@yogthos surplus was one of the main points of Marxist criticism of capitalism, but Marxian economy had a problem much worse: shortages.
@kravietz shortages happen under capitalism all the time. You also end up with recurring recessions and wars. Right now capitalism is literally killing our biosphere and there is a distinct possibility that it will make us go extinct along with the rest of the complex life on this planet.
@yogthos so there's a fundamental problem with bashing "capitalism": it's not an ideology but a economic model that is very flexible and can adapt - Sweden, UK, USA, Russia and China are all capitalist, yet their living standards are drastically different; at the same time Marxism is very prescriptive and closed ideology
@kravietz
A true democracy has to start with the democratic allocation of resources in a way that benefits majority of the citizens. However, capitalism is designed to accumulate resources under the capitalist class. Fundamentally, this system optimizes resource usage towards personal whims of the capitalists as opposed to the needs of the society at large. Capitalism inevitably creates an oligarchy of the rich who run the country for their own personal benefit.
@kravietz The problem is further compounded by the fact that the rich use their accumulated resources to aggressively spread propaganda that puts them in a favorable light. They buy news media, think tanks, special interests groups and so on with the purpose of spreading memes beneficial to them. This works the same way as religious indoctrination where people are bombarded with pro-capitalist ideology from the young age.
@kravietz the only places where capitalism works is when you have strong socialist policies and heavy regulation. I'm not sure what you mean about Marxism being a prescriptive and closed ideology. What specifically do you mean by that?
@kravietz so I agree that capitalism can work on small scale, but you have to have strong oversight by the public.
@yogthos I'm onboarding a ferry now so can't really provide relevant quotes, but check Chapter 1 from Lenin's "State and Revolution", it has a nice collection of quotes from Marx and Engels justifying actual, rather than metaphorical, terror and dictatorship
@kravietz right but that's Lenin's interpretation of Marx and Engels hence Leninism. It's also fair to describe USSR as state run capitalism as opposed to socialism advocated by Marx. The first thing that happened in USSR was that the local soviets got dissolved.
@kravietz dictatorship of the proletariat is just democracy. It also looks like you're confusing Leninism and Marxism which are two completely separate things. Meanwhile, the violent revolution is not really a requirement of communism but rather a natural reaction to capitalist abuse of the population.