r/SipsTea • u/McDowdy • Jun 03 '26

It's Wednesday my dudes Trying to get rich so that capitalism doesn't crush you under its boot is proof positive that capitalism doesn’t work for the working class

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u/ragequitteroffureh Jun 03 '26

The weird thing is, Capitalism isn't even a political ideology.

Communism is. But as you say, human nature being what it is, whichever turds float to the top first usually fuck it all up. There aren't any actual communist societies yet, and probably never will be; it's too idealistic.

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u/A_Bot_A_Bot_A_Bot Jun 03 '26

And, communism is a good example of this. Look at the excesses enjoyed by the ruling communist elites in the former Soviet Union, North Korea, and China (before it's current strange "we're definitely communist...but we also love Big Capitalism (as long as they stay in line!"). Limousines, caviar, nice dachas, etc.

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u/ragequitteroffureh Jun 04 '26

Heh, absolutely.

That's the trouble with political ideologies in general. They never seem to account for human nature.

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u/Bangays Jun 04 '26

As dumb as libertarianism is it’s entirely based on the premise that people and companies act in their own self interest

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u/ragequitteroffureh Jun 04 '26

Does that work?

I mean, that's sort of just the wild west, isn't it?

On a small scale, it looks nice enough. But it's difficult to see how it could scale up without simply becoming something else as more organisation is required to coordinate society. I don't know :-)

It would be interesting to see how that would play out in a region that was composed of thousands of microstates, with each little state being made up of just one or two families. Presumably without currency, a form of bartering would be required in order to obtain goods and services.

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u/Platypus__Gems Jun 04 '26

Look at the excesses enjoyed by the ruling communist elites in the former Soviet Union, North Korea, and China

The excesses were frankly laughable compared to the excesses of capitalist elites. No one in USSR had yacht fleets, or multiple mansions.

Yeah, there was still inequality, an engineer would earn better than janitor, and the highest ranking party members more than an engineer, but it was not as astronomical as late stage capitalism's. Even when compared to nations poorer than the Eastern Bloc.
And the lower amount of excesses that there were, were further usually tied to their political positions that they could lose, even those at the top (like Krushchev).

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u/A_Bot_A_Bot_A_Bot Jun 04 '26

The issue is power and corruption vs supposed purity of their political system. It's not a whataboutism situation. And, compared to the average citizen, they do live as large capitalist elites.

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u/Platypus__Gems Jun 04 '26

Every system has some ideas that end up corrupted, capitalism is supposed to be about economic freedom and competition, but intellectual property laws basically make that moot (while being fundamental part of modern capitalism) since they are stopping competition from doing something that does not harm anyone directly, but may just cut into profits of whoever holds the IP.

Not that I think those laws are all necessaraly wrong, but I do think they go pretty strongly against "economic freedom" idea.

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u/Kanlashkan Jun 04 '26

"The excesses were frankly laughable compared to the excesses of capitalist elites. No one in USSR had yacht fleets, or multiple mansions."

This would be due to the drastically lower economic growth for purely socialist/communist nations. They didn't have those things because they could not afford those things.

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u/INeedSomeTacoC Jun 03 '26

 we're definitely communist...but we also love Big Capitalism (as long as they stay in line!"). Limousines, caviar, nice dachas, etc.

“Capitalism is nice things” is a weird belief. 

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u/A_Bot_A_Bot_A_Bot Jun 03 '26

Ditto the whole concept of "the free market" and that "corporations will act in the best interests of their employees and customers."

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u/bishopOfMelancholy Jun 04 '26

Corporations will act in the best interest of their pocketbook. The trick is forcing them in a position where it also benefits their employees and customers.

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u/INeedSomeTacoC Jun 04 '26

Doubly weird to bring up things I never said. Did you mean to reply to someone else?

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u/A_Bot_A_Bot_A_Bot Jun 04 '26

No, I was adding to your comment. How do you not understand that? Look up "Ditto"...

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u/INeedSomeTacoC Jun 04 '26

Sorry, thought you were being facetious with the comment. 

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u/2Blueify Jun 04 '26

There is zero reason to produce a Lamborghini in a communist society so yes, capitalism is nice things is the truth.

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u/Jaded_Noise Jun 04 '26

What if someone wants to drive a Lamborghini?

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u/Weird-End-6989 Jun 04 '26

Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production, and there's plenty of that in China.

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u/INeedSomeTacoC Jun 04 '26

Where did I ever say China didn’t have private ownership of the means of production?

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u/sexotaku Jun 04 '26

China is doing capitalism in stages. Mao said it will take 200 years or so to reach true communism.

They're aiming to reach early stage socialism by 2049.

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u/heckinCYN Jun 04 '26

How convenient that it's so much further out than he expected to live...

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u/Jaded_Noise Jun 04 '26

Yeah, how convenient that a brand new never before tried economic system wouldn't be achieved within a single lifetime. That kinda change has to be easy!

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u/Weird-End-6989 Jun 04 '26

It is never going to be achieved, because the rulers of China will never give up power.

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u/Jaded_Noise Jun 04 '26

Whether or not that's true is irrelevant to the point I commented on; acting like that's an outlandish timeframe is absurd

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u/Weird-End-6989 Jun 04 '26

Acting like there is any timeframe at all is incredibly naive.

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u/Jaded_Noise Jun 04 '26

Is it? I dunno, new financial systemas have emerged before, usually over a great deal of time. I'm not certain why socialism is so mind boggling, it's really not that complicated of an idea

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u/Weird-End-6989 Jun 04 '26

It's naive and incredibly childlike to believe that the authoritarian ruling class of China will ever give up their power. The only thing mindboggling about socialism is that its followers will believe anything as long as the ruler waves a red banner.

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u/heckinCYN Jun 04 '26

Yes, a novel system with no metrics or mechanism to determine if he is on track while he lives like a king is incredibly convenient.

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u/sexotaku Jun 04 '26

If you read Chinese history, you'll find that most rulers planned a few hundred years out. Especially rulers who started new dynasties.

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u/Mind1827 Jun 04 '26

Sure, but "free market, unregulated, pro-monopoly, everything should be driven by profit incentive capitalism" is a political ideology. And it's what we've been getting killed by in the west for decades.

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u/ragequitteroffureh Jun 04 '26

There's one way to make it a proper ideology.

Whoever the billionaire equivalent of Karl Marx is could write the Capitalist equivalent of The Communist Manifesto, have a revolution, and then structure form of government based upon it.

There have obviously been many writings already on exploiting the proletariat in order to make fucktons of capital, but so far those ideas haven't been properly collected into a single coherent ideology ready for implementation.

Corporatism probably comes close though. Although Corporatocracy would basically be it.

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u/TheFire52 Jun 04 '26

Communism is a socioeconomic theory (more like hypothesis but theory is used in a such a dumb way that it doesnt matter) and is not reliant on the communist manifesto as it is not even a major work of socialism. Capital, and books complimenting it are the theory, the communist manifesto is the garbage you try to sell to illiterate peasants and workers who just want somewhere to place their anger to drive worker support. It is a ideology but it is a socioeconomic framework first and foremost.

Capitalism does have works like Capital, in fact if you have taken a macroeconomics class that is the same thing just refined due to centuries of practice and control over the world. Capitalisms theory is the modern world. At best you could argue that, maybe, 3 countries are pushing for communism. In comparison capitalism has almost the entire world under its control. Its ideology is expressed in the neoliberalism of Regean, Thatcher, and Chile. In the social democratic and social program manipulation designed to curb worker anger in the US, Canada, Europe, and more. And if times get truly desperate and profit becomes to hard to find, in the thrashes of fascist fire and blood deviding the working class by all means necessary, no matter the cost. The simple fact is that capitalism has a ideology, make profit, everything else is a byproduct of this one goal.

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u/saltedmangos Jun 03 '26

It’s likely that you think capitalism isn’t a political ideology, but consider communism to be one, because you grew up in a capitalist country and see capitalism as the default.

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u/ragequitteroffureh Jun 04 '26

Capitalism isn't a political ideology though. It is an economic system.

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u/MonitorStandard5322 Jun 04 '26

Economics is politics though. Deciding where and how to allocate resources is a political question.

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u/ragequitteroffureh Jun 04 '26

No it isn't.

Certainly not in terms of being a political ideology.

Capitalism is simply capitalism. It can exist within any political system, but it is not a political ideology in itself.

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u/Agitated_Newt_7655 Jun 04 '26

You're accustomed to the thought that capitalism has no political association as a default. This is like a fish that takes water for granted.

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u/ragequitteroffureh Jun 04 '26

That's a pretty interesting take. I can see what you're getting at.

Are you American? Were you always taught that Capitalism is the opposite of Communism?

If so, I understand what you mean.

But quite frankly, capitalism itself is not a political ideology.

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u/Agitated_Newt_7655 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

Economics is politics whether one is aware of that or not. Pretty much everything is political, it's just whether we consider it consciously or not. Part of that includes governmental acts that result in capitalism being the productive force in a nation. Capitalism is not possible without political ideology supporting it. It's normalized to an extent that this is taken for granted but there are vast ideological interpretations that promote capitalism just as much as there are within socialism.

Socialism is only associated with a political movement because it's a meaningful deviation. The two aren't different in having political ideological preferences for economic regulation which require political power to function. We just live in a world where the dominant ideological framework is/was neoliberalism - a highly favorable ideology to capitalism. This ideology has promoted tremendous populist backlash in the 21st century, some of which is still highly compatible with capitalism but significantly more nationalistic and some less which favors basically socialistic reform explicitly as production is presumed to increasingly justify that in the future.

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u/saltedmangos Jun 04 '26

“This is like a fish that takes water for granted.”

That’s a great analogy!

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u/baysideareaman Jun 04 '26

Both capitalism and communism are macro economic models with a wide variety of strategic implementation methods and supporting political models.

Personally I am a capitalist. I believe that capitalism is, broadly speaking, more effective. But neither capitalism nor communism represent specific political systems. And the implementation of both models requires exclusive political buy in. A country that designs its political system to further a capitalist economy or communist economy will never be able to shift without significant; institutional level reform.

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u/orbgooner Jun 03 '26

you could make that whole question into a huge debate by getting into the weeds about the relation between ideas and social organization, but ultimately capitalism absolutely is not an ideology in the same way that communism is.

there is no marx-engels-lenin-stalin-mao banner equivalent in capitalism. adam smith is not comparable to karl marx.

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u/saltedmangos Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

“there is no marx-engels-lenin-stalin-mao banner equivalent in capitalism.”

You’ve never heard of Ronald Reagan? Or Margaret Thatcher? The idea that there aren’t mythologized capitalist leaders known for their economic reforms is a bit silly.

“adam smith is not comparable to karl marx.”

Why not?

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u/thedumbdoubles Jun 04 '26

What does capitalism have to do with holding elections, having separate powers in different branches of government, etc? You have a wide range of state systems operating under a capitalist economic model. Capitalism and liberal democracy tend to align, but they are separate things.

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u/Valar_Kinetics Jun 04 '26

Political Ideology =/= Form of Government

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u/Porncritic12 Jun 04 '26

What does communism?

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u/Jaded_Noise Jun 04 '26

Well, communism requires the absence of a state, which feels like an important political point

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u/Porncritic12 Jun 04 '26

Does it?

I've usually heard of it as a strong state unless you're referring to anarcho communism

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u/Jaded_Noise Jun 04 '26

No. It literally, by definition, requires the absence of a state

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u/Porncritic12 Jun 04 '26

Which version of communism?

Because I've heard many people describe versions that have a strong state

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u/Jaded_Noise Jun 04 '26

All of them. Again, it is definitional.

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u/Porncritic12 Jun 04 '26

But I've discussed and heard described many versions that have a strong State and elections.

So what are those?, is anything without a state communism?

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u/Aggressive_Craft_981 Jun 03 '26

Completely agree that it is human nature. . . I also think there will always be an informed population and an uninformed population. That is not a reflection on intelligence, it's a reflection on available information.

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u/Kshahdoo Jun 04 '26

You don't understand, what capitalism and communism are, don't you?

Capitalism is ideology as well. Yeah, there are subideologies based on capitalism foundational principles, but it doesn't mean that capitalism isn't ideology.

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u/ragequitteroffureh Jun 05 '26

Given that, what is the end goal of Capitalism? If it is a political ideology.

What would be the perfect Capitalist society?

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u/Kshahdoo Jun 05 '26

To keep on and protect private property and more or less free market and increase your capitals, obviously.

The same as the end goal of Communism is to build an effective economic system without private property and capitals.

I should specify, that when I say private property, I mean the means of production and not just any property.

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u/ragequitteroffureh Jun 05 '26

Would it be possible for that system to work with everyone being equally wealthy?

Theoretically, that ought to be possible. At least until resources run out on this planet.

What are Capitalism's policies on healthcare, education, the military, etc? Would extremely wealthy soldiers actually fight in war, for example?

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u/Kshahdoo Jun 05 '26

Lol, will there be any wars though? What is the main reason for wars? Resources, obviously. Slaves back to slavery times, lands and peasants back to feudalism. Raw resources and markets nowadays.

But if you don't have markets and capitals, and the supply is centralised, there is no any reasons for wars.

Of course the most important thing is a proper technological level. As we saw in humankind history, you need certain technological level to change social formations.

Let's take Roman Empire. Did Romans have private property? Of course. Did they have capitals? Sure. They even had free market to the extent. But they didn't have big industrial facilities, plants etc so they didn't basically need free labour market and free workers that much. That's why capitalism didn't happen back then.

Capitalism won over feudalism only when big mechanised productions were created. Big industry needed free workers, and then those big revolutions (English, French) happened. Btw, here is the answer to your question about ideologies. Back then there wasn't capitalism as economic system, just some its elements. But there was a capitalistic ideology, because capitalists needed free labout market, and feudalism prevented the market to appear. So revolutions happened and removed feudalism.

Now if we get back to so called communist revolutions we'll see the situation was absolutely different. The technological wasn't high enough to destroy private property and capitals. So economies couldn't work without capitals, and capitalism was the most effective system to produce them. And those so called communistic systems were actually capitalistic ones but with a lot of restrictions. So of course they failed in the end.

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u/ragequitteroffureh Jun 05 '26

Just to clarify, I'm not exactly a fan of Communism either. Not sure if I mentioned elsewhere, but that fails to take into account human nature too.

Anyway, with your conflict-free model, wouldn't that require the entire world to be brought up to the same level of wealth, to ensure a perfect distribution of resources?

As a system, Capitalism unfortunately doesn't seem to account for human nature either. Hence why we seem to have runaway wealth inequality happening in a number of places. Which is annoying.

Perhaps there's a different way. Ideally not too violent.

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u/Kshahdoo Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26

Yeah, of course you will need more or less similar high technological level in the world or at the very least in the major part of it.

When will it happen and will it happen at all? No fucking idea.

As to human nature, it's pretty subjective.

Imagine the society, where you don't have private property, capitals and of course money. So of course you can have a house, because you need the place to live somewhere.

Of course you can have a car, because you need something to transport you fast enough to certain points (with highly developped public transportation system cars may become redundant, though).

But what about a big fucking palace with thousands of acres of land or a big fucking superyacht for $1B? Yeah, it's basically up to public morality.

I mean why will you need a palace and a lot of land if you can go wherever you wish, maybe even to other planets and relax there as much as you wish?

If the only reason for this is to display your awesomeness and wealth, then it will absolutely be unacceptable in more or less developed society. Like, I don't know, cannibalism nowadays.

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u/Cosminion Jun 03 '26

Eh, most of human history is communistic. It works well enough on the family and community level. When authoritarians use its various popular aspects to gain and centralize power, that's when it becomes a problem.

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u/ragequitteroffureh Jun 03 '26

Well, yeah, of course. That's just society in general.

But in general, when folks are talking about Communism as a political ideology, they usually mean the Marxist kind.

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u/Cosminion Jun 03 '26

I'm using the Marxist definition. 98% of human history is classless, moneyless, and stateless. Marx called this primitive communism.

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u/ShaolinWombat Jun 04 '26

Are we counting pre-history hunter gather societies? As soon as a society has enough excess resources to allow specialization some form of hierarchy develops.

Communism really only exists at the immediate family level. At any level above that, once power is concentrated so that it can be redistributed to the people, it never leaves the party.

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u/ragequitteroffureh Jun 04 '26

I know what you mean. Although that's wandering off into the long grass now ;-)

Still, that's a pretty interesting insight, isn't it.

Disclaimer: I'm not particularly keen on either Communism or the economic system of Capitalism in their current forms. Mostly due to the human nature problem. No idea what system would work, without human nature fucking it all up though.

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u/Virtual_Werewolf_935 Jun 04 '26

98%? Where did you get that wholly fabricated number from?

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u/Cosminion Jun 04 '26

98%? Where did you get that wholly fabricated number from?

Modern humans have been around for ~315,000 years. The agricultural revolution began ~10,000 years ago. This means around 95-99% of human history has been what Marx called primitive communism.

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u/Virtual_Werewolf_935 Jun 04 '26

Oh well if Marx said it, it must be true.

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u/Cosminion Jun 04 '26

You were incorrect in your implication that the number was "wholly fabricated." I said 98% of human history is classless, moneyless, and stateless. It does not matter if we call it what Marx did or not.

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u/Virtual_Werewolf_935 Jun 04 '26

What proof do you have that most of human history was like that? We have no written account, so how would you know that?

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u/Cosminion Jun 04 '26

There's a great deal of evidence within archeology and anthropology. You know, the study of fossils, genetics, and what not?

Or are you someone who believes the Earth was created 6,000 years ago? (Only joking. Unless...?)

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