Under capitalism, housing is a commodity and it is primarily accessed through market transactions.

In markets, prices are set by supply and demand.

Sometimes, the supply of a commodity is so low, or the demand so high, that the price of that commodity exceeds one’s purchasing power.

Sometimes, the supply of labor is so high, or the demand so low, that the price of one’s labor is low and one’s purchasing power falls too low to afford a given commodity.

This is how homelessness happens.

Some of you might be tempted to moralize this simple economic observation and try to blame homelessness on mental illness, or drug use, or laziness. These are all simply denying how capitalism works and is supposed to work.

neo-liberalism or the better term market fundamentalism has sustained a stretch of 40 years of uninterrupted hegemony over most of the entire world apart from china and the all the western world. in that time the entire western world has fallen into oligarchy and serfdom, in the west massive amounts of wealth have gone upward due to specific policies like deregulation andprivatization. and every time this is pointed out it is always "this is not the real liberalization" "there is still too much government control of the private sector" blah blah blah.

How is this better in terms of wealth distributism than the F*CKING GOLDEN AGE OF CAPITALISM, that was the opposite of this privatization and liberalization brigade? this is not even socialism,.

i have come to the conclusion that neoliberalism and it's worship of free markets is working just as intended.

in what way are the neoliberalism hampered? every government in the west ideologically aligned what is stopping them?

how many regulations need to be repealed before wealth in the working class comes back on?

how little must taxes be before wages gain parity with productivity?

how much must monopolies rent-seek before your benevolent system corrects itself?

there is nothing stopping the agents of this system, you have everything. is this the best you can offer?

Unless I’m mistaken one of the main critiques of capitalism is it’s coercive.

So, in practice, how does socialism/marxism/communism deal with the free-rider problem?

If you’ve got an obstinate person completely unwilling to work, who is also having all their material needs met, how exactly do you deal with that without coercion/state violence/imprisonment?

I realize this is a simple/101 issue but it sort of seems to really undercut socialisms main thrust of being non-coercive. I’ve never seen a good, straight forward answer to this that isn’t just resorting to violence.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

While Marx himself has always emphasized the qualitative side of his theory, most of his critics seem to be focusing on the quantitative side instead. It is frequently asserted that Marx's theory is not mathematically consistent for various reasons or that actual prices in Capitalism have no relation to labor whatsoever. I thought it would be helpful to do a mathematical formulation of the theory starting with how it appears directly in developed Capitalism - the gravitation of prices towards prices of production.

In classical theory, the gravitation towards prices of production has been a widely accepted conjecture. In modern economics this conjecture is not universally accepted. For the purposes of the following formulation, I will explicitly assume that this tendency holds. But such an assumption is not without basis. Various mathematical models exist that demonstrate such convergence with only standard assumptions. Unfortunately, the most extensive such models seem to be locked behind a substantial paywall. For this reason I'm going to reference this paper. While it does make a somewhat controversial assumption of no fixed capital, it must be noted that there are models that work without such an assumption.

Given this hypothesis, the long-term competitive equilibrium prices can be represented by this equation:

P = (1 + r)(LW + AP) = (1 + <rate of profit>)(<wages> + <cost of means of production expended>)

I'm using a slightly different notation that the one in the paper to make it easier to present on Reddit. I'm also formulating it slightly differently to better present my point. Here:
P - nx1 vector of long-term competitive equilibrium prices, which is assumed to also be the vector of prices of production.
r - the general rate of profit(which is the result of the equalization of the rate of profit between industries). This rate is risk-adjusted.
A - the input matrix nxn, which represents the quantities of input goods necessary to produce one unit of the corresponding output good.
L - the direct SNLT matrix nxm, which represents the socially-necessary duration of various kinds of labor directly employed, for example in hours to produce one unit of a good. Socially-necessary basically means that we average the total duration of labor employed in an industry over the total quantity of goods sold.
W - the wage-rate vector mx1, which represents all the different wages paid depending on the type of labor performed, for example per hour

So like this:

--        --                       --   --   --                       --   ---
p1        | l11, l12, l13, ..., l1m |   w1   | a11, a12, a13, ..., a1n |   p1
p2        | l21, l22, l23, ..., l2m |   w2   | a21, a22, a23, ..., a2n |   p2    
p3=(1+r)*(| l31, l32, l33, ..., l3m | * w3 + | a31, a32, a33, ..., a3n | * p3) 
..        | ..., ..., ..., ..., ... |   ...  | ..., ..., ..., ..., ... |   ... 
pn        | ln1, ln2, ln3, ..., lnm |   wn   | an1, an2, an3, ..., ann |   pn
--        --                       --   --   --                       --   ---
(My best attempt at a matrix representation on Reddit)

We assume a static equilibrium merely to simplify our presentation. Thus, we assume A,L,W,P,r do not change between the production cycles. In reality the equilibrium is dynamic, and so to model this dynamic equilibrium we would simply replace the `AP` component with `AP'`, where P' denotes the previous equilibrium price vector. This assumption does not affect the conclusions drawn from our formulation, merely simplifies the math a bit.

Deconstructing the prices of production

Let's investigate an arbitrary equilibrium price px out of the equilibrium price vector P

px = (1+r)(LxW + AxP),

Where Lx is the 1xm vector of direct SNLT and Ax is the 1xn vector of direct input goods, both corresponding to the xth rows in their respective matrices L and A, which correspond to the production requirements of the xth good.

This equation can be recursively expanded by substituting (1 + r)(AP + LW) for P

px = (1+r)(LxW + Ax(L'W + (1+r)*A*(L''W + (1+r)*A*... ) ) )

In order to keep track of direct and indirect labor employed, have added the ' annotation to denote that this L-matrix is the SNLT matrix from the previous production cycle. So L' is labor employed one production cycle ago, L'' is labor employed 2 production cycles ago etc

px = (1+r)(LxW + Ax( (1+r)L'W + (1+r)^2AL''W + ...) )

Since all of the components of px are linear in the direct or indirect labor-time matrices Lx, L', L''... , then it follows that if we were to multiply all elements of Lx, L', L'' ... by an arbitrary value q, then P would be multiplied by q as well. In other words, a proportional increase in the total required SNLT will result in a corresponding increase in the equilibrium price, ceteris paribus. For the following segment of the formulation we will assume that all transactions take place at the equilibrium price, we will consider the remaining possibilities later.

Profit, wages and class conflict

Once a sale is realized, px becomes a real, fixed sum of money that constitutes the revenue. Some of this money is necessarily spent on replacing the means of production, some goes towards the workers' wages and some the capitalist keeps as profit. Each component part of px corresponds to a labor performed directly or indirectly, and consequently px follows the "proportionality rule" established above.

vx = LxW

This is the part that goes towards replacing the wages. We call this part variable capital

sx = r(LxW + Ax((1+r)L'W + (1+r)^2AL''W + ...)) = r(vx + cx)

This is the profit of the capitalist

cx = Ax((1+r)L'W + (1+r)^2AL''W + ...)

This is the part of the money that necessarily goes towards replacing/maintaining the spent means of production(actually replacing the wages of the workers who made them and realizing the profit of the capitalists who provisioned them). We call this part constant capital

The rate of profit specific to industry x can be expressed as:

rx = sx/(vx+cx)

As a result of the equalization of the rates of profit, rx=r is forced. The proportion in which the revenue is divided between profit and wages can therefore be expressed as:

sx/vx = r(vx+cx)/vx = r(1+kx)

Where kx=cx/vx is the Value Composition of Capital(VCC) in industry x

Because r is an external variable not determined by our model(exogeneous), it can assume many different values independent of all the other variables. This means that the proportion in which this fixed amount of revenue is distributed between profit and wages can vary. Marxists assume r to be socially-determined(politically, culturally, etc). This points to a clear conflict of interests between the workers and the capitalists, as the proportion between wages and profit is subject to political struggle.

The actual basket of goods that the worker gets for his wage can increase despite a rise in profit due to increases in productivity, so it might appear as if the interests of the workers and the capitalists can be reconciled. But such changes render the worker increasingly more replaceable, throw ever greater masses of people out on the streets and take away their means of subsistence, so the conflict is not resolved and merely takes on a different form.

Redistribution of profit between industries

In the previous section we've derived the profit of the capitalist sx

sx = r(vx + cx) = r(LxW + Ax((1+r)L'W + (1+r)^2AL''W + ...))

This profit is the sole property of the capitalist who provisioned the good. But notice that there are terms that correspond to indirect labor-time of workers that the capitalist didn't hire (L',L'' ...). It is therefore possible for the capitalist to realize a profit that corresponds to the labor of workers who made the input goods, that the capitalist didn't even directly hire. We call this phenomenon the redistribution of profit

Conversely, because the revenue from the same labor exists as profit across many industries where the labor wasn't even directly employed, then what appears in the equation as the profit from L', L'' ... is in fact only one part of the total profit corresponding to this labor. To know the total profit we'd have to add up all the profit corresponding to this labor across industries.

How is this possible? In order to understand this phenomenon, let's imagine an industry α, where the redistribution of profit does not take place, and as a result all profit corresponds exactly to the labor employed directly, sα = σαLαW = σαvα. Here σα denotes the rate of exploitation, or the ratio of the total generated profit to variable capital employed. But at the same time the equalization of the rate of profit forces rα=r, so sα = r(vα+cα). Both can only hold simultaneously if

σαvα = r(vα+cα)

σα = r(vα+cα)/vα

σα/(1 + kα) = r

σx/(1 + kx) is a theoretical pre-equalization rate of profit in industry x, rx*. The extra terms therefore don't appear if the pre-equalization rate of profit is already equal to the general rate of profit.

If rx* > r, then the profit from direct labor in industry x is obtained at a higher rate than the general rate of profit. Noticing the higher returns, the capitalists are compelled to invest in this industry. Consequently, more capital is diverted to this industry, increasing supply and lowering prices until rx = r is restored. Vice versa if rx* < r, then the prices are increased until rx = r again. The capitalist competition between industries forces the equalization in the rates of profit.

The industries where the pre-equalization rate of profit is higher than the general rate of profit will therefore experience deflated prices, and vice versa for industries with a lower pre-equalization rate of profit. The pre-equalization rate of profit on the other hand depends on the Variable Composition of Capital kx, rx* = σx/(1+kx). Companies with a higher than average VCC will therefore experience extra profits that are related to the labor of workers employed in other industries which compensate for the low profit obtained from direct labor. Companies with low VCC on the other hand will experience a relative loss in profits. In this way profits are redistributed between industries to force the general rate of profit.

That's how a high-tech low-labor industry can still experience the same rate of profit as a low-tech high-labor industry, or even higher under certain conditions. The extra profit comes from the fact that high-VCC industries can sell their outputs at inflated prices, while low-VCC industries have to sell their outputs at deflated prices. But inflated/deflated in relation to what?

Social product and value

If we sum up all the prices of final goods sold in some period, excluding credit, we will obtain the total net social product expressed in money. Let Qf be the 1xn row-vector of quantities of final goods sold. Then the net social product can be expressed as:

QfP = Qf(1+r)(LW + (1+r)AL'W + (1+r)^2A^2L''W + ...).

Thus the net social product follows the same "proportionality rule" to SNLT as the prices of production, since it simply consists of a sum of prices of production.

This social product is divided between the workers and capitalists as wages and profit respectively. But considered as a whole, this product represents the total realized value of society. All component parts of this product correspond to some labor, past or present, which is embodied in a particular good. The product however is not distributed between industries according to labor embodied but in the first place based on the principle forced by the equalization of the rates of profit. The total net social product created across industries by the sale of a good is it's value in monetary form.

It is in relation to this value that the production prices of goods are inflated or deflated. By selling above value, one company records a gain relative to selling the good at it's value; but another company records a relative loss of the same magnitude due to having bought above value. Vice versa if the sale takes place below value. The sum total of the social revenue is not affected by this outcome. Only new value can increase it.

The investigation of what constitutes the nature of value and it's origin does not belong here but in a separate text focusing on the qualitative side of the theory.

The disequilibrium case

Until now we've assumed that all transactions occur at the equilibrium. In such a case all of our conclusions immediately follow. Let's now investigate the remaining cases of transactions taking place above or below the equilibrium.

By selling above the equilibrium(prices of production) one person records a gain relative to selling at the equilibrium, but by buying above the equilibrium another person records a relative loss of the same magnitude. Vice versa if the transaction takes place below the equilibrium. So the relative loss becomes someone else's relative gain. But the loss can not come from nowhere and must instead come either from wages or from profit. It is therefore a loss in wages or in profit relative to the wages and profit obtained at the equilibrium, but the sum total of value remains unaffected.

Just like with the effects of the equalization of the rate of profit, the disequilibrium case does not, by itself, affect the total social product, and thus can't create new value. In certain cases disequilibrium can prevent the value of a good from becoming realized in exchange, in this way reducing the net social product. But it can never increase it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsp6Su6hNuo

Dr. Steve Keen explains why economics departments intentionally screen out objective and intelligent students in favor of ideological believers.

For example, he cites Ben Bernanke and the mainstream economic consensus that private debt has little or no macroeconomic effects as it is pure redistribution, then points out that banks create money when they lend, which inflates GDP, causing a collapse if debt is paid down, because that money ceases to exist.

Students who notice this are failed out of the department, while those who simply "swallow and regurgitate" what they are told go to the head of the class; those students then become the next generation of economists, who are both indoctrinated in false economics and lacking in the mental capacity to escape that indoctrination.

Dr. Keen then goes on to note that Ben Bernanke forecast an excellent economic year for 2008, then won the Nobel prize in Economics in 2022.

Keynes had a low opinion of Marx. He did not think it was worth understanding him. It is therefore something of a surprise when he goes along the same lines.

Keynes thought of his General Theory as a monetary theory of production. In his notes, he writes about Marx's distinction between the trading of commodities for money, C-M-C’', and the use of money to make more money, M-C-M'. A monetary theory of production investigates the latter structure.

But more, he set his theory out in terms of labor values:

"In dealing with the theory of employment I propose, therefore, to make use of only two fundamental units of quantity, namely, quantities of money-value and quantities of employment. The first of these is strictly homogeneous, and the second can be made so. For, in so far as different grades and kinds of labour and salaried assistance enjoy a more or less fixed relative remuneration, the quantity of employment can be sufficiently defined for our purpose by taking an hour's employment of ordinary labour as our unit and weighting an hour's employment of special labour in proportion to its remuneration; i.e. an hour of special labour remunerated at double ordinary rates will count as two units. We shall call the unit in which the quantity of employment is measured the labour-unit; and the money-wage of a labour-unit we shall call the wage-unit." -- John Maynard Keynes. 1936. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Chapter 4.

Keynes had a concept of the long period rate of employment. But most of his argument was set in Marshall's short period. Even though investment is given, he takes the stock of capital goods as given. His question is how much of it is used and how much labor is required. He deals with complex labor very shortly. For his problem, this makes sense.

Joan Robinson noticed the parallel with Marx:

"Keynes changed the question back again. He started thinking in Ricardo's terms: output as a whole and why worry about a cup of tea? When you are thinking about output as a whole, relative prices come out in the wash-including the relative price of money and labour. The price level comes into the argument, but it comes in as a complication, not as the main point. If you have had some practice on Ricardo's bicycle you do not need to stop and ask yourself what to do in a case like that, you just do it. You assume away the complication till you have got the main problem worked out. So Keynes began by getting money prices out of the way. Marshall's cup of tea dissolved into thin air. But if you cannot use money, what unit of value do you take? A man hour of labour time. It is the most handy and sensible measure of value, so naturally you take it. You do not have to prove anything, you just do it.

Well there you are-we are back on Ricardo's large questions, and we are using Marx's unit of value. What is it that you are complaining about?

Do not for heaven's sake bring Hegel into it. What business has Hegel putting his nose in between me and Ricardo?" – Joan Robinson, 1953, An open letter from a Keynesian to a Marxist.

Michal Kalecki probably had the best insight into the political consequences of Keynes.

Sometimes democracy is just 9 people disagreeing with 1 on when the noise curfew ought to be. Sometimes though, it's 6 people disagreeing with 4 on who should be thrown into a van to be shipped off to war against their will.

That's why serious ideologies allow for democracy moderated by individual rights. Ya'll suck.

We all love to see the acts of socialism: building schools or paying for education, we love the idea of free meals for children and free healthcare, but some start crying as soon as they hear socialism.

If a country can spend hundreds of millions or billions in offshore aid per year, we can always do a little more for our own people.

The people before us worked to build a country in which the happiness and wellbeing of its people are the defining factors of a balanced government. Now we have epidemic
Levels of homelessness, joblessness, chronic illness, child incarceration rates are up, serious crime is up. All whilst the education and health systems fall into despair.

At what point do we concede to the idea, that being rich, and the prospect to become rich are new ideals. Not made for common man who needs his basic necessities met.

We are part of one of the first generational runs to experience freedom in this world. Yet when asked to contribute to society, so many would rather have the extra car, house or holiday. We are far too over indulgent. Maybe if you paid that 3rd car payment in the form of tax you wouldn’t have to drive by the homeless to get to work.

•The total supply of a particular commodity in a given society depends on how much labor is spent on it
•Every society only needs so much of every commodity. It therefore has a definite demand for a definite amount of labor to be spent on them
•Prices fluctuate according to supply and demand
•If supply=demand, then by definition, there is just enough labor being spent on that particular commodity to satisfy society’s total need or demand for it
•So if we treat each commodity as the average of its kind(since in a market people can’t know the specific conditions that produced it but only the general conditions that typically produce others like it), its price would be equal to the socially necessary labor time when supply=demand

In other words, SNLT is how much labor time creates enough supply of a commodity to meet the demand for it exactly. Therefore when supply and demand are in equilibrium the price has to be determined by SNLT.

Hola buenas espero que se encuentre esta es mi primera vez usando reddit lo cual quiere decir que es mi primer post disculparan si no entienden lo que estoy pidendo, bien soy un hombre de 22 años que tiene 0 idea de política.

Estoy empezando a interesarme más seriamente por la política y quiero leer diferentes fuentes antes de formar mi propia ideología política. No quiero simplemente leer libros que defiendan una determinada posición y terminar adoptándola sin conocer los argumentos del otro lado.

Por eso quería pedirles recomendaciones de libros lo más neutrales, académicos o imparciales posible, que expliquen las distintas ideologías y sistemas políticos desde una perspectiva equilibrada.

Por ejemplo, me gustaría encontrar libros que expliquen de manera clara y objetiva:

¿Qué es el socialismo?

¿Qué es el comunismo?

¿Qué es el capitalismo?

¿Qué es la socialdemocracia?

¿Qué diferencias existen entre estas corrientes?

¿Cuáles son sus principales argumentos, ventajas, críticas y problemas históricos?

¿Cómo funcionan realmente los distintos sistemas económicos y políticos?

Seria bueno que al responder me pusieran el nombre del libro por cada pregunta que esta ahi.

También me interesan libros que ayuden a entender conflictos y problemas actuales del mundo sin presentar únicamente la versión de un bando. Por ejemplo:

El conflicto entre Israel y Palestina.

La OTAN, su origen, objetivos y papel actual.

Las relaciones entre Rusia, Europa y Estados Unidos.

Las causas de las guerras y conflictos internacionales.

Geopolítica y relaciones internacionales.

Colonialismo, imperialismo y sus consecuencias.

Desigualdad económica y pobreza.

Democracia, autoritarismo y populismo.

Mi objetivo no es encontrar un libro que me diga “esta ideología es la correcta”, sino materiales que me permitan conocer los diferentes argumentos, entender el contexto histórico y después sacar mis propias conclusiones.

Si conocen libros, autores, cursos o incluso canales y documentales serios que consideren buenos para alguien que está empezando desde cero, agradecería mucho las recomendaciones.

Y si creen que no existe un libro completamente neutral, también me interesa saber qué autores o libros recomendarían leer desde posiciones ideológicas diferentes para poder contrastarlos.

Muchas gracias espero que me puedan ayudar

With the recent wins of democratic socialists in U.S. congressional primary elections, I’ve been questioning whether democratic socialism is really all that different from classical Marxist socialism in the long term.

From my understanding, the difference between Marx’s classical interpretation of socialism and the modern democratic socialist movement is that Marx calls for a revolution against the bourgeoisie to establish a state in which workers seize and control the means of production, while democratic socialists prefer to achieve this through elected officials whose legislation gives greater power to workers, ultimately striving toward the goal of worker ownership of the means of production.

This raises the age-old question: How could this be achievable in a world where resource scarcity and greed make a socialist state difficult to maintain without a system to resist the tendencies of human nature, and guide and enforce a classless society?

And if an authoritarian system is needed to enforce this society, does that not create a similar power structure to what Marx argues capitalism creates, where there are two distinct classes? Except instead of the owner class vs. the workers, it becomes the people vs. those within the political apparatus enforcing the socialist system.

Here is a short clip of him, and he is just talking about a few different things.

Milton Friedman believed in Capitalism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J34J7dvbV1w

Now if you watch that, what do you believe? Should the state keep on doing what they do, or should they stop? Now you can be against what he said, but then you are in favor of actual poverty as they have to pay the double, or you can be against it. Which one will you choose?

Like as a society make a small state and then if some want to be socialist together then they can and same for capitalist. Why is that not an ideal ? The only rule would be consent and then we just see what works.

We can imagine a state who do only laws security and defense. The law would be preventing that you step on other liberty and drawing the line. We can have a democracy on that. What do you think ?

Most people probably think of wealth in terms of possessing or having access or title to many goods and services. Likewise, most people probably think of poverty in terms lacking possession of or access or title to goods and services. Being wealthy is better than being poor, because being wealthy means having more stuff to satisfy your needs and desires, right?

Consider that surveys of life satisfaction find that people who live in isolated, traditional lifeways reporting being satisfied with their lives at rates equal to or higher than people living in the wealthiest OECD countries:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/feb/05/isolated-indigenous-people-as-happy-as-wealthy-western-peers-study

Consider that people living in traditional lifeways, with very little stuff, tend to experience little to no self-harm, while people living in vastly wealthier societies, such as the US, experience startling high and rising rates of self-harm:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303591186_Suicide_among_the_Mla_Bri_hunter-gatherers_of_Northern_Thailand

vs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States

Consider that people with low incomes in rich countries experience worse health outcomes than people in those countries with high incomes, even when controlling for lifestyle factors, and even though these “poor” people have access to vastly more stuff than either their ancestors or people living in traditional lifeways today:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749379724000692

Does any of this suggest to you that there might be more to wealth and poverty than merely stuff?

It is widely believed that capitalism is a prerequisite for innovation/that innovation cannot occur without capitalism/profit motive.

This is simply not true.

Having said that, it is true that capitalism can in many cases/domains spur innovation.

However, what is not talked about is how capitalism can inhibit innovation as well.

The thing is, when everything is based on profit, it limits everything to the zeitgeist. Because that is where the demand is. If something cannot make profit, it is rejected. And for something to make profit, it needs to be consistent with the zeitgeist. Therefore, anything proposed or built outside the zeitgeist, regardless of its value and utility, will not be permitted to succeed. In this way, capitalism stifles innovation and change.

Let's use the example of books.

Now there are a lot of good books. But the issue is that they are all within the zeitgeist.

The issue is that no book outside the zeitgeist, regardless of its value and utility, sees the light of day.

If you write a high value book that is outside the zeitgeist, you will not be able to have it published by a major publisher. If it is not accepted by a major publisher, you will be forced to self publish and that means it will not be read by a meaningful amount of people.

So how do publishers determine what they publish? The sole determining factor is profit. "Will this book make us money?" That is why we are stuck in a loop: within-the-zeitgeist books will sell because they have high demand, but they have high demand because they are within the zeitgeist.

If you go outside the zeitgeist, regardless of how valuable your book is, there won't be demand for it. But this is basic logic: because if this was not true, you would not need to write the book in the first place/the information in the book would already be known (in cases of non-fiction). The demand issue applies to the publisher as well: the publisher itself will not understand or appreciate your book, so they will think it is not good. But who are they to determine this? They too are incapable of operating outside the boundaries of the zeitgeist. And, in the rare case that the publisher is able to think outside the zeitgeist and see the value of your book, they will still deny it because they know the masses will not, so it fails the profit test, and it will be denied all the same.

Count Capitalism’s Dead

Below is the post in the link.

Count Capitalism’s Dead

We are repeatedly told that “communism killed millions.”

The dead should be counted. Stalin’s purges, Mao’s famine, the gulags, and Cambodia’s killing fields should be condemned without apology.

But America maintains a strangely selective ledger.

Even the familiar “100 million” figure is not a settled historical census. It was popularized by The Black Book of Communism, which combined executions, famines, war, imprisonment, deportation, and forced labor beneath one ideological total. Several contributors objected to its editor’s framing and methodology.[1]

If those categories belong in communism’s ledger, they must also be applied to capitalism.

The Vietnam War killed an estimated two million Vietnamese civilians, 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters, and as many as 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers. More than 58,000 Americans were also sent to their deaths.[2]

During nine years of American bombing, more than eight million tons of bombs fell across Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Unexploded ordnance reportedly killed at least another 40,000 Vietnamese after 1975.[3]

At Côn Sơn Prison, the American-backed South Vietnamese regime shackled political prisoners inside “tiger cages.” They were beaten, starved, mutilated, and burned with lime beneath iron bars. In 1970, congressional aide Tom Harkin photographed approximately 500 prisoners hidden from the official tour. Life published the evidence.[4]

Where are they in capitalism’s moral accounting?

No universally accepted capitalist death toll exists because attribution depends upon methodology. The same problem surrounding anti-communist totals. One peer-reviewed analysis estimated that wars attributable to capitalist powers killed approximately 123 million to 158 million people between 1914 and 1992 alone.[5]

A broader contemporary calculation, which also counts colonial famines, slavery, industrial deaths, malnutrition, and treatable deaths where care was unavailable, places capitalism’s toll above 421 million.[6] That figure is not academic consensus, but it applies the kind of expansive accounting routinely used against communism.

Capitalism’s violence does not end when the bombs stop falling.

RAND estimates that if economic growth had remained as broadly shared as it was during the early postwar decades, the bottom 90 percent of American workers would have received another $79 trillion between 1975 and 2023. In 2023 alone, their income would have been $3.9 trillion higher.[7]

Meanwhile, the wealthiest 10 percent possess approximately 68 percent of American household wealth. The entire bottom half possesses roughly 2.5 percent.[8]

One hand of the system drops bombs abroad. The other reaches into the worker’s paycheck at home. Both hands protect the same throne of capital.

Revelation says the Beast was permitted “to make war on the saints and to conquer them.” Empire always calls its victims dangerous, godless, criminal, or undeserving before it cages them, bombs them, impoverishes them, and erases them from history.

Count the victims of communist governments.

Then count capitalism’s dead.

Count everyone or admit that the ledger was never about human life.

[1] https://doi.org/10.3917/receo1.512.0055https://doi.org/10.3917/receo1.512.0055

[2] https://www.history.com/articles/vietnam-war-timeline⁠; https://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics

[3] https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20190603_R45749_1f35a5f0287e155ce04ceba0af3dc7af5012a142.html

[4] https://rollcall.com/2014/12/01/tom-harkin-from-tiger-cages-to-pinochet-2/

[5] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10455752.2021.1875603

[6] https://capitalismkills.info/

[7] https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-2.html

[8] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/compare/chart/

"Real" socialism™️ actually requires that the means of production be controlled by workers directly. Not through the State. Workers. There have been scarce few examples of "real" socialism ever being tried, but when it has been it's usually been successful until an outside force decides to attack.

What people usually think of as socialism is closer to State Capitalism. If you think State Capitalism is bad, I agree with you.

The definition of Communism is a free and stateless society with no fiat currency, brought on through massive cultural revolution. The goal of Socialism is to bring about communism. Why would Socialism require a strong central State if the entire goal is a stateless society?

Edit: having a lot of people asking for examples, that's my bad. Should have included them. For reference here's what I put in a comment

Quick examples:

The Paris commune where laborers took over abandoned factories and started running themselves in 1871 for a few months until France sent the military in to end it.

The Free Territory of Ukraine from 1918-1921 where the entire country was led without a centralized state for a few years until the Red Army came and conquered them.

Revolutionary Catalonia from 1936-1939. Ironically enough they fell to both fascists and "communists". But for a while over three million workers owned themselves.

There's also a few modern examples that exist and are currently being attacked by the governments around them. The Zapatistas or Rojava for example.

One of my basic issues with capitalism is the laissez-faire and unaccountable nature of it. From what I understand, the whole theory behind free market capitalism since Adam Smith has been that it allows the economy to regulate itself with price signals and supply and demand without the need for intervention. That kind of capitalism essentially just creates economic anarchy and incentivizes scams, crime, and exploitation. That true laissez-faire capitalism is far behind us now, and we have laws in place to prevent selling drugs, human trafficking, scamming, etc. People figure out ways around these laws since the nature of the system rewards it so much, but still. My question is at what point does regulation become too much regulation? Would you prefer a truly anarchic economic system, or is there a specific threshold?

When Von Mises came to American, no university would hire him. He ended up at New York University, funded by the Volker fund and the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), not the normal academic position. He had a seminar, so to speak, from 1948 to 1969, past the usual retirement age.

His students consisted of the usual youngsters seeking credit for a grade and a weird cohort of adults, who attended year after year.

"As Robert Nozick … said, 'In 18 years of teaching at Princeton and Harvard, I never encountered any professor teaching a seminar where non-degree-seeking adults would continue to attend year after year . . . [Mises was] unique in attracting mature minds without demanding discipleship.'" -- Brian Doherty. 2008. Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.

Much of the description of this seminar contradicts that last sentence. In defense of Von Mises' unwillingness to brook questions at a supposed seminar, he was becoming hard of hearing.

Israel Kirzner describes what many saw as Von Mises’ arrogance:

"But by the time I was at his seminar, he was of advanced age and had heard all of the arguments in favor of other points of view. There's no doubt he felt convinced that he knew what was valid and invalid. That awareness on his part was fairly obvious to anyone, from body language if you like, and it could be that some members of the seminar might have felt put off." -- Kirzner, quoted by Doherty

Kirzner also comments on the weird cohort:

"Another aspect of those years that has to be kept in mind is that for various sociological reasons Mises became surrounded by people who were very eager to protect him. Some of those well-meaning individuals may have projected an image Mises is not to be criticized, not to be disagreed with. That was unfortunate..." -- Kirzner, quoted by Doherty

Margit Von Mises, the great man's wife describes the behavior of his acolytes:

"four or five students had formed a group in order to protect the professor against dissident students who opposed his views. They occupied a table ahead of the class next to the professor in order to be ready to protect him against any possible violence." -- Margit Von Mises, quoted by Doherty

Murray Rothbard, a later cult leader, was one of these followers. I do not list more because I do not want to encourage propertarians. George Koether was another admirer:

"Mises's friend George Koether, an editor at Look magazine, commissioned a bronze bust of the great scholar." -- Doherty

I have not exhausted the oddities of Von Mises' seminars. These cult meetings were important in preserving the Austrian school until the 1974 South Royalton Conference on Austrian Economics.

I have any number of posts about the silliness, confusion, and lack of scholarship from Von Mises: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.

Update: Here Israel Kirzner re-iterates the weirdness of Von Mises' seminar in a speech reflecting on his career

Basically, both AnCaps and AnComs believe in a stateless society. However, AnCaps believe that statelessness will bring free markets, private property, self-ownership, and voluntaryism, while AnComs believe that the abolition of the state will bring decommodification and the communization of the means of production.

All anarchists believe that the abolition of the state will bring about their vision of society. So, why don't all anarchists form one movement if their means and actions are the same-namely, the abolition of government?

I suddenly had this question today, so I asked GPT to help me organize the major cases from roughly the past 75 years and compare them using approximately the same standard.

I chose China and the United States because, in broad ideological and political-economic terms, they can be seen as two opposite extremes: China as an extreme example of communist totalitarianism, and the United States as an extreme example of imperialist capitalism.

China under the CCP 1950–53 — Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries 1957–59 — Anti-Rightist Campaign 1958–62 — Great Leap Forward and Great Famine 1966–76 — Cultural Revolution 1979/80–2015 — Coercive One-Child Policy, including forced abortions and sterilizations 1989 — Tiananmen crackdown and nationwide political repression 1999 onward — Nationwide persecution of Falun Gong 2008 — Tibet crackdown 2009 — Xinjiang/Urumqi crackdown, arrests and disappearances 2015 — 709 Crackdown on human-rights lawyers and activists 2017 onward — Mass detention and systematic repression in Xinjiang 2019/20 onward — Hong Kong political crackdown and National Security Law 2020–23 — Zero-COVID: extreme lockdowns, forced quarantine and barriers to food and medical care, followed by an abrupt reopening and massive excess mortality 2026 — Guangxi floods and reservoir failures: 100+ confirmed deaths and an ongoing investigation into disaster-response responsibility (not counted below as a proven human-rights disaster yet)

United States 1950s–65 — Jim Crow segregation and racial disenfranchisement (already underway when the 75-year window begins) 1932–72 — Tuskegee syphilis study: no informed consent and effective treatment withheld (already underway, so not counted as a new start) 1956–71 — COINTELPRO: FBI surveillance, infiltration and disruption of political and civil-rights groups 1964–73 — Vietnam War and the U.S. bombing campaigns in Laos and Cambodia 1965–66 — U.S. support for the Indonesian Army during anti-communist mass killings in which hundreds of thousands were killed 1970s — Indian Health Service sterilizations with serious failures in informed-consent procedures 1981–90 — U.S. support for the Contra war against Nicaragua; the International Court of Justice later found that the U.S. had violated international law through its use of force and intervention 1991 — Gulf War: U.S.-led bombing caused civilian deaths and extensive destruction of Iraqi civilian infrastructure 2001–21 — Afghanistan War: invasion, civilian casualties, displacement and detention abuses 2002 onward — Guantánamo Bay: indefinite detention, torture and detainees held for years without criminal charges 2003–11 — Iraq invasion and occupation: mass civilian casualties, displacement and detention/torture abuses, including Abu Ghraib 2004–18 — U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan, including civilian deaths and strikes investigated as possible unlawful killings 2011 — U.S.-backed NATO intervention in Libya, including civilian deaths from airstrikes and subsequent destabilization 2014–19 — U.S.-led air war in Iraq and Syria, including substantial civilian casualties 2015 onward — U.S. military, intelligence and logistical support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen despite repeated unlawful attacks on civilians 2017 onward — Major expansion of U.S. airstrikes in Somalia, with documented civilian deaths and possible unlawful strikes 2018 — Zero-Tolerance border policy and separation of more than 3,000 migrant children from their parents 2023 onward — Extensive U.S. military and diplomatic support for Israel during the Gaza war amid enormous civilian casualties, mass displacement and allegations of war crimes and genocide 2025 — Large-scale direct U.S. strikes in Yemen, with significant reported civilian casualties 2025 onward — U.S. military strikes on suspected drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing suspected traffickers without conventional criminal trials and raising serious international-law questions January 2026 — Direct U.S. military attack on Venezuela and capture of Nicolás Maduro February 2026 onward — U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, involving large-scale strikes and a continuing regional conflict

Very rough frequency comparison

Using this expanded list changes the result substantially.

If every distinct episode is counted separately:

CCP China: roughly one new major human-rights/state-policy disaster every 5.8–6 years. United States: roughly one every 3.5–4 years.

If closely related events are grouped into broader political or military waves:

CCP China: roughly one major wave every 6–7 years. United States: roughly one major wave every 5–6 years.

So after including U.S. actions abroad, my original estimate for the United States was clearly too long.

This is obviously sensitive to definitions. I’m not claiming this is a scientific “human-rights disaster index.” I’m trying to apply approximately the same threshold to two very different political-economic systems.

What would you add, remove, merge or reclassify?

(Thanks to u/RedMarsRepublic for pointing out the U.S. overseas interventions and wars I originally missed — that substantially changed the comparison.)

I’ve had two different kinds of conversation with proponents of capitalism online:

In the first, I am told that the category of “means of production” is meaningless. Since humans can create value with almost any tool (or simply our own hands), it doesn’t make sense to distinguish between means of production and other goods, objects, resources, etc. This is usually in the context of debates about socializing ownership of the means of production versus maintaining personal ownership of consumer goods—for example, in the infamous toothbrush example.

In the second, I am told that we must distinguish between capital goods, those goods that we use to make other goods, and consumer goods, those that we consume to satisfy some personal want or need. A capitalist who buys a tractor, for example, is investing in a production good (and thus deferring consumption), while a farmer who feeds the mechanic who maintains the tractor is merely supplying consumption goods (and thus not deferring consumption).

Can someone reconcile these for me? Is there a diagnostic criterion by which we can reliably distinguish between capital goods and non-capital goods, or is the distinction, or is the distinction perhaps socially contingent?

To be sure this wouldnt satisfy socialists but wouldnt this remove a lot of the worst things we associate with modern capitalism as practiced in America for instance? Hey you dont want war? Vote for me, I wont get into one! does... Oh you gotta get congressional approval to renew hostilities after the alleged emergency? Well lets make dirty political games to see who can be turned for decisive votes for future kickbacks or favors or whatever...this would be easy 200 years ago, with the internet now its trivially easy. You can change quite a bit in local administration as a rule (maybe even in a federal state system by state I dont know) but the electoral systems seem too inert... theyre even being degraded into worse forms than this type of direct democracy even by proponents of the former.

Is it just assumed people are too fickle for the government to function properly, each sustained action sabotaged? Or that people dont know enough about the details? Then doesnt that logic apply to electoral democracy as well? And arent secret or not so secret interests much easier to capture the system as it stands? Obviously there would have to be independent institutions giving accurate data on what each thing costs, the budget etc

Obviously Im not defending mob rule. There should be layers of validation the most fundamental the policy in debate is just like we have that for regular constitutional changes.

Btw im not American but it does seem to be the most corrupted major democracy at least as far as positive freedoms go (i.e. ability to get things done you want and stopping things you dont want, as opposed to the state just not interfering with your life in certain areas). I also dont get things there like presidential pardons, lifetime supreme judges, etc.

Capitalists claim that unless you get paid, you will not do anything.

But there seems to be major flaws with this logic.

First of all, the capitalist system itself commodifies everything, so it forces you to have money to do everything. Therefore, in terms of cause and effect, is it that it is human nature to fail to do anything without profit motive, or that capitalism forces one to seek money?

Secondly, it is much more plausible that humans are hardwired to chase self-interest as opposed to money, that is, money is only one avenue of self-interest: self-interest can come in different ways, even via empathy. This is very easily able to be proven: money is a relatively modern invention.

Consider reviews. Why do so many people leave reviews of products/businesses for free? This is something businesses would wish to pay for. Like testimonials. But we see that people do this for free. Why? Because it shows humans have a natural desire to be heard. So this is one proof that not everything needs profit motive to be implemented.

The other major flaw with capitalist thinking is that "capitalism lifted the world out of poverty". This is such as silly and superficial statement. It implies that the natural order of the world was poverty, until capitalism heroically "changed the natural horrible order". This simply doesn't appear to be factual. You can't apply modern lens to ancient people. Humans were doing fine before. They had different problems, but they also had less of many modern problems. It is difficult to compare, and on balance they were not doing bad. It is only after agriculture revolution that major problems were introduced, but even that is exaggerated. For example in Europe even after the fall of feudalism people had nostalgia for it. So it can be fair to say that capitalism refined things compared to agricultural revolution and beyond. But human history spans way before 10k years: for the vast majority of our history we were fine. "Nature" was not brutal. Yes it could be, but it also had much less daily stressors. And people back then had nothing to compare it with, they were doing just fine. It is just silly to say "because people did not have running water in faucets and laundry machines and AI they were horribly abused and oppressed and suffering on a daily basis". They managed fine/it was nature/normal. And it is also illogical to say "ok then right now, when your whole life you lived in a city, go in the middle of a forest alone and then tell me capitalism is not needed".. it doesn't work like that.