You do realize: that FDR was very conscious of the risk of revolution right? As was Bismarck? Social reform-trade unions, public welfare, etc… were all implemented in part because the ruling classes feared working class revolution, as much as worker unrest often demanded it.
the above poster is also correct in stating Marx felt that more developed capitalist economies might achieve socialism through what amounted to a public referendum. The clinger is that trade unions and public welfare more or less satisfied the western working classes. And the labor parties and trade unions in the UK or the Netherlands or whatever were fine with the system as is. Rather than forcing some sort of confrontation by demanding that referendum.
Communism is anti religion. Persecution of religion was tragic-but I do think Marx was largely right about the sociological function of religion.
People want heaven because it fundamentally defers their discontent with their lives on earth.
let me quote the entire thing “
The foundation of irreligious criticism is:
Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But
man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is
the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an
inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an
inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual
point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the
fantastic realization of the human essence since the
human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle
against that world whose spiritual
aroma is religion.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the
expression of real suffering and a
protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the
opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the
illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their
real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to
give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore,
in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the
halo.”
This is a long winded way of saying-religion is both a projection of human longing, alienation, and dissatisfaction, which both distorts the real source and real solution to the actual causes of these things, religion goes away when the initial conditions that sustain its power are dissolved.
While religion in human cognition is more complex than this-I do think that more or less this is true. Religion reflects human aspirations, and is a salve on the pain, misery, and indignities of “real” life.
He didn't. End of story. FDR as a president genuinely defies his historical progression, and I will now go vomit for needing to praise FDR.
Hardly, all FDR did was provide material needs and services during the Great Depression. This is what marxists call concessions. The capitalist ruling class giving the workers stuff to mollify their discontent.
Because Karl Marx was a few hundred years too early. Communism can only work in a post-scarce society which we're approaching closer and closer to, but we're still perhaps half a century to a century off. At that point though it wouldn't even be "Communist" it would be more akin to what we see in for instance shows like Star Trek: TNG where you can just "materialize" your own food and have an infinite amount of it, but that wouldn't necessarily mean the concept of work would just disappear, rather transform into something completely different. That's implying a post-scarce society is possible in the future though, and we don't nuke ourselves into oblivion and that Capitalism ever gets phased out.
You say this, but forget that capitalism requires scarcity. Scarcity of labor primarily. If everyone could just tap into zero point energy or something and get whatever they imagined out of it-capitalism would collapse-because without people having to work to survive and no capitalism firm able to sell anything-all profit drops to zero.
