>>2545122>yes, and capitalism means the abolition of markets, as adam smith and karl marx write.Adam Smith described capitalism as a system of “commercial society” based on private property, the division of labor, and accumulation of capital. He did not say capitalism abolishes markets, in fact, markets were the mechanism through which it operated. Marx, on the other hand, argued that capitalism socializes production while privatizing appropriation, the contradiction of capitalism lies in how commodity exchange and wage labor organize production, through markets, where these markets become subordinated to capital accumulation. Under capitalism there is the dominance of capital over labor and production for profit rather than use, the market becomes the primary social relation, and labor power itself becomes a commodity, therefore it destroys the relations that pre-capitalist modes of production maintain by dragging everything into the orbit of commodity exchange and capital accumulation.
>its easy to win when you cheat; thats why we have laws.You're assuming that “laws” can exist outside of the class relations that produce them. But under capitalism, the law itself is an instrument of class rule, it exists to protect private property and the profit system. The capitalist doesn’t “cheat” when consolidating power; monopolization and concentration of capital are the logical results of capitalist competition. When one firm beats another, it accumulates more capital, expands with economies of scale, changing the rules and gaining more methods of dominating the market, uses that power to crush smaller competitors. This process isn't a violation of the rules, it is the rule. Laws against "cheating" don't stop this; they merely regulate how capital may dominate, not whether it does. Every so-called "anti-trust" or "competition" law in history ends up preserving capitalism, not preventing its tendencies toward monopoly or concentration. It's the natural outcome of competition between capitals. The law only protects the winners who are part of the ruling class, and it will be influenced by these winners who will use money in politics. Any regulation against cheating will not last or will be co-opted by the biggest capitalists.
>you mean that big business can only survive by a conspiracy of state power?No, the state isn't some conspiracy of big business, it's a necessary precondition for private property itself. The moment ownership becomes separated from direct use, when you have absentee owners claiming land, tools, housing, natural resources that others must work on or live in or have exclusive control of what is needed by the rest of society, you need a permanent institution of organized violence to enforce those claims and this institution separate from society alienates itself from it. That’s the birth of the state. The state doesn’t “corrupt” the market; it creates and maintains the very property relations the market depends on for capital to circulate. Without it, “ownership” would collapse the moment the working population decided to use what it needs directly. Capitalists will always create the state to protect owners from workers and to manage competition among capitalists so the system doesn't tear itself apart. Even in a society with only petty-bourgeois competing, the regional inequality of the best properties and competition will recreate the same capitalist state with capital concentration that the petty-bourgeois themselves will create to prevent the chaos of violence from the working masses and competitors, which will cause property to become collective, ending the imagined private property, or this property will turn into a battlefield that will create a state by some militia. In all cases with private property, the winning property owners will consolidate capital and recreate the same situation with "cheaters"; this is inevitable.
>marx says that this is what capitalists already do, and you support it.Under capitalism, production is already social; thousands or millions cooperate in producing every commodity, but the results of that collective labor are privately appropriated by the owners of capital. That contradiction is what Marx analyzed as the essence of capitalist property, and the change in the revolution would be to socialize this private appropriation so that this production is collective, planned collectively for the needs of this socialist society, no longer having this privately appropriated collective labor.
>so the sufragettes were "conceding" political power… to themselves? youre entirely contradictory.When I said rights in bourgeois democracy come as concessions, I was referring to the long struggle of the working class and its allies to win participation in a system originally designed against them. Early capitalist democracies restricted suffrage by property, wealth, or education, plural voting, land qualifications, and other mechanisms excluded the working class entirely. The bourgeoisie didn’t grant voting rights out of principle; it granted them under pressure from organized workers and socialists who were threatening the system’s stability. As for women’s suffrage: bourgeois women fought to remove restrictions imposed by their own class’s property system, the petit-bourgeois woman had the risk of becoming radicalized against capitalism by joining working women if the state did not reform itself to remove the barriers that alienated her while working women fought alongside men to end economic exploitation. These movements overlapped, but they weren't identical. So no, it’s not the suffragettes conceding power to themselves, it’s the ruling class reluctantly opening its political framework to prevent revolutionary upheaval. That’s what “damage control” means in a class context.
>your claim is that the proles petitioned and won universal suffrage, which is false.Let's take the text you replied to, "There was the problem of the bourgeoisie becoming more conservative and reactionary as time passed," and then I'll take the quotes that address the topic I wrote about:
<The very position the bourgeoisie occupies as a class in capitalist society inevitably causes it to be inconsistent in a democratic revolution. The very position the proletariat occupies as a class compels it to be consistently democratic. The bourgeoisie looks backward, fearing democratic progress, which threatens to strengthen the proletariat.
<Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1905, Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, Chapter 6https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/ch06.htm
<But we Marxists all know from theory and from daily and hourly observation of our liberals, Zemstvo people and Orvobozhdentsi, that the bourgeoisie is inconsistent, self-seeking and cowardly in its support of the revolution. The bourgeoisie, in the mass, will inevitably turn towards counterrevolution, towards the autocracy, against the revolution and against the people, immediately its narrow, selfish interests are met, immediately it “recoils” from consistent democracy (and it is already recoiling from it!). There remains the “people,” that is, the proletariat and the peasantry: the proletariat alone can be relied on to march to the end, for it is going far beyond the democratic revolution. That is why the proletariat fights in the front ranks for a republic and contemptuously rejects silly and unworthy advice to take care not to frighten away the bourgeoisie.
<Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1905, Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, Chapter 12https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/ch12.htm
<when the Paris uprising found its echo in the victorious insurrections in Vienna, Milan and Berlin; when the whole of Europe right up to the Russian frontier was swept into the movement; when thereupon in Paris, in June, the first great battle for power between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie was fought; when even the victory of its class so shook the bourgeoisie of all countries that it fled back into the arms of the monarchist-feudal reaction which had just been overthrown — there could be no doubt for us, under the circumstances then obtaining, that the great decisive battle had commenced, that it would have to be fought out in a single, long and vicissitudinous period of revolution, but that it could only end in the final victory of the proletariat.[…]
<And when, as Marx showed in his third article, in the spring of 1850, the development of the bourgeois republic that arose out of the “social” Revolution of 1848 had even concentrated real power in the hands of the big bourgeoisie — monarchistically inclined as it was into the bargain — and, on the other hand, had grouped all the other social classes, peasantry as well as petty bourgeoisie, around the proletariat, so that during and after the common victory, not they but the proletariat grown wise from experience had to become the decisive factor — was there not every prospect then of turning the revolution of the minority into a revolution of the majority?
<Works of Frederick Engels 1895, Introduction to Karl Marx’s The Class Struggles in France 1848 to 1850https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1895/03/06.htm
>youre utterly confused. you keep claiming that social democracy is actually radical, and then you say that its social fascism. again, make up your mind, schizo.The communist parties were called social democrats during the Second International; the name change only occurred because of the betrayal by social chauvinism of some member parties who compromised with the national bourgeoisie during the First World War, where those who did not betray changed their names, following Lenin's example. The issue of radical reforms exists if you read the political programs in the Communist Manifesto, Principles of Communism, Demands of the Communist Party in Germany, and The Programme of the Parti Ouvrier as examples used by Marx and Engels. These reforms are not made to vote for and tolerate class conciliators; they are made for the revolutionary workers' party, as a party independent of the bourgeoisie, to use to intensify the class struggle and prepare for the revolutionary situation.
>anyone after 1945?There's Harry Braverman who worked in various metal-smithing industries in the United States, Víctor Contreras Tapia worked as a tram conductor and later as a machinist for the Valparaíso Electricity Company, joining the Federación Obrera de Chile. But any worker from the intelligentsia who served the proletariat would fit in anyway; you'd find someone who wrote newspapers spreading propaganda and agitation.
>wage labour has existed for milennia, and buying something from someone means mutual gain.You are wrong, pre-capitalist populations had means of subsistence with means of production, even having to give away part of what was produced. Wage labor is modern, not eternal; the worker does not own the means of production in capitalism. The worker must sell their labor power to survive, and surplus value is extracted by the capitalist because labor power is a commodity. Even when pre-capitalist labor was exchanged, production was primarily oriented to use-value satisfying concrete needs. Capitalism inverts this: production is primarily for exchange, and labor itself is commodified to generate profit. The buying and selling process only creates a dependency on capital and requires a state to maintain itself, which means a portion of the population will be coerced into selling their labor power because the means of production are controlled by owners who simply exist to profit in the market from the needs of the population, thus creating a concentration of capital among the largest property owners.
>why would it? we are all free individuals.Without collective control of property, meaning a state is maintaining this private property, this means there will be an industrial reserve of unemployed workers to intensify the exploitation of the rest of the workers. This means that these capitalists will concentrate capital by winning the competition, consolidating capital, monopolizing, and maintaining oligopolies. The entire state will be influenced for the benefit of further capital accumulation, where the financialization of the economy will advance with the fall in the rate of profit, which will indebt the population. Your opinion, advocating for the interests of the capitalist class, is irrelevant because of the antagonistic class interest of the proletariat against the capitalist in any case.
>yes, exactly. This is called freedom.You are free from the means of production that are increasingly concentrated in the hands of capitalists, with a dispossessed population. The only freedom here is for capital to accumulate. So you are not against the social production of this concentrated property, which will be used in appropriation and expropriation against these capitalists during the revolution, so that these means of production can be collectively organized.
>what does this even mean?It means labor wasn't something sold. In communal societies like clans, villages, early peasantry, even the mir in Russia, people worked as part of the collective reproduction of life, not for a wage or for exchange. In pre-capitalist or communal settings, labor was oriented toward use value, producing what the community actually needed to live. Under capitalism, labor is organized around exchange value, producing not for use, but for sale, for profit.
>you specified "access" to means of production (just like labour), now its "ownership" and "control". youre inconsistent.If property is collectively owned by the entire society, it does not belong to a specific group or person. Therefore, there is no difference because this property will be collectively organized according to use and need. This means collective access, collective control, and society owns it collectively because it is not separate from the use to meet the needs of this society.
>you specified "access" to means of production (just like labour), now its "ownership" and "control". youre inconsistent.If property is collective to the whole society, it does not belong to a specific group or person, therefore there is no difference because this property will be collectively organized according to use and need. This means collective access, collective control, and society owns it collectively because it is not separate from the use to meet the needs of this society. But this is an achievement of the proletariat organized collectively with other workers and revolutionaries to gain power as the new ruling class that will abolish social classes; this is not an isolated natural right of yours.
>can workers vote themselves out of a communist society?No. You only organize collective resources to maintain social equality and meet the needs of the population. Taking away the means of production that are collectively organized from society so that some can own them means depriving other workers of access to the necessities of what is being collectively organized in solidarity with all workers. This is sabotage of collective property to deprive other workers of access and coerce them.
>translated it for you. try to be more succinct.So you're fantasizing about entrepreneurs and small business owners as if they were different in exploiting workers? People close to me have been used by these types of businessmen who ran away without paying workers' wages and abused them even more. Why should I give importance to smaller capitalists who can only survive because the state gives them privileges to exploit workers even more? The only important factor is controlling the means of production collectively, organized without the logic of profiting in the market, but rather supplying the needs of society for its use value. Monopoly is inevitable and facilitates this property being appropriated and expropriated from the capitalist to be collectively organized by the workers. How can you prevent a capitalist from concentrating capital and using part of their capital to influence politics for their own class interest in accumulating more capital? A monopoly that is collectively organized, belonging to the whole society, and that does not produce goods to profit in the market through exchange value, is not a problem because it is an economic democracy organized by society to meet the needs of the population, since this monopoly has been socialized.