thats how capitalism implodes... its lives and breathes might makes right and the way to be mightier is to eat competitors and when you run out of competitors you use your might to change the rules. Corruption.
if everything is capitalism, then nothing is capitalism
"But one should not succumb to the illusion that with an analysis of the fundamentals of the capitalist mode of production that everything decisive has already been said about capitalist societies"
Michael Heinrich, Introduction to the three volumes of Capital
Capitalism prescribes a limited role of government, to protect the rights of private citizens and maintain an orderly environment that facilitates proper functioning of markets.
This isn’t capitalism, it’s pure unfettered and uncontrolled greed.
People have announced the implosion of capitalism many times and each time living standards have improved. In a purely correlationary sense, it seems like civilization progresses one capitalistic implosion at a time.
And yet he gave us nothing in terms of what alternative economic would look like apart from a "a free association of workers" or something. Turns out it's a hard problem.
From my read of the Manifesto… while I may not have been impressed by the writing, that is from my perspective over 150 years later.
We got a lot of the things Marx was calling for. Of the 10 point plan near the end of section 2, we got:
- "2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax." today's rates look "heavy" by the standards of the 1848, even if we've also seen it decline somewhat from the peak.
- "3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance." not fully of course, but inheritance tax is absolutely a thing in a way it wasn't in 1848, and was one of the contributors to the decline of country estates in the UK.
- "5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.", again, clearly not as described, but the central banks do now direct how much credit costs for all the other banks, and financial regulation has changed hugely since then (even if some of this has also been falling away as quickly as the rich think they can get away with it).
- "6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State." has been on-and-off in the intervening time depending on where and which technology: the Royal Mail/USPS; I'm not quite old enough to remember the end of British Telecoms' monopoly on UK phones. For transport, likewise, depends on the specifics, does the British Highways Agency or American Federal Highway Administration count? Motor vehicles (let alone aircraft) came quite some time after the Manifesto was written, the tech of that era was shipping and canals, railways existed but the big boom hadn't happened yet. British Rail was a nationalised thing when I was young. Deutsche Bahn is still state-owned, but on the other hand British busses are private and I don't know how to think correctly about how British bus routes are run/bid for/regulated.
- "7. …; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan." (trimmed a bit I'm not sure about), Superfund site cleanup?
- "9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; …" (trimmed the absolutely-not part), this seems correct, given how industrialised farming is?
- "10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of
children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education
with industrial production, &c, &c." - done so hard we don't even want to trade with places that don't do it
Remember, the form of capitalism that Marx et al were fighting against was laissez-faire, which basically died with the Great Depression. It's not the form of mixed economics we have today which we still call "capitalism".
Yes yes I agree but none of those are a blueprint for communism per se. They are more transition measures in the hope that a new society will come out of it. Also is it only the work of Marx or collective authorship?
There's no blueprint for what Communism will be like. There is just this vague idea of some administrative entity that would replace distribution by the market IIRC
If China is capitalist. Let's implement their form of capitalism in the West. Finally home ownership for 90% of the population. The English would be so happy.
The Vikings didn’t “conquer” new lands the way you might imagine. Rather than just raiding, they often settled, intermingled with the locals farmers and established new states.
As seen in Scottish Isles, Ireland, Danelaw (England), Ukraine, Faroes, Iceland, Normandy, Greenland, Newfoundland etc they sack some leadership but quickly integrate and evolve into mostly peaceful farming societies
> The Vikings didn’t “conquer” new lands the way you might imagine. Rather than just raiding, they often settled, intermingled with the locals farmers and established new states
There aren’t any the viking settlements in the Americas from that time? Or at least evidence of intermingling with the locals.
Old version on HF: https://huggingface.co/AndrewAndrewsen/distilbert-secret-mas...