purely capitalist system. Now, do you think that we as humans could achieve this, or am I here now too optimistic? :)

@@eversbrothersproductions1476 Thank you for your extensive reply. You raised some good points that I can't disagree with. For example, that capitalism is the system which produced never-before-seen amounts of wealth. This is correct and the fact that Marx saw that as well. I'd only say that, if we're talking specifically, human labor is what created such vast wealth with the help of cooperation, division of labor and machines. It is true that only under capitalism do we see such a historic and sudden expansion of labor productivity, but the fact remains is that it was the workers, all those men, women, and children who died of various illnesses, barely reaching beyond their 30s, working for 16 to 18 hours every day in poorly lit, dangerously hot or seriously damp and often small, cramped up spaces. This is something that Marx mentions at large in his critique of Capital. What is so revolutionary about Marx's theory is how almost all social phenomena are grounded in the mode of production, e.g. war. How is war connected with capitalism or even feudal or ancient societies? All those societies do have one thing in common, their being as class societies. The Marxist understanding of class distinguishes the working class (slaves, serfs, wage-laborers) and the ruling/non-producing class (slave-owners, lords, capitalists, but also landlords, bankers et al.). It is already apparent how the non-producing classes are always the ruling classes on account of their relationship to the means of production and human labor. It is no secret that the decision to wage war comes exclusively from the ruling classes. Now, what is the motivation for war in the capitalist social context - to turn a profit. You are right, this is absolutely connected with human corruption, greed and stupidity, no doubt about that. However, greed and stupidity are psychological states, they do not declare war, they do not mobilize millions, they do not order people to kill. What declares war and sends millions to die is power, which comes from the ruling class. The abuse of power is inherent in every system that relies on it, and it's only a matter of time before corruption sets in. The solution is to end the class distinctions so that way, even if a person is malicious and manipulative, they will have no means to order people around to work for them. Classless societies have no laws, no government, no police. Just look at the contemporary hunter-gatherer societies or look at the historical anthropological accounts of the now non-existent counterparts in the North America. All those classless societies have had one thing in common, which is owning the means of production in common (pun partially intended). I detect a tension between your pessimism on human nature and your optimism that it can be overcome or at least managed to a comfortable degree. Let's ask ourselves then, how to reduce corruption and help the dispossessed? We would need some political influence to do that. To get that influence, we would have to organize a quite a number of people with shared beliefs. Then we would have to get access to organs of political power - the parliament, government and the courts. In Europe, where you and I (Croatia) both live, most countries are democratic republics, so we'd have to run for the election and other political campaigns. Not only that, but we'll have to do better than our political opposition. Are we starting from scratch and thus have very little to build on or do we join an existing ruling party or major opposition party? If we do the latter, we will find ourselves surrounded by people who are corrupt and self-serving. If we do the former, we must rely on luck to get to the point where we again find ourselves among very unscrupulous people. What you are arguing for is social-democracy. I will expand on my point that it has been shown even that ideology and political system has shown ineffective in the 20th c. The social-democratic states came to existence after WWII. The social welfare programs and laws were enacted all across the developed world, from North America to Europe and Commonwealth countries. After the war, the economy was in shambles and in a deep crisis, which allowed for the subsequent economic boom. You can hear people reference the 50's, the 60's as those golden years in the USA, the UK and the rest of Europe. Enter the stagflation of the 70's. The dominant economic model - the Keynesian Consensus - started crumbling. A new economic paradigm started rising - neoliberalism, pioneered by Reagan and Thatcher. 20 years later, the USSR was dissolved and a new crisis had befallen the world. Such famous and celebrated practitioners of social-democracy, e.g. Sweden, Denmark, Finland etc., began utilizing austerity measures, cutting down on social programs, reducing welfare benefits etc. The trend of decreasing the welfare state continues to this day all across the world. It's simply at odds with the capitalist mode of production which constantly produces crises due to the chase for profit. As long as profits dominate the economy and therefore human beings, we won't see the end of all the social and environmental issues.

@@eversbrothersproductions1476 It happened to be the case that no other system ever on the face of the earth was able to push more people into unprecedented and unparalleled poverty and misery through the colonisation of entire continents and the thorough exploitation of labor and resources of the oppressed countries than the capitalist system. Poverty in western liberal countries only started going down in any meaningful sense after decades of radical, militant labor movements (not to mention the Bolshevik revolution and the subsequent rise of the USSR) forced them to implement social democratic reforms in order to save capitalism from itself, not a flex for capitalism. Poverty in African, Asian and Latin American countries started to go down only because of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial social movements in those counties, and the Soviet Union sped up decolonisation by decades, not a flex for capitalism. Kerala, an Indian state which is ruled by the CPI(M), a reformist socialist party, has by far the best quality of life and the least poverty in India. The USSR, which was a largely agrarian, feudal and war-torn country in 1922, from 1920s-1960s had the highest and most rapid upward social mobility in human history at that time, and saw the biggest non-war drop in quality of life in most former Soviet states after the full restoration of capitalism. Standards of living in western capitalist countries have deteriorated in the last 30-50 years since the neoliberal reforms. Among the very few countries where poverty has gone down in any meaningful sense in the last few decades is China, with orders of magnitudes more state spending, regulation, restrictions and interventions in the economy than most capitalist country, it's a state-led market economy, an economic model which the overwhelming majority of the defenders of capitalism are against. Also, some related videos kzfaq.info/get/bejne/edVkeaiElcvMqX0.html kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fKt4jMiWt6nYhn0.html kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fshml7uDm6fKiHk.html kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Y7lddtqHr97cpZs.html

Thanks for your comment. For a great part I agree with your remark. However, I do think that this idealism offers some tools to observe the problems that we face today, and especially of alienation. Work is indeed essential, but it should be a means to an end, and not the end itself. My brother came to me a little while ago with a question: how can it be, that 50 years ago one salary was enough to buy a house, own a car, go on holiday etc. And that now, we have the double amount of labour (both men and woman), we work almost every day to put the children in day-care and to barely be able to pay for our houses, that we do not own since it is all rent due to inflation. And we do not own our own car since this is lease, we do not even own our own phone. This combined with a great amount of jobs that are plain useless (by the definition of people themselves). We now have jobs like vibe managers, lead sales engineers of business, etc. But in most western countries we lack the real labour power that is needed to keep everything running: electricians, plumbers, etc. They work very hard, yet nobody knows their names. We have created a society with as its only goal: Work and money. But Marx argues that even though work is necessary, it does not have to be the end. Maybe if we put the labour force into a general direction that we agree on as a people, we can find some time to create a goal as a people that gives us fulfilment, meaning and a feeling of self worth, instead of our "happiness" in the form of commodities. With its ever shifting desire for selfish greed.