It gets easier, actually! So I wouldn’t call it Sisyphean. Different parts of Lemmy have different levels of understanding, if I can get parts mostly aware to be more aware, then that helps trickle into other instances, and it’s easier than doing so in instances where Marxism is seen hostiley.

Welcome, comrade! @[email protected] has a fantastic Crash Course Socialism you can check out, and if you want to get into theory but don’t find the Communist Manifesto to be approachable, I recommend my “Read Theory, Darn It!” introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list. It has audiobooks, and starts off simpler than the Communist Manifesto.

Most books by Ha-joon Chang, especially 23 things they don’t tell you about capitalism. Fun fact, Ha-joon Chang isn’t a Marxist, he’s a liberal, but his writing is still critical enough of capitalism that South Korea banned his books.

Anything on prolewiki’s library are good reads as well.

For a broad look at the evolution modes of productions and how capitalism came to be there is this 60s textbook from the soviet academy of science, there even are a series of videos following the textbook by the finish bolshevik that is pretty good.

For a more all-round perspective, I recommend Hajoon Chang’s “economics: the user’s guide”.

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I’ll be honest, I picked this meme precisely because I knew it would draw out liberals, and I think it’s been effective in convincing a few people to reconsider their prior understanding.

Because they are taught to never, ever, read any of his books. It’s the Necronomicon for them.

There exists a strong current within Liberal economics that asserts that the formation we have arrived at now is because over time, Humanity has assumed the system most fit for our nature. Some take the path you percieve it as, a focus on greed, rather than Capitalism specifically, but that’s not what the meme addresses.

The advancement Marx made is recognizing Capitalism as merely one stage in the progression of Modes of Production historically. His analysis of Socialism and Communism was rooted in how it naturally emerges from Capitalism, just as Capitalism had emerged from Feudalism. The Capitalist Realists, who see Capitalism as eternal, stand in contrast to that notion and assert Capitalism as the final default stage. “There is no alternative,” of Thatcher.

Capitalism is not about individuals being greedy. Calling capitalists greedy is like calling fish greedy for needing water. The capitalist system requires constant profit maximization to prevent firms from crumbling, the capitalists are tasked with ensuring this, generally by (at first) maximizing exchange value of their product and minimizing costs (usually labor), then later using monopoly position to charge economic rent. In the heart of empire, financialization has meant trying to skip the first step via large financial investment up front, like with tech monopolies. The system itself forces exploitation, dispossession, colonialism, and ultimately crisis and war.

Historical empires conquered for reasons we often don’t really know specifically, as the accounts we have are written by victors with limited access and understanding. But ancient peoples were just as sophisticated as us and subject to material forces as us, so it was certainly not just being greedy. The economic base can force hands, for example. The Roman slave and debt system was unsustainable and required debt jubilees and war and invasions to be maintained, for example. For the ruling class of Rome, was maintaining the empire only greed or was it what they were taught to do as the moral and right thing?

I recommend this thread, though maybe don’t bother going down the chain that far as it becomes a stalemate.

Essentially, you’re correct in that tribal societies were very communistic, but not Communist. Marxists call this “primitive communism,” as a distinguishing factor from Communism, a highly industrialized and global society emerging from Socialism.

The truth is, all modes of production are “human nature.” Human nature, after all, is malleable, and is largely determined by which mode of production humanity finds itself in. Each mode of production turns into another due to human nature, Capitalism is merely also human nature, just like feudalism, tribal societies, as is Socialism and eventually Communism.

This comment is like telling Superman not to lift with his back.

I didn’t make the meme, so 🤷

Just wrote the description.

I’d say it depends more on the Mode of Production. Early humanity found it integral to survive, and many groups even today rely on Mutual Aid to continue. However, it isn’t a hard requirement across all classes in society, yet these class formations are also “human nature,” just as the conditions to eventually abolish class society are “human nature” as well.

Answered here. Commerce isn’t Capitalism, and neither is small manufacture.

Where’s the steam engines and factories?

I would argue that you’d need Publically Traded Companies, and thus Stocks, and thus a Stock Market, and also Stock Exchanges to be able to form a Capitalism.

Of course, “private ownership of the means of production” is an important aspect as well.

I think you’ll also find that the upvote to downvote ratio is very positive, few people are commenting expressly to agree with me, while those who disagree feel compelled to respond. Further, there is a strain of liberal economics that believes Capitalism is the natural end result, the Thatcherite “there is no alternative.”