this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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To be fair, it usurped feudalism, and it socialized & developed the productive forces, thus making industrial socialism possible.
On the other hand, it turns out that revolutions were possible in countries like Russia and China that haven't yet made a full transition to industrial capitalism.
Good point. And China has taken advantage of capitalism’s better features than the USSR did, to good effect.
indeed
Usurped feudalism? Nah, it really didn't. It just changed it to something like it, but far worse.
Both capitalism and feudalism are class societies, but the conditions of industrialization accelerated by capitalism have dramatically improved on feudal squalor. Life expectancy has dramatically improved the world over, and the conditions for collective ownership and planning are possible because capitalism paved the way for it.
Capitalism has come with its own atrocities, and in many ways workers are less obviously exploited but to an even greater degree, but is still a historical stepping stone as a progressive movement from feudalism, that which will be usurped by socialism.
You really can't say that life expectancy has improved, just because you have created more customers. At the same time you have polluted every single part of the planet, and people are suffering because of this, and we are killing of species in record speed.
It's sick, sorry to say, that you think that capitalism paved the way for anything good.
Oh, maybe you should read up on socialism, because that's really what's have made the world a better place.
Name one concrete example of capitalism bettering the world - and be careful not to confuse your example with that of socialism?!?
I think you're deeply confused, here. I'm a communist, I support socialism and working our way to communism. Life expectancy has dramatically improved from feudalism, and it isn't close. Socialist countries like Cuba, the PRC, and former USSR would never have existed had capitalism not come into existence yet, as industrialization is the base that allows for planned, collectivized production.
To be fair, isn't the reason life expectancy improved is largely attributed to China uplifting over 800 million people out of poverty?
While yes, the overthrow of feudalism, which prevented scientific progress as it had threatened the ruling class's power, led to medical advancements, better food production and access, etc., capitalism negated a lot of improvements toward life expectancy because of deadly working conditions, genocide, wars, colonialism, etc.
I do agree with your point that capitalism is often a necessity to eventually enable a socialist revolution to be possible once it faces crises from its contradictions and did contribute, at least indirectly, to increased life expectancy, Russia/USSR and China, as mentioned above, are examples of nations that were able to achieve socialism earlier, and their impact towards humanity cannot be understated.
Capitalism certainly lowered life expectancy initially, Marx makes this abundantly clear in Capital - Volume 1. However, with industrialization came advancements in socialized production (not socialist, socialized, ie cooperative work on an expanded and industrial scale in capitalism), which allowed for an acceleration of the sciences. Feudalism was holding science back, which in turn held medical science back. Same with farming, industrial farming increased outputs dramatically.
The Soviet Union and PRC absolutely made more dramatic improvements on a far-shorter time scale thanks to socialism, and indeed they did not rely on a developed period of capitalism (though they still depended on market forces), but the proletarian ideology of Marxism could not have come to existence without the prevalence of capitalism somewhere, this case being western Europe, allowing Marx to make critical advancements and Lenin to analyze the impacts on imperialism to successfully lead a revolution.
Feudalism was more obviously exploitative, and to a lesser extent than capitalism's theft of surplus value, but the sheer productive capacity of market forces ultimately provided the base for class struggle and development of proletarian ideology.
That's fair
I might misunderstand you, but I'm not confused. And you should read up on history. The communist manifest was written mainly from experience from feudalism. Capitalism was a waste of time, killing millions, if not a billion people, and a lot of species on the way - while polluting the earth, air and water on the way...
We have always known how to work together. That's what a tribe, a people, a town was for. If we didn't, we wouldn't have survived as a species.
The Communist Manifesto was written as an explicit response to capitalism. Marx's most important work is Capital. Returning to early cooperative societies is not what the Marxist position is, it's taking advantage of industrialization and instead collectivizing and planning society using what was created under conditions of capitalism as a base. Capitalism has indeed been monstrously damaging, but with the bad came the conditions for socialism.
You should read the Communist Manifesto, and history books as well.
No it was not. But bright as you are, and knowledgeable, then please do tell me, where did Marx go to find inspiration for the communist manifesto and Das Kapital? Please enlighten me? Where in the world, at that time, did communism start to blossom? And why did it stop?
I did not say that the Marxist position was to return to the past. I said that you are wrong, to say that capitalism brought this on. You have no proof, what so ever, that capitalism has done any real good... Socialism has, workers fight for rights has - capitalism is the cancer of the whole world.
Follow your own advice and start reading now - but first tell me, where did Marx go to find inspiration for his work on communism?
Capital, Volume 1 was first published in 1867, when capitalism was dominant in western Europe and it was both dramatically improving production while pushing down the quality of life of the proletariat. Capital is a critique of "Political Economy," the common bourgeois justification for capitalism. Marx's chief observation about capitalism that enables socialism is capitalism's centralizing tendencies, which increases the ratio of proletarian to bourgeois, while also training the proletariat on how to run and administer a complex and centralized economy.
The old, tribal formations were not socialist, they had no socialized production. It was cooperative, but extremely small-scale. Feudalism did not pave the way for socialism, either, but instead gave birth to capitalism. Capitalism's centralization and introduction of large, industrial production does give way to a large, single class that can collectively run and plan production, ie socialism. From Manifesto of the Communist Party:
Communism has not stopped blooming. Or, rather, it hasn't started, either. Communism is a future system of fully collectivized, classless production. Socialism is still thriving, of course, it's the form of economy of the PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, etc.
Tell me, what should I read of Marx that goes against the theory of historical materialism and scientific socialism?
One more, for good measure, from Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith:
I can see, that you couldn't answer my simple question. And therefore you shouldn't claim that you know the history of Marx. Here's a little helper for you, but I doubt you are interested. You seem like a guy who thinks he has al the knowledge in the world, and won't ever admit to not knowing things. But do try to read about the Paris Commune, and how the common people worked together, shared and was then brutally attacked and punished by the rich people of France, and even Germany (which they had just been in a war with). The rich of both countries feared workers power more, than they feared each other. But that's where "Communism" come from, the Paris Commune...
You error is, that you think that capitalism did something that feudalism wasn't already doing.
The French Revolution was in 1789, after which France became capitalist, and the Paris Commune was in 1871. The Manifesto of the Communist Party came out in 1848, predating the Paris Commune. The words "communism" and "communist" are old, older than Marx and the French communards, but Marxism is not based on feudalism in any way. It's based on historical materialism, and as I've shown, is a post-socialist, post-capitalist system. The Paris Commune was short-lived, and did not manage to reach communism, they did not collectivize all property, nor could they have in such a short amount of time.
Marx did not invent the term "communism," nor did the French communards. Capitalism was widespread in western Europe prior to Marx being born and well before the Paris Commune. The manifesto of the communist party, written by Marx and Engels, both predates the Paris Commune, and is something made well after Marx's theoretical framework was created and written about for decades.
You're deeply unserious.
I can see that you are a classic fact denier, and therefore I'll just let you live with your confusions. Far be it for me to waste time on getting you to know your errors.
What facts did I deny?