this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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Late Stage Capitalism

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[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Look you can argue this point as much as you like but you're wrong. I'm citing actual theory and you're going off what "feels right" to you. What you personally believe is "feasible" or "not feasible" is completely irrelevant.

If you won't believe one of the authors of the Communist Manifesto, then maybe you'll believe Wikipedia, which says in the first line:

In Marxist thought, a communist society or the communist system is the type of society and economic system postulated to emerge from technological advances in the productive forces, representing the ultimate goal of the political ideology of communism. A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access[1][2] to the articles of consumption and is classless, stateless, and moneyless,[3][4][5][6] implying the end of the exploitation of labour.[7][8]


As I've explained to you several times, this is the end goal, an ideal to work towards, and not a policy to be implemented right away. Let me try to explain this to you.

Right now, you need money for everything. You need it for rent, you need it for food, you need it for transportation, for entertainment, for luxuries, etc. This makes people very dependent on the capitalist system, on wage labor, it makes it so that you have no choice but to sell your labor to survive. People will put up with a lot to keep their jobs because they're afraid they'll end up on the street otherwise. Some people will even put up with things like sexual harassment at work, or they'll stay in an unhealthy relationship so they have a place to stay, or sell drugs, whatever. Ain't no rest for the wicked.

Now, imagine that the state implements a free housing program. Now that you're no longer dependent on money to avoid being homeless, you are no longer as desperate for it. Of course, there's still plenty of stuff you can buy with it, but you have a safety net, and with that safety net, the balance of power at your job has shifted - if you get on your bosses bad side, you'll be faced with a meager living situation but not a desperate one. Because money is no longer used to buy housing, it has become a little bit less critical to your life.

Now, imagine that, one by one, over time, more and more things are moved out of the financial sphere and distributed based on need or fairness. With each step, money becomes a little more "superfluous." You don't need it for food or rent, you don't need it to get to work, you don't need it to pay for internet, etc. It becomes something that's used only for luxuries, collectables, imported goods, that sort of thing. Nobody goes around seizing everybody's money, it just becomes more and more limited in its applications.

Eventually, is it really so impossible to imagine a world where money is so limited that it doesn't really matter anymore? Where it has become "superfluous" and is eventually eliminated altogether? Obviously, such a transformation could not happen overnight. But we can certainly take steps to move in that direction, like the housing program I suggested. And taking steps in the direction of that vision is what Marx and Engles advocated for. Objectively. Indisputably. Even if you personally can't imagine it, others have.


If you're going to keep insisting that I'm wrong, then I have to ask where your ideas about what communism is come from, because they certainly don't come from reading theory. And I don't mind explaining things to people, but I do mind when people try to assert that I'm wrong about something without knowing basic facts about what we're talking about.