There are a bunch of zoomers out there who un-ironically claim Communism is the ideal way of life. I've worked with some of them. I still can't fathom what's going on in their brains.
They are generally unable to engage with good-faith criticisms of the parts of it that don't work.
Don't let it get to you.
I think for a lot of people, it's intellectual junk food. A Marxist revolution has a low risk of actually happening in the modern world. And rather than educating yourself on policy and working on advocacy, you get to play in a fantasy world where you don't have to do anything except fight the conspiracy suppressing a natural egalitarian world order.
China only began thriving after they abandoned Marxist-flavored communism and integrated markets into their government.
Well, it's not just unclear to you. Even if you buy into some of Marx's more coherent ideas, it's such a bonkers idea to form a government with the expressed intent of achieving some sort of vague Hegelian state as outlined by some untestable arguments described in an unfinished work of political critiques. Das Kapital is not exactly a useful guide for creating actual policy.
There are two primary responses to this:
1. Realize that the real world is competitive and difficult and much self-improvement and hard work will be needed to thrive. These people put their heads down and get to work.
2. Refusal to address the truth of #1. Frame the real world as some unwinnable game to avoid putting in the required effort to succeed. Distract yourself with structural problems (real or imaginary) far too big for you to have any effect on but keep you from the painful self-improvement that is really needed.
Communism preys on the people who are susceptible to the second path.
Communism rebalances the relative worth of people in society. I.e. my grandfather, an engineer, earned less than a factory worker. An average or passing artist could earn a decent living in the Soviet Union, compared to having scraps today (in relative terms).
I notice this calculus as I have an artistic career and a software career. I would like to pursue the artistic career (and am actually pretty good at it), but I would make many multiples less than I currently do in software. This is partly because of how we've financialized/structured the economy (i.e. software monopolies should have been broken up, taxes imposed, etc), not because the work is actually worth less in some sense.
Shouldn't people be incentivized to pursue work that they are good at, enjoy AND which society actually demands?
If good art is rare and in higher demand, good artists will be able to demand higher pay. If good art is in high supply because many people prefer the artist lifestyle, artists will not be able to demand as high of pay. Both of these situations seem perfectly reasonable to me.
The reason investment bankers are paid well is that they make money _for rich people_. If you look at any professions, the closer you are to the money source and to the rich, the more you make.
Rich people want to stay rich in relative terms, not in absolute terms - something people always forget (because that makes them able to command other people's time and make other people "dance" for them, not buy gadgets or luxury goods which don't matter anyway).
I.e. I would argue that a lot of things that command a high income in the U.S. are actually net-negative for society overall (if we look at the value not in $ value, but in human value). Extracting monopolistic rents, for example. Slumlording. Speculating in Bitcoin. The list is long if you want to really make it.
It depends on how you define value. If you mean value in terms of how much money you receive, you actually need other people to agree that what you're doing is worthwhile.
If you only care about the feelings that YOU get from doing the work (which is totally OK) your work is still valuable, but don't expect others to provide you value in the form of money when you provided them nothing.
In other words, I'm cool with you being an artist. But you can't force me to pay you for your art if I don't want it.
In fact, if you had a choice, if we sold software services the way we sell art today, software salaries would go way down (in fact, someone could increase revenues for a company by making it impossible for you to unsubscribe. If that's not anti-value, I don't know what is. In fact, it's so bad that we even have to pass laws to outlaw it). Same for medicine and many other things - the financialization and obscurity of the actual source of the money is part of what allows this whole thing to continue.
Someone would happily buy a house that's half the size of most on the market (or less) - unfortunately, such houses are prohibited by regulation. So they are forced to choose between buying twice the house at twice the cost or renting.
It sort of works when you're comparing product A to product B at the store. When you're comparing parts of the economy, there are much greater forces and distortions at work.
A total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag not including labor colonies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet...).
The Communists didn't prey in some vaguely psychological sense, they physically exterminated anyone who disagreed.
2. USSR had no extermination camps (unlike the NAZIs), GULAG was a prison system no different from the US Prison system today.
Joe the Plumber was the poster child for this, a decade ago.
1. Keep your head down, work hard and humbly, be a good little serf.
2. Say "screw this", realise there's a ton of wealth in the world and the leeches are taking it all, push for some changes that might actually make a difference in the world.
Capitalism preys on the people who are susceptible to the first path.
If you can’t beat ‘em join em
And with how the war against Ukraine is going, Russia is on a fast track to relive those memories.
They make some good points against capitalism, but like Democracy is the worst form of government other than all the others, capitalism is the worst economic system other than all the others.
But I simply cannot agree with a world that make everybody equal, no matter how much or how little work they do. People who work jobs that require extensive studying (ie, medical doctors) or jobs that almost literally nobody would ever volunteer for (ie, cleaning public restooms) should be rewarded.
It's one of those weird catch-22s. If we actually incentivized those jobs nobody wants, they'd get done better, and then people would be more proud of the work, and be willing to pay for it. But because people don't pay for it, the work is done poorly, and so people aren't proud of it, and thus don't want to pay for it.