| > Of the economic systems in discussion, capitalism has the least alienation is it true though? I believe it's never been measured by anybody and you're only speculating here. > Marxist solutions are either pure fantasy, or have been tried and lead to worse outcomes If that was true, why the most capitalistic power in the World and recent history was so scares by them that went to war against them and used every dirty trick in the book to replace them with dictators or puppets (sometimes they were literally Nazis...) > how they undercut themselves when discussing it. you keep saying it, but the how it's not clear to me. It looks to me your knowledge of Marxism is incomplete. Marx was impressed by capitalism, he simply thought that capitalism was detrimental for the working class and that through the class struggle they could improve their conditions and participation to the wealth. Marx wasn't against capitalism, but he knew it was tuned to favour the ruling classes and the bourgeoisie, but also argued that it was the most productive system the World had ever seen. It's only a matter of where you stand: with billionaires that amass capital like never before while their employees do not earn enough money to make a living, while also being alienated by the work they do, or not. It's bad enough to be alienated, it's much worse if the system only rewards those that do not actually do the work and/or do not need or deserve so much wealth. Marxists systems were not worse of capitalistic ones on average, for example at the times Yugoslavia wasn't in worse shape than Greece and what happened in Romania wasn't much different from what Franco did in Spain, a fascist dictotator supported by the USA in exchange for military bases. Life in Cuba or Peronist Argentina was probably similar to Portugal, if not slightly better. Of course USA had a better life style than communist Poland, but they literally had the highest standard of living in the World, it really doesn't describe capitalism in general, USA are an outlier where the good and the bad of their system show themselves to the extremes (and now it's mostly the bad i.e. the tribalism and the violence). it's the distribution of wealth that is much different in the two systems, capitalists simply don't like that: to share But even if it was true that all non capitalistic countries were much worse than capitalistic countries, literally everyone was in the same boat and services were free for everybody. |