Marx would likely be appalled by most any authoritarian communist regime.
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2026
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Marx would be amazed how much capitalism built over last century
I think you'd be amazed to find that oil built that.
Almost like they don't actually represent communist ideals at all or something...
It’s the basic human tendency to take an unbiased ideology, broadcast an unintended interpretation to generate a following, then build a cult that puts them in power.
The oldest trick in the book. And it sadly works, nearly every time.
Given what I know about Marx as a historical figure and what he observe to come to his conclusions but having not read his work (Capital is a literal textbook and the Communist Manifesto is short and dry) I can hazard a guess that Marx would probably be with the punks and what's left of Redneck lefties. Either that or he'd be an autistic online shit poster because I'm pretty damned sure he had the right personality.
Read up on the Hague congress. Although wielding anti-authoritarian rhetoric, Marx de facto was authoritarian in his practice and used bureaucratic maneuvers to exclude the anarchists from the internationale. Punks are generally anarchists and therefore Marx wouldn't be one.
Also read up on lumpenproletariat. Marx was ironically quite bourgeois in his outlook and values, he admired orderly industrial society and had very harsh words towards the underbelly of society — explicitly listing beggars, prostitutes, vagabonds and the like as degenerate and scum. Punks are very much constituted from these strata and therefore would be despised by Marx.
Marx would perhaps be appalled by later authoritarian marxists, but their theory and practice are very much extensions of his own. Depicting Marx as anti-authoritarian and counter-cultural is revisionism.
Was legit unaware of that, though I've only done a surface level look at him due to my greater interest in pre-marxist American socialism and anarchism which in a lot of cases is folk in nature and thusly rarely interacts with more refined models. Thanks for the info and frankly I'm not too surprised, kinda like what happened with the forerunners of the enlightenment often times being of the very aristocracy it would criticize.
Communist Manifesto has jokes. They are subtle.
It does but it still comes off as pretty dry. 1800s works tend to be that way unless it was written by Mark Twain and even then Tom Sawyer is still pretty close.
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as Marxism, is in fact, GNU/Marxism, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Marxism. Marxism is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called Marxism, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Marxism, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Marxism is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Marxism is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Marxism added, or GNU/Marxism. All the so-called Marxism distributions are really distributions of GNU/Marxism!
jokes on you, I also use MUSL/centre-left and BSD/anarchism
Free [open source] software, you mean.
It's more about software freedom than mere access to the code.
Open source implies libre. It's arbitrary I know. What you're referring to is "source available". Like TF2, Proton products, etc.
If you have access to the code, why is it not free?
Unfortunately having access to all the pixels that make up a movie or all the words that make up a book doesn’t make either free, and the same thing applies to code depending on licenses
Thank you :)
For example Unreal Engine is source available. Can't redistribute it, can't fork it and make a new version for the public. Still need to pay Epic when you release a game and make revenue over one million.
Some open source projects sell recompiled and signed copies and if you want it free, you can compile from source.
It’s a convenience thing…
License. The owner of the source can still limit what you can (legally) do with it.
Which raises the question: Is Karl Marx an MIT or a GPL man?
Under Communism, probably public domain. Under Capitalism definitely GPL.
In addition to the other comment, a lot of companies typically sell support for their software, not the software itself. That counts for a lot in the business world
Free doesn't mean free. It means free.
Yeah yeah I know, I just didn’t remember what free actually meant
If Marx were alive today he'd probably hate modern day "marxists" and they'd hate him.
say it louder, don't think .ML heard you lul
They hear. .Ml is full of stoop kids. They don't leave their stoop.
He hated Marxists in his own lifetime
There's one thing that's always true about leftists.
They only eat other leftists.
If USA user base knew English, they wouldn't brake the rules. But hey, fuck of what the rules say.
I do enjoy reports mate.
It’s ‘break,’ for what it’s worth.
One thing we know for sure is he'd be the biggest shitposter on lemmy.
If Marx was alive today, maybe he would be a furry femboy in thigh high socks and a hoodie. :3
You're projecting again. Doesn't help that I agree with you
Running gentoo or nix
Marx wouldn't be a Maoist?
According to the image he would be quite fond of open source software.
If Marx were alive today, he'd be whacking with Ben'll Frank you on The Hub.