/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

A capitalist society is ruled by liberalism which sets the interests of the community against those of individuals, and places the interests of individuals above those of the community. Liberalism inevitably results in social inequality and an increasing imbalance between rich and poor, and it produces conflicting relations among people. Capitalist egoism conflicts with the intrinsic nature of man as a social being. Because he is a social being capable of shaping his destiny only within the social community, man has an intrinsic need for collectivism. The Juche idea has made clear that the masses, and not an individual, are the driving force of the revolution and that collectivism, and not egoism, is an intrinsic requirement of man. The basic requirement of collectivism is that the interests of the collective should be placed above those of individuals, that the two types of interests should be harmonized and that the interests of individuals should be realized through the realization of those of the collective. That which is contrary to collectivism is not the individual interests themselves but liberalism which seeks to satisfy only individual interests at the expense of collective interests.

In a capitalist society, the individual is left to fend for himself, pitted against others in a struggle for survival. This produces a weak, fearful, and dependent personality, easily manipulated by the ruling class. In socialist society, the individual is strengthened by the collective; his creative potential is nurtured, and he gains confidence through participation in the common cause. Under socialism, the individual's creative ability is developed to the full, and he is able to demonstrate his worth as a social being. In capitalist society, man is reduced to an appendage to a machine, a mere commodity to be exploited

Kim II

>>2749828

Capitalism’s individualism is not materialist, it is idealist, a fantasy that denies the actual social relations in which every individual is embedded. Under capitalism, the individual is not liberated but commodified and enslaved; not strengthened but reduced to a precarious, atomized unit of labor whose “freedom” is the freedom to be exploited and brutalized. The capitalist system needs individuals weak, isolated, and dependent, because a weak individual does not resist, does not organize, does not imagine a world beyond capital, and quietly accepts their collective role of slavery; they accept the sanctity of the god of commodity.

True individuality, by contrast, is forged in collective struggle. The strong individual is not one who stands apart from the collective, but one who is deepened, sharpened, and realized through it. The worker who organizes a factory floor, the tenant who builds a mutual aid network against slum conditions, the militant who learns to trust and be trusted, these are individuals whose strength is not diminished by solidarity but multiplied by it. A collective of workers who fight together, who share risk and bread and the knowledge that they depend on one another, creates the material conditions for genuine individuality; each person’s unique capacities emerge because the collective guarantees the individual can exist.

This is why class struggle is not the enemy of individuality but its greatest liberator. In the process of resisting exploitation, individuals discover capacities they never knew they had, and in this collective consciousness, the individual consciousness grows too.. They become future revolutionaries, organizers, strategists, fighters, bearers of truth. They are not reduced to a function of economy, they become more than capital ever allowed them to be. And the stronger the collective becomes, the more it nurtures this development. A strong collective does not flatten its members as individuals; it cultivates them, because its own strength depends on the creativity, initiative, and courage of each.

Capitalism’s individualism is idealist because it imagines a self that exists outside of social relations, a fiction that serves to obscure the very real relation of private property to the individual. In reality, capitalism forces the individual into a state of weakness, always one paycheck from disaster, disconnected from creativity and life, always competing with the person next to them, always isolated in the belief that their fate is his own. That is not individualism at all.

Communism, by contrast, proposes a materialism of the individual; the recognition that human flourishing depends on the social organization, and that only by collectively seizing the means of life can any individual truly become free. The strong individual is not an accident of nature but a product of struggle, forged in the fire of collective action. And the revolutionary collective is not a mass of identical units but a living network of individuals who have learned to trust, to fight, and to build together. Strong individuals make a strong collective; a strong collective makes strong individuals. The dialectic moves both ways, and liberalism’s professed individualism collapses under the weight of its own idealism, loudly proclaimed, yet nowhere realized in the material relations it refuses to name.

It is genuinely entertaining to watch the ideological defenses of capitalism crumble under the weight of materialist analysis. The standard refrain that the abundance and innovation we enjoy are products of capitalist competition and individual genius ignores what becomes of art, culture, science and craft when profit becomes the sole organizing principle. Commodification does not simply cheapen material life; it strips culture of its soul, directs the science towards fields that don't always benefit us as a whole. Music, video games, cinema, any creative field subsumed by the hyper‑ late stage - capitalist model tends toward mechanic formula, risk aversion, and the relentless pursuit of the bottom line. The most enduring games, the most resonant albums, were rarely born from quarterly earnings projections; they emerged from spaces where passion, not profit, drove production. Capitalism did not invent creativity; it commodified it, then proceeded to enclose it, standardize it to bourgeoisie norms, and drain it of everything that made it vital. Individual artists and developers who once worked for love of the craft are now pushed to the margins, their visions chopped into marketable fragments, their names buried under corporate branding. The decline in quality is not incidental it is the necessary outcome of a system that treats creativity as a product and inventors as interchangeable labor. The evidence is everywhere, a gaming industry once animated by basement coders and small teams now churns out hollow sequels and micro transactions; a music industry once capable of producing genuine cultural movements now cycles through algorithm‑generated disposable pop. The moment capital fully colonizes a creative field, the field loses its capacity to surprise, to challenge, to reflect anything beyond the logic of accumulation. This is yet again, an example of capitalism crushing every aspect of the individual.