I had an argument with a lecturer earlier this week.
Marx was a very bearded fellow who had many of the works ascribed to him written by his wife, I was informed. The key point of those works was to end exploitation of the worker by removing ownership of factories from non-workers and only let workers own the factories they work in.
As you may know some history of the Communist Republic of China and the Soviet Union, the commies lost and the capitalists won!
This has lead a lot of American capitalist venerators declaring they hold the key to superiority because communism was the opposite of capitalism.
I disagree.
Capitalism and communism both functioned on the same foundation, that of exploitation. Neither system intrinsically include a set of socialist regulations designed to protect workers. Merely removing the upper class does not guarantee fair wages or good working conditions or affordable housing or access to education or health.
But that wasn’t my point.
My point was this: both capitalism and communism depend on exploitation of natural resources.
Positioning capitalism as the thesis and communism as the antithesis is a false dichotomy, one that can never reach resolution. The fall of CCCP and USSR proves this: capitalism strengthened into globalisation and neoliberalism – there was no resolution.
The thesis is exploitation of the natural environment by white European economic ideologies. The antithesis is sustainable civilisation as exemplified by ancient Australians and Edo Japan.
The resolution?
This shall be proven over the next 40 years as climate disasters prevent both the thesis and the antithesis from functioning as separate entities.