Real communism hasn't been tried

>look up definition of communism
>doesn't fit said definition

If global income inequality is decreasing because some developing countries are catching up but is increasing inside developed countries since the 80s, how should we expect inequality to behave in the long term after said countries catch up?

Except it hasn't been increasing in developed countries either. The percentage of income earned by the top 1% was greater in 1939 than it is today, and that's gross income: before a progressive taxation system takes a lot of it out of the pockets of that top 1%; at least in the U.S., they pay 37% of all tax income.

Furthermore, at least in what Marx lays out in Kapital, income inequality in an absolute sense isn't what foments revolution, you'd have a very hard time making the case that there's greater income inequality now than under a feudal system, for instance. It's the decreasing share that the worker gets, until he has no point but to rise up in revolt to avoid starvation. (Which has happened in the past, but not usually in advanced economic systems).

Post 80s income inequalities have been largely the result of the top earning brackets increasing more quickly than other earning brackets, not that other earning brackets are falling. The choice between revolution and starvation has pretty much never been further away if you live in a developed country.

Peasant societies like Russia or China with no middle class to speak of underwent the revolution, by doing so, they skipped the necessary historical transitions of developing a full-fledged capitalist economy first, then socialism, and finally communism.

While Europe underwent the transition to social democracy and enjoyed the prosperity and innovation it brings.

Marx never criticized the social democracy we experience today.

>How many people here thought Marx was against capitalism? Marx was against capitalism? Almost nobody? Max wasn't against capitalism? How many think he wasn't against capitalism? One? Why do you think he wasn't against capitalism? Just get to a mic.

>Student: He wasn't against capitalism because Marx thought capitalism was a necessary step in getting to socialism.

>Professor: You're exactly right. So what Marx thought about capitalism was, and we're going to understand the reasons for this in detail in the next couple of lectures, that for a certain phase of history it was essential. He thought capitalism was the most innovative, dynamic, productive mode of production that had ever been dreamed up, and there was no way you could even think abut a socialist or a communist society developing unless you had capitalism first. And Marx would have had absolutely no sympathy for the Russian Revolution which was done in a peasant society, or the Chinese communist system either. He would have said they were completely premature because in the end it's going to be capitalism which is necessary to generate the wherewithal to make socialism possible. So he wouldn't have had any sympathy with the Leninist or Stalinist projects, which we'll talk about later.
oyc.yale.edu/transcript/808/plsc-118

I can't, for the life of me, understand why would any "marxist" describe himself as an anti-capitalist.

It's the best possible system at the moment, a historical inevitability, and Marx knew this.

Marx was the biggest defender of capitalism @ the time.

>Except it hasn't been increasing in developed countries either. The percentage of income earned by the top 1% was greater in 1939 than it is today (...)
>Post 80s income inequalities have been largely the result of the top earning brackets increasing more quickly than other earning brackets, not that other earning brackets are falling.
I didn't say that countries became more unequal since the 30s nor that worker income is falling. Inequality is increasing since the 80s though, and china and india will eventually catch up.

>The choice between revolution and starvation has pretty much never been further away if you live in a developed country.
There's no doubt about that, as long as you agree to rent yourself to property owners.
On the other hand, using the general increase in living standards as a pro capitalist argument is pretty poor, the same could be said about, say, slavist america or stalinist russia.

>the same could be said about, say, slavist america or stalinist russia.
Americans have managed it without enslaving or killing off their own population in droves desu.

I'm just saying that the argument is not enough to prove a social system desirable, and gave some examples. Also, to extreme leftists wage labor is basically slavery, so it's debatable.

>I didn't say that countries became more unequal since the 30s nor that worker income is falling. Inequality is increasing since the 80s though, and china and india will eventually catch up.

Again, so what if it does?

>On the other hand, using the general increase in living standards as a pro capitalist argument is pretty poor, the same could be said about, say, slavist america or stalinist russia.

I haven't been trying to argue that it's objectively good, if you can even make such a statement about an economic system. Rather, the predictions that Marx lays out in Kapital, the "inherent contradictions within capitalism that will lead to itself providing its own overthrow" do not seem to exist, probably because Marx never seemed to grasp Marginalism.

Marx all believed that all societies evolved in a strict linear fashion at the same rate. He encouraged capitalism because he believed that all capitalist societies would eventually become communist, and they would never revert back to capitalism

Absolutely nothing this kook said should be taken seriously

>Again, so what if it does?
Then inequality will rise in the long term, which i find undesirable, but in the context of this thread it makes "PPS income inequality is decreasing, get fucked" sort of irrelevant.

>Rather, the predictions that Marx lays out in Kapital, the "inherent contradictions within capitalism that will lead to itself providing its own overthrow" do not seem to exist, probably because Marx never seemed to grasp Marginalism.
Specify what predictions you are referring to and how marginalism would be relevant. I'm not a marxist but i'll answer anyway.

Yea until commies prove labor theory of value correct they can get fucked same with their inability to prove technology constantly creating new markets to derive profits from wrong

Well they tried communism in GERMANY and the result is eastern German economy being shit compared to the west even 30 years after unification.

Marx was no defender of capitalism. He believed that it was a terribly unstable system, bound to fall apart through historical necessity. Something workers would naturally rise up against as they became "conscious" of their collective condition. That's a way more damning verdict than the weak moral arguments people normally come up with.

marx had an extremely ignorant shallow and incomplete view of the masses-mind

Dude, DDR was an amazing state, and people still fucking miss it and want it back

>and people still fucking miss it and want it back

yeah, edgy 16 year old fedoralord communists.

real communism hasn't been tried because it can't be tried

FPBP

Communism isn't "tried" communsim is a temdency aim towards, with the end goal of abolition of money, state, provate property, and class. Communism has not been attained accept in proto communist societies of hunter-gatherers milennia ago.

>If global income inequality is decreasing because some developing countries are catching up but is increasing inside developed countries since the 80s, how should we expect inequality to behave in the long term after said countries catch up?

Median incomes are converging, and inequality between countries is falling, but the 'polarization of wealth' is increasing. Mutatis mutandis, you can expect middling incomes in developed countries to stagnate or fall slightly and their analog in developing countries to rise, while the real poverty line rises and the disparity between top earners and everyone else to increase.

If you're an egalitarian this is a mixed blessing, as obviously a vast portion of the world's population is seeing increases to their income and, by proxy, their quality of life comparable to what we've enjoyed in the West for the past 200 years.

If you're just some schmo living in Middle America you might feel a bit put out that you haven't seen a pay hike in 20 years and maybe there is some truth to the political shibboleth that 'they' took 'yer' job, which might push you to vote for some tub-thumping populist claiming he'll freeze out 'foreign' competion with imaginary trade tariffs.

And there are still senior citizens nostalgic for Nazism; what's your point?

Communism is the result of a socialist society reaching post-scarcity. It is Socialism that comes at the end of a developed economy.

Real socialism hasn't been tried. It's gotten so bad that most of the world thinks real socialism means income redistribution, welfare and handouts, which all have almost nothing to do with workers controlling the means of production.

That's why they built a wall, right?

It's mostly because the USSR was constantly taking shit from the DDR, where as the US was pumping money into West Germany. It had more to do with their relative prosperity due to their backers.

The USSR was intent on making the DDR a shittier place to live. They saw no reason a conquered nation should have a higher standard of living than the victorious conqueror. The USSR would have stolen every single one of the factories of those damn Nazis until they realized that you needed more than just the physical capital to produce quality goods.

The US on the other hand was rebuilding Europe, West Germany included, as a political bloc to counter the USSR. The US, unravaged by war and with a kickstarted economy due to WWII, saw economic opportunity to develop war-torn Europe and did so.

It's no wonder people fled from the DDR to the West, even though the DDR was by far the most prosperous state in the Soviet sphere of influence. The DDR's biggest problem was it's soviet "backers"

comunism will work if all the world sistem would be comunism...

>Marx SPECIFICALLY stated that a communist revolution could not occur in Russia
He literally said the exact opposite.

He identifies it as one of the regions most likely for one to occur.

Marx was right.
Russia was way too underdeveloped for a true Socialist state. The great majority of the people were peasants.
Plus, with the interference from the victorious allies and the Civil War, the Soviet state started off with weakness, famine and a conspiratorial mind set that the USSR never shook off.

>MEINE
>ERSTE
>BANANE

>what is Germany
>what is Czechoslovakia

Looks like communism fucked up in industrialized states too

>bound to fall apart through historical necessity.
Clearly the so-called capitalism we have in our countries isn't the horrible dystopia he was talking about.

Luckily for us, capitalism has never been tried.