The Great Reset

[Mastr Blastr]

This concept has been floating around the socioeconomic ether for about four years now. It was "popularized" (if such is the term) by Klaus Schwab, a hedge fund manager and founder of the World Economic Forum, a kind of consortium of big capitalist interests. Here is what Schwab has to say about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=NcAO4-o_4Ug

This notion was summed up in a single phrase on social media: "You will own nothing and you will be happy", a slogan originally invented by Danish social democratic economist Ida Auken for the WEF.



This isn't merely a toothless slogan, though it seems in part a description of current events in the developed world. E.g. (warning: wall 'o graphs)










But that's just the US. What about the rest of the developed world - say perhaps, Germany?

Small business start-ups in Germany per year.



Housing in Germany:



It appears like this tendency is most pronounced in the United States, but is present in Europe as well.

Now, I'm A Marxist. And I feel very strongly that Marx told us about this. From The German Ideology, an unpublished manuscript of 1845 (with which Ida Auken, as a social democrat, should be very familiar):

This “alienation” (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an “intolerable” power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity “propertyless,” and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced; and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the “propertyless” mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones. Without this, (1) communism could only exist as a local event; (2) the forces of intercourse themselves could not have developed as universal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remained home-bred conditions surrounded by superstition; and (3) each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism. Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism. Moreover, the mass of propertyless workers – the utterly precarious position of labour – power on a mass scale cut off from capital or from even a limited satisfaction and, therefore, no longer merely temporarily deprived of work itself as a secure source of life – presupposes the world market through competition. The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have a “world-historical” existence. World-historical existence of individuals means existence of individuals which is directly linked up with world history.

Interesting, no?

[Solauren]

Hedge Fund Manager.

They don't even known how to do their job without crashing the economy, so they say 'don't worry, you'll like it'.

Utter Bullshit.

[Mastr Blastr]

Hedge Fund Manager.

They don't even known how to do their job without crashing the economy, so they say 'don't worry, you'll like it'.

Utter Bullshit.

See, right-wingers are quite irate with this, like so

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Iy-YrmDMX4
(don't know how to actually embed YouTube videos properly here)

They think this is Communism. But if you close your eyes and squint a little, these are actually the preconditions Marx said would evolve within capitalism to produce world working class revolution. It's still capitalism, mind you, but it's capitalism after universal competition has driven profit rates so low (adjusted for inflation - "record profits" are masked by year-on-year inflation) that the only solution is to cannibaliz Tue property of the lower strata.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... o/ch02.htm

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

As to why right-wingers dislike this, wellll....

The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.

The reason I keep bringing up Marx is because there isn't much discussion about what this actually is. The righties call it a conspiracy by a Blofeld-like rich Jew like Schwab... But in economic terms it almost perfectly aligns with Marx's immiseration thesis.

[Dominus Atheos]

This concept has been floating around the socioeconomic ether for about four years now. It was "popularized" (if such is the term) by Klaus Schwab, a hedge fund manager and founder of the World Economic Forum, a kind of consortium of big capitalist interests. Here is what Schwab has to say about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=NcAO4-o_4Ug

The WEF is a group of rich people who meet in Davos every year to figure out a way to convince regular people to not hate them. In 30 years, they have never once come up with a successful idea and everyone still hates them. One year they came up with the idea "The Great Reset (of people's opinions of us). It immediately fizzled out and went absolutely nowhere, like everyone of their ideas. The only thing WEF does outside Davos is circulate money around other rich people so they can talk problems to death. Occasionally some money or benefits might actually reach some poor people suffering from the problem, but that's very rare.

Besides that, nothing the WEF does has ever actually affected anybody, positively or negatively, ever. In my experience, everyone who believes otherwise are conspiracy theorists.

This notion was summed up in a single phrase on social media: "You will own nothing and you will be happy", a slogan originally invented by Danish social democratic economist Ida Auken for the WEF.

That's not a slogan or a goal for the WEF, that's the title of a prediction made in one presentation at Davos of hundreds. It also predicts flying cars, like every other bad "this is what life will be like in xx years!' take;

Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city - or should I say, "our city." I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I don't own a house. I don't own any appliances or any clothes.

It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it ended up not making sense for us to own much.

...It made no sense for us to own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a flying car for longer journeys within minutes

...In our city we don't pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there

...When AI and robots took over so much of our work, we suddenly had time to eat well, sleep well and spend time with other people. The concept of rush hour makes no sense anymore, since the work that we do can be done at any time. I don't really know if I would call it work anymore. It is more like thinking-time, creation-time and development-time.

...My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city. Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI took over big parts of our jobs. Those who got upset with the political system and turned against it. They live different kind of lives outside of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities. Others just stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages.

Yeah I suppose that in that post scarcity communist utopia I would own nothing and probably like it. On the other hand the person who wrote that is so out of touch with reality they should probably locked in a loony bin. Right next to anyone who thinks it's being used as a blueprint to force on anyone.

It's a bad piece of creative writing, that's all.

This isn't merely a toothless slogan, though it seems in part a description of current events in the developed world. E.g. (warning: wall 'o graphs)










But that's just the US. What about the rest of the developed world - say perhaps, Germany?

Small business start-ups in Germany per year.



Housing in Germany:



It appears like this tendency is most pronounced in the United States, but is present in Europe as well.

As technology advances, distances shrink and the world becomes more centralized. You might as well complain about the rise of villages and towns with laws and property when being a hunter-gatherer was so much freer.

Now, I'm A Marxist. And I feel very strongly that Marx told us about this. From The German Ideology, an unpublished manuscript of 1845 (with which Ida Auken, as a social democrat, should be very familiar):

This “alienation” (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an “intolerable” power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity “propertyless,” and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced; and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the “propertyless” mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones. Without this, (1) communism could only exist as a local event; (2) the forces of intercourse themselves could not have developed as universal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remained home-bred conditions surrounded by superstition; and (3) each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism. Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism. Moreover, the mass of propertyless workers – the utterly precarious position of labour – power on a mass scale cut off from capital or from even a limited satisfaction and, therefore, no longer merely temporarily deprived of work itself as a secure source of life – presupposes the world market through competition. The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have a “world-historical” existence. World-historical existence of individuals means existence of individuals which is directly linked up with world history.

Interesting, no?

Do you have autism? If so, now would be a really good time to mention it because if you don't some people are going to take issue with that meme.

[Mastr Blastr]

The WEF is a group of rich people who meet in Davos every year to figure out a way to convince regular people to not hate them. In 30 years, they have never once come up with a successful idea and everyone still hates them. One year they came up with the idea "The Great Reset (of people's opinions of us). It immediately fizzled out and went absolutely nowhere, like everyone of their ideas. The only thing WEF does outside Davos is circulate money around other rich people so they can talk problems to death. Occasionally some money or benefits might actually reach some poor people suffering from the problem, but that's very rare.

Right. I'm not saying, as right-wingers do, that it's an active conspiracy by Schwab and the WEF to take your property or whatever. Not my point. What I am suggesting is that this indicates that there is an implicit acknowledgement here of a notion that is central to Marxism and which capitalist economists have always rejected - what has come to be known as the immiseration thesis. This isn't just " the rich get rich and the poor get poor"; this is too simplistic. What it is is that property will become increasingly inaccessible to the majority of humans as capitalism continues, further segmenting society into two cleanly polarized camps.

Besides that, nothing the WEF does has ever actually affected anybody, positively or negatively, ever. In my experience, everyone who believes otherwise are conspiracy theorists.

Sure. I am again not saying this is an evil plot by the WEF to take over the world - but a description of where the world capitalist economy is tending[/quote]

Yeah I suppose that in that post scarcity communist utopia I would own nothing and probably like it. On the other hand the person who wrote that is so out of touch with reality they should probably locked in a loony bin. Right next to anyone who thinks it's being used as a blueprint to force on anyone.

What I'm saying is that, if you actually look at it, it's more a "Communist utopia" solely for the capitalist class (the actual capitalists, not the petit-bourgeoisie).

Marx had something else interesting to say on a like topic:

In an 1868 letter to Friedrich Engels in Manchester, Karl Marx makes the following observations with respect to a tendency of Capital to consolidate:

https://marxists.architexturez.net/arch ... 04\_30.htm

...Then it turns out that, assuming the rate of surplus value, i.e. the exploitation of labour, as equal, the production of value and therefore the production of surplus value and therefore the rate of profit are different in different branches of production. But from these varying rates of profit a mean or general rate of profit is formed by competition. This rate of profit, expressed absolutely, can be nothing but the surplus value produced (annually) by the capitalist class in relation to the total of social capital advanced. E.g., if the social capital = 400c+100v, and the surplus value annually produced by it = 100m, the composition of the social capital = 80c+20v, and that of the product (in percentages) = 80c+20v | +20m = 20% rate of profit. This is the general rate of profit.

What the competition among the various masses of capital — invested in different spheres of production and differently composed — is striving for is capitalist communism, namely that the mass of capital employed in each sphere of production should get a fractional part of the total surplus value proportionate to the part of the total social capital that it forms

Elon Musk's wife, the artist Grimes, angered some people when she began talking about "AI Communism" last year in public.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dlUKHTbwsjY

The big capitalists seem to think a shift is underway towards something that could vaguely be described as socialism. Of course, my suspicion is that this will be directed downwards - eco-fascism against the working class.

[Jub]

I'd attempt to rebut this but I'm not sure any of it is coherent enough for that to be possible.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

It's TL;DR

[LadyTevar]

The only Big Reset that needs done is reset the Capital Gains taxes back to 1970, and make these fuckers pay their share.

[Mastr Blastr]

I'd attempt to rebut this but I'm not sure any of it is coherent enough for that to be possible.

I mean, it's coherent enough:

The World Economic Forum is describing a future in which most people own little to nothing as utopic.

This is already sort if happening - small businesses are in decline throughout the West, personal houses and cars are slowly starting to be out of reach for most people, etc.

Coincidentally, this is what Karl Marx said world pre-revolutionary conditions would be like.

[Broomstick]

Thank you for that summary.

Of course the aristocracy sees a world where the peasants own nothing and must labor endlessly for their "betters" as utopia. No doubt they will be shocked to discover that the peasants themselves have a different viewpoint.

I doubt very much that the people hailing this dispossed future will be delighted that when they're away from home someone is holding a meeting in their living room when this state of affairs actually comes to pass.

[Mastr Blastr]

Thank you for that summary.

Of course the aristocracy sees a world where the peasants own nothing and must labor endlessly for their "betters" as utopia. No doubt they will be shocked to discover that the peasants themselves have a different viewpoint.

I doubt very much that the people hailing this dispossed future will be delighted that when they're away from home someone is holding a meeting in their living room when this state of affairs actually comes to pass.

So this is where we get to Marxism.

Marx, first of all, was not a fan of the idea that revolutions led predominantly by the peasantry could produce a postcapitalist society. From 1874's Conspectus On Bakunin's Statism & Anarchy :

https://redsails.org/marx-on-bakunin/

A radical social revolution depends on certain definite historical conditions of economic development as its precondition. It is also only possible where with capitalist production the industrial proletariat occupies at least an important position among the mass of the people. And if it is to have any chance of victory, it must be able to do immediately as much for the peasants as the French bourgeoisie, mutatis mutandis, did in its revolution for the French peasants of that time. A fine idea, that the rule of labour involves the subjugation of land labour! But here Mr. Bakunin’s innermost thoughts emerge. He understands absolutely nothing about the social revolution, only its political phrases. Its economic conditions do not exist for him. As all hitherto existing economic forms, developed or undeveloped, involve the enslavement of the worker (whether in the form of wage-labourer, peasant etc.), he believes that a radical revolution is possible in all such forms alike. Still more! He wants the European social revolution, premised on the economic basis of capitalist production, to take place at the level of the Russian or Slavic agricultural and pastoral peoples, not to surpass this level […] The will, and not the economic conditions, is the foundation of his social revolution.

Russia, in 1917, had a population of 125 millions, of which approximately 29 millions were waged laborers collecting salaries from capitalists. The overwhelming majority were land-bonded peasants or small craftsmen not engaged in market exchange as their primary source of livelihood. This was even more true of China in 1949.

So these societies did not meet the "certain definite historical conditions of economic development " Marx says are necessary for a "radical social revolution". What conditions are those, then? As I've mentioned, from The German Ideology :

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... /ch01a.htm

This “alienation” (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an “intolerable” power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity “propertyless,” and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced; and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the “propertyless” mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones. Without this, (1) communism could only exist as a local event; (2) the forces of intercourse themselves could not have developed as universal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remained home-bred conditions surrounded by superstition; and (3) each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism. Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism. Moreover, the mass of propertyless workers – the utterly precarious position of labour – power on a mass scale cut off from capital or from even a limited satisfaction and, therefore, no longer merely temporarily deprived of work itself as a secure source of life – presupposes the world market through competition. The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have a “world-historical” existence. World-historical existence of individuals means existence of individuals which is directly linked up with world history.

This focus on a dispossessed, propertyless global mass is also present in The Communist Manifesto.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... o/ch02.htm

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

These emerging conditions are the ones Marx called for as the precursor to international proletarian revolution. You can't do it in the 19th century, when most of the world is still seni-feudal. You can't do it in the 20th, when most of the world is transitioning out of feudalism (the last remaining Junker estates in Germany weren't dissolved until the end of World War II). You can only start to do it when global competition has begun to immiserate the global working class. Capitalism abolishes private property for most, which is why Marx could write that

The abolition of private property is therefore by no means identical with communism and communism has seen other socialist theories, such as those of Fourier and Proudhon, rising up in opposition to it, not fortuitously but necessarily, because it is only a particular, one-sided realization of the principle of socialism.

This all occurs within capitalist production for Marx. It is the abolition of capitalism within capitalism.


The argument, in brief, is that you hit a point where to survive the working class of the world, already dispossessed, dispossesses the capitalists of their property and power in turn. And it being too late to wind back the clock, they have no choice but to carry through with the new system.

That, at least, is how I see all this.

[Broomstick]

I dispute the notion that there will come a come when we "own nothing". Own less, perhaps, but not "own nothing" whatsoever. There are reasons to restrict items to just one person's use and holding, from health and hygiene (think about underwear) to specialized skills (specific tools or work areas). Just as there is no truly pure capitalist society (the nuclear family is arguably communist) so too I do not believe there will ever truly be a society in which people do not have some level of personal and private property.

I also dispute that this will be a utopia. On the contrary, it will demonstrate a massive case of tragedy of the commons. People are not inherently altruistic enough to avoid this. The only solution is to bring to bear rules/regulations/laws with substantial penalties, which gets back to hierarchies, power structures, and those who wield force over others. This will lead bad to those with power accumulating more stuff/resources to themselves.

[Mastr Blastr]

I dispute the notion that there will come a come when we "own nothing". Own less, perhaps, but not "own nothing" whatsoever. There are reasons to restrict items to just one person's use and holding, from health and hygiene (think about underwear) to specialized skills (specific tools or work areas). Just as there is no truly pure capitalist society (the nuclear family is arguably communist) so too I do not believe there will ever truly be a society in which people do not have some level of personal and private property.

In the near-medium term - say, the next century and a half to two centuries - most people will own far, far less than they do today. The WEF asked five years ago whether a future is imaginable in which you rented everything.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpz6K1sSIPY&t=2s

The answer appears, for now, to be in the affirmative.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/millen ... l-economy/



These numbers are all greatly increased among Millennials from Gen X and Boomers, and again among early Gen Z from Millennials.

Nobody thinks you'll rent your toothbrush or your bar soap. That might be about all you don't rent - clothing rentals are increasingly becoming a Thing.

I also dispute that this will be a utopia. On the contrary, it will demonstrate a massive case of tragedy of the commons. People are not inherently altruistic enough to avoid this. The only solution is to bring to bear rules/regulations/laws with substantial penalties, which gets back to hierarchies, power structures, and those who wield force over others. This will lead bad to those with power accumulating more stuff/resources to themselves.

I do not believe it will be a utopia either - quite the opposite. What I do believe is that it is a vindication of Marx's long-term teleological predictions. I cannot see a situation where, three, four, five centuries from now, this does not lead to working class revolution.

I think, too, that there will be no rules or regulations or laws against it. How do you legislate against the natural, inherent tendency of capitalism towards mass dispossession?

Indeed, you can easily give all this the egalitarian patina of what Marx called bourgeois socialism. Long quote, so I'll hide it.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... o/ch03.htm

A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.

To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems.

We may cite Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misère as an example of this form.

The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.

A second, and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government.

Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.

Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism.

[His Divine Shadow]

The only Big Reset that needs done is reset the Capital Gains taxes back to 1970, and make these fuckers pay their share.

You will also need capital controls.

[His Divine Shadow]

Personally we're already living in a capitalist dystopia and trying to remove your ownership over stuff you've paid for is an increasing part of it. Moving even more towards removal of ownership and towards more rental modes just means the final stratification again of classes, into the ownership class and the rental class. And we're back to feudalism.

[Mastr Blastr]

The only Big Reset that needs done is reset the Capital Gains taxes back to 1970, and make these fuckers pay their share.

You will also need capital controls.

I don't think this will work as well as Keynesians think it will. It provides cover for businesses to... further raise prices.

Personally we're already living in a capitalist dystopia and trying to remove your ownership over stuff you've paid for is an increasing part of it. Moving even more towards removal of ownership and towards more rental modes just means the final stratification again of classes, into the ownership class and the rental class. And we're back to feudalism.

Perhaps this extended terminal phase capitalism is a period humanity must pass through. All roads within the capitalist mode of production seem to lead to it.

[Tribble]

That poster is (perhaps unintentionally) the most honest depiction of what the upper classes of societies have in store for us plebes I’ve seen in awhile:

“We will take everything from you, and you will be happy… or else”

I fail to see how this will lead to a Marxist utopia though.

All roads to Marxism seem to just lead to some form of brutal dictatorship that’s frequently worse than the aristocracy/capitalist regime it replaced. Maybe nice in theory, but extremely poor in execution.

And let’s skip the “only a true Scotsman Marxist” fallacy please, I’m getting tired of the whole “Soviets/China etc were not really Marxist/communists so they don’t count” excuse.

[Mastr Blastr]

That poster is (perhaps unintentionally) the most honest depiction of what the upper classes of societies have in store for us plebes I’ve seen in awhile:

“We will take everything from you, and you will be happy… or else”

I fail to see how this will lead to a Marxist utopia though.

All roads to Marxism seem to just lead to some form of brutal dictatorship that’s frequently worse than the aristocracy/capitalist regime it replaced. Maybe nice in theory, but extremely poor in execution.

And let’s skip the “only a true Scotsman Marxist” fallacy please, I’m getting tired of the whole “Soviets/China etc were not really Marxist/communists so they don’t count” excuse.

It isn't that it itself leads to Communism, in the sense that it's not Communism in itself. What it leads to is world working class revolution, which then leads to Real Communism (and the USSR wasn't Communism, for reasons outlined here).

I'm not saying this Great Reset is a good thing. I'm not saying the concept of "owning nothing, being happy" is a good thing. They're not. What I'm saying is that Marx thought that capitalism would tend in this direction and create the preconditions for working class revolution - "you abolished property for us, now we're abolishing property for you". That is the way that Marx thought proletarian revolution would go, and he thought it couldn't happen before capitalism began stripping property from the working class (and the small business class).

Again, to break down Marx's predictions step by step:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... /ch01a.htm

This “alienation” (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an “intolerable” power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity “propertyless,” and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development.

Tl;dr translation: Capitalism has to have rendered the overwhelming masses of humanity propertyless *before* there can be world working class revolution. This occurs within capitalism. This is confirmed as a necessary precondition in The Communist Manifesto :

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

Tl;dr: This has to happen preceding any world working class revolution. It wasn't happening in Marx's day, when industrial capitalism existed cheek to jowl with feudal social structures throughout Europe and Asia. It couldn't happen in the 20t century, when capitalism was still progressive and the ability to acquire property, however small, was a real possibility for most workers.

It is starting to happen today.

And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced; and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the “propertyless” mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones. Without this, (1) communism could only exist as a local event; (2) the forces of intercourse themselves could not have developed as universal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remained home-bred conditions surrounded by superstition; and (3) each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism.

Tl;dr: You have to have a fully developed capitalism for any of this to happen. Otherwise you just have mass absolute poverty, as opposed to mass propertylessness, which is a unique production of advanced capitalist society.

Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism. Moreover, the mass of propertyless workers – the utterly precarious position of labour – power on a mass scale cut off from capital or from even a limited satisfaction and, therefore, no longer merely temporarily deprived of work itself as a secure source of life – presupposes the world market through competition. The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have a “world-historical” existence. World-historical existence of individuals means existence of individuals which is directly linked up with world history.

Tl;dr: This revolution can only occur at once, worldwide, which presupposes instantaneous or near instantaneous communications etc. None of this was happening in the early 20th century. More, it can only happen when working class, everyday people can have world historical import. Wasn't happening in 1917 or 1949; is increasingly happening today.


This probably can't be averted, in the long run, in a way that sustains property.

[bobalot]

While I agree that there is a dangerous amount of market concentration that needs to be broken up, I'm a bit dubious about some of these graphs.

For example, the one for cars for the United States vs. BRICS.


Isn't this because America is a saturated market?

America has the highest number of cars per Capita in the world.

Why is it surprising that the BRICS with a total population of over 3 billion, has the same number of care sales of the United States?

[Mastr Blastr]

While I agree that there is a dangerous amount of market concentration that needs to be broken up, I'm a bit dubious about some of these graphs.

For example, the one for cars for the United States vs. BRICS.


Isn't this because America is a saturated market?

America has the highest number of cars per Capita in the world.

Why is it surprising that the BRICS with a total population of over 3 billion, has the same number of care sales of the United States?

Sure, car ownership saturation point in the US (though the timescale is off - the saturation point was in the 1990s). But there has been considerable downward pressure on car ownership since then.also, which is about to massively accelerate.

https://investorplace.com/2019/04/4-cha ... ship-over/

For all the reasons mentioned above (you don’t need a car anymore, traffic delay problems are getting really big, and ride-hailing service access and use is rapidly rising), car ownership rates in the U.S. are now dropping for the first time in modern history.

Specifically, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, the percentage of no car households in the U.S. has steadily and dramatically decreased since 1960 as the American dream has encompassed owning a car. From 1960 to 2010, the percentage of no car households in the U.S. dropped from well over 20%, to 8.9%.

But, for the first time since 1960, the percentage of no car households actually increased to 9.1% from 2010 to 2015. That’s no coincidence. During that stretch, ride-hailing services went mainstream and millennial consumers (who, as we saw earlier, don’t think cars are necessary) became the driving force of the economy. These trends will continue. Ride-booking is only growing in popularity. Generation Z consumers are now turning into the economy’s driving force, and they are more pro ride-booking than millennials.

Yes, A .2% drop is tiny in the grand scheme of things. But that number will expand very rapidly over the next few decades. Cash For Clunkers started the trend, pricing cheap cars out of the hands of many working people.

[LadyTevar]

For all the reasons mentioned above (you don’t need a car anymore, traffic delay problems are getting really big, and ride-hailing service access and use is rapidly rising), car ownership rates in the U.S. are now dropping for the first time in modern history.

Specifically, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, the percentage of no car households in the U.S. has steadily and dramatically decreased since 1960 as the American dream has encompassed owning a car. From 1960 to 2010, the percentage of no car households in the U.S. dropped from well over 20%, to 8.9%.

But, for the first time since 1960, the percentage of no car households actually increased to 9.1% from 2010 to 2015. That’s no coincidence. During that stretch, ride-hailing services went mainstream and millennial consumers (who, as we saw earlier, don’t think cars are necessary) became the driving force of the economy. These trends will continue. Ride-booking is only growing in popularity. Generation Z consumers are now turning into the economy’s driving force, and they are more pro ride-booking than millennials.

Yes, A .2% drop is tiny in the grand scheme of things. But that number will expand very rapidly over the next few decades. Cash For Clunkers started the trend, pricing cheap cars out of the hands of many working people.

And this proves to me you're not poor.
No, see, what's happening is CAR DEALERSHIPS HAVE PRICED CARS OUT OF RANGE.

Then, we have License Fees. Here in WV, for many years I was paying $51/year for my license fees. Then WV decided Electric and Hybrid owners "Weren't Paying Gas Tax" and my license fee jumped to $151.
Now, let's talk Car Insurance. I have the absolute basic car insurance that WV requires. In the last 5 years ALONE, it's gone from $80/month, to $95/month, and just last month it jumped to $115/month.

That's not because I've been in any accidents. That's PURE CORPORATE GREED.

SO is the rest of this thread you've started, and I've yet to see you post ANYTHING to disprove that fact.

[Mastr Blastr]

For all the reasons mentioned above (you don’t need a car anymore, traffic delay problems are getting really big, and ride-hailing service access and use is rapidly rising), car ownership rates in the U.S. are now dropping for the first time in modern history.

Specifically, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, the percentage of no car households in the U.S. has steadily and dramatically decreased since 1960 as the American dream has encompassed owning a car. From 1960 to 2010, the percentage of no car households in the U.S. dropped from well over 20%, to 8.9%.

But, for the first time since 1960, the percentage of no car households actually increased to 9.1% from 2010 to 2015. That’s no coincidence. During that stretch, ride-hailing services went mainstream and millennial consumers (who, as we saw earlier, don’t think cars are necessary) became the driving force of the economy. These trends will continue. Ride-booking is only growing in popularity. Generation Z consumers are now turning into the economy’s driving force, and they are more pro ride-booking than millennials.

Yes, A .2% drop is tiny in the grand scheme of things. But that number will expand very rapidly over the next few decades. Cash For Clunkers started the trend, pricing cheap cars out of the hands of many working people.

And this proves to me you're not poor.
No, see, what's happening is CAR DEALERSHIPS HAVE PRICED CARS OUT OF RANGE.

Then, we have License Fees. Here in WV, for many years I was paying $51/year for my license fees. Then WV decided Electric and Hybrid owners "Weren't Paying Gas Tax" and my license fee jumped to $151.
Now, let's talk Car Insurance. I have the absolute basic car insurance that WV requires. In the last 5 years ALONE, it's gone from $80/month, to $95/month, and just last month it jumped to $115/month.

That's not because I've been in any accidents. That's PURE CORPORATE GREED.

SO is the rest of this thread you've started, and I've yet to see you post ANYTHING to disprove that fact.

Why do you think I'm advocating for any of this? I'm not. I -know- what it's like. I'm telling you it's going to get much, much worse, but that it's explicable and predictable with Marxist analysis. The only thing I would add is that it's not corporate greed per se, but a response to the tendency of the rate of profit to decline under conditions of universal competition.

I'm here flat out saying that this is going to start happening across the developed capitalist world, accelerating at a marked clip in the coming decades. Because Marx was right - capitalism does take property off the working class, and does require the working class to take property off the capitalists.

[His Divine Shadow]

Corporate profits have been very good under the neo gilded age tho?

[Mastr Blastr]

Corporate profits have been very good under the neo gilded age tho?

Adjusted for inflation, not really

https://braveneweurope.com/michael-robe ... w-approach

[Raw Shark]

How was autism relevant to this? (Hi, diagnosed at age 6)

I mean, I don't want to start a complete Donnybrook here, but I wonder where the connection is coming from.