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My sister recently posted a series of problems she has with "capitalism" on Instagram. They basically all boiled down to "I don't want to have to work" I didn't

My sister recently posted a series of problems she has with "capitalism" on Instagram. They basically all boiled down to "I don't want to have to work" I didn't have the heart to point out that "He who does not work shall not eat." Was said by Karl Marx. I feel that part of the youths obsession with socialism and blaming capitalism is that they have never experienced scarcity to any real degree and because of that do not understand that there are limited resources, and their issue is fundamentally with that concept that they want to blame on capitalism.

selimthegrim 3y ago
Marx kind of borrowed that from the Bible.
- tcmart14 3y ago
  Yup. Marx borrowed a lot. Very little of Marx's ideas on their own are original. Really what he did was stitch together work from multiple sources. Lots of his contradictions of capitalism come from Adam Smith in some form. Marx is also, if I remember correctly, influence by early christian communes. As I said, most of his ideas taken individually are not original to him, it is only when it is all combined, it is original.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  Lots of people borrowed that from the Bible, but AFAICT Marx isn’t one of them (Lenin is, but even as much as Leninists like to pretend Leninism is Marxism, even they don’t pretend Marx and Lenin are literally the same person.)
  - selimthegrim 3y ago
    Correct, I was responding to OP but it was Lenin.
mrkeen 3y ago
Are you saying your sister is the straw man in this debate?
dragonwriter 3y ago
> I didn't have the heart to point out that "He who does not work shall not eat." Was said by Karl Marx. The Communist writer known for adopting that passage of II Thessalonians as “the first principle of socialism” is Lenin (in The State and Revolution [1917]), not Marx. Non-Leninist Marxists tend to not have a very high opinion of Lenin, in general.
- cyber_kinetist 3y ago
  And the historical context behind Lenin’s words was that in a early state of socialism (like the beginnings of the Soviet Union) it needs tons of immediate forced labor to industrialize to come to a point where it can provide the basic needs for all people (to eventually advance into full communism.) In other words, things were pretty dire. To quote the full text: “The socialist principle, "He who does not work shall not eat", is already realized; the other socialist principle, "An equal amount of products for an equal amount of labor", is also already realized. But this is not yet communism, and it does not yet abolish "bourgeois law", which gives unequal individuals, in return for unequal (really unequal) amounts of labor, equal amounts of products. This is a "defect" according to Marx, but it is unavoidable in the first phase of communism; for if we are not to indulge in utopianism, we must not think that having overthrown capitalism people will at once learn to work for society without any rules of law.” (Chapter 5, Section 3, "The First Phase of Communist Society") You can’t say the same thing to the US, which already has an advanced economy with most agricultural/industrial production being heavily automated or offshored, and where a large portion of people are working unproductive bullshit jobs in order to just have a living wage.
antisthenes 3y ago
> I feel that part of the youths obsession with socialism and blaming capitalism is that they have never experienced scarcity to any real degree and because of that do not understand that there are limited resources, and their issue is fundamentally with that concept that they want to blame on capitalism. A very large portion of Gen Z and some Millennials as well legitimately believe we live in a post-scarcity society where work is optional. I'm not sure if this is a result of an extremely privileged upbringing or an education system failure, but they hold these beliefs pretty firmly. Not sure they can actually empirically justify them to any degree but there it is.
- danaris 3y ago
  We do not yet live in a society where we can get by with no one working. We do live in a society where we could absolutely house, feed, and clothe every person in the Western world without requiring them to pay for these things, and still be hugely net-positive on productivity. Fortunately, we now have ample evidence that if you provide for people's needs, unless there is some very pressing reason not to (eg, sick, disabled, caring for children full-time, massively burnt out by our current stressful work environment), people still want to work. So we should absolutely be doing the above. It would benefit the whole society, and only hurt those who will no longer be able to control others by holding the threat of death by starvation and exposure over them.

selimthegrim 3y ago

Marx kind of borrowed that from the Bible.

tcmart14 3y ago
Yup. Marx borrowed a lot. Very little of Marx's ideas on their own are original. Really what he did was stitch together work from multiple sources. Lots of his contradictions of capitalism come from Adam Smith in some form. Marx is also, if I remember correctly, influence by early christian communes. As I said, most of his ideas taken individually are not original to him, it is only when it is all combined, it is original.
dragonwriter 3y ago
Lots of people borrowed that from the Bible, but AFAICT Marx isn’t one of them (Lenin is, but even as much as Leninists like to pretend Leninism is Marxism, even they don’t pretend Marx and Lenin are literally the same person.)
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  Correct, I was responding to OP but it was Lenin.

mrkeen 3y ago

Are you saying your sister is the straw man in this debate?

dragonwriter 3y ago

> I didn't have the heart to point out that "He who does not work shall not eat." Was said by Karl Marx. The Communist writer known for adopting that passage of II Thessalonians as “the first principle of socialism” is Lenin (in The State and Revolution [1917]), not Marx. Non-Leninist Marxists tend to not have a very high opinion of Lenin, in general.

cyber_kinetist 3y ago
And the historical context behind Lenin’s words was that in a early state of socialism (like the beginnings of the Soviet Union) it needs tons of immediate forced labor to industrialize to come to a point where it can provide the basic needs for all people (to eventually advance into full communism.) In other words, things were pretty dire. To quote the full text: “The socialist principle, "He who does not work shall not eat", is already realized; the other socialist principle, "An equal amount of products for an equal amount of labor", is also already realized. But this is not yet communism, and it does not yet abolish "bourgeois law", which gives unequal individuals, in return for unequal (really unequal) amounts of labor, equal amounts of products. This is a "defect" according to Marx, but it is unavoidable in the first phase of communism; for if we are not to indulge in utopianism, we must not think that having overthrown capitalism people will at once learn to work for society without any rules of law.” (Chapter 5, Section 3, "The First Phase of Communist Society") You can’t say the same thing to the US, which already has an advanced economy with most agricultural/industrial production being heavily automated or offshored, and where a large portion of people are working unproductive bullshit jobs in order to just have a living wage.

antisthenes 3y ago

> I feel that part of the youths obsession with socialism and blaming capitalism is that they have never experienced scarcity to any real degree and because of that do not understand that there are limited resources, and their issue is fundamentally with that concept that they want to blame on capitalism. A very large portion of Gen Z and some Millennials as well legitimately believe we live in a post-scarcity society where work is optional. I'm not sure if this is a result of an extremely privileged upbringing or an education system failure, but they hold these beliefs pretty firmly. Not sure they can actually empirically justify them to any degree but there it is.

danaris 3y ago
We do not yet live in a society where we can get by with no one working. We do live in a society where we could absolutely house, feed, and clothe every person in the Western world without requiring them to pay for these things, and still be hugely net-positive on productivity. Fortunately, we now have ample evidence that if you provide for people's needs, unless there is some very pressing reason not to (eg, sick, disabled, caring for children full-time, massively burnt out by our current stressful work environment), people still want to work. So we should absolutely be doing the above. It would benefit the whole society, and only hurt those who will no longer be able to control others by holding the threat of death by starvation and exposure over them.