'Capitalism is dead. Now we have something much worse (2023)

Mathematically speaking, no they are not. Politically speaking, yes they are. It is a different thing to have made such an analysis and it is a different thing to use it as your main political argument for reform. But this discussion buys into the argument that he is even pro-communist (which is what he sells) when he clearly isn't if you look at his concrete political actions. Especially when he was a prime minister.

Communism is about adopting socialism through violent revolutionary means. The Fabians were all about gradually forcing adoption to socialism. Feudalism met definitional characteristics for socialism, while being about the state or aristocracy.

The names of the various movements, or their fine-detailed implementations mean little while they still retain the important properties of structure that lead to failures, such as state apparatus owning/controlling most private property with little or no private ownership. The names themselves mean very little given the structures and defects involved.

Fiat money and deficit spending for example while initially backed by assets before the 1970s, eventually fail to non-market socialism, destroying the market in the process through debauchery of the currency (Lenin/Keynes), culminating in the Socialist calculation problem.

We can already see this happening with regards to the continual trends towards concentration of the market into few hands, who then make mistakes favoring profit driven by artificial constraint over production, that results in shortage. Competition is prevented by these entities being funded (and undercutting) and is driven by non-reserve debt issuance (0% fractional reserve, circa 2020).

Transitions to false reserve systems (capital reserves) is based in flawed value schemes that do not account for subjective value as defined by Carl Menger, they eventually fail (Basel III), when subjective value reasserts chaotically.

Marxist parties that call themselves marxists won't ever win elections because of the long sordid history they have with deceit, delusion, and truth, not to mention the callous disregard for life and limb to the consequences of their actions.

Anyone who claims to regularly change their core values and views without good reason (driven by extreme circumstance) is more likely than not to be acting deceitfully, which is engendered in a lack of credibility.

Unfortunately, the many promises of socialism as a structure are based in flawed assumptions, defects, and indirection, where many are swayed by delusion instead of following objective reality.

When continued survival and life is dependent on such systems not failing, and the rational are being dragged long at the whims of the delusional and insane, bad things happen which cannot be stopped.

This is a kind of existential risk that deserves rational thought and careful attention, but the psychological stress of our times has regressed all but a minority of those with competent or capable intellects, who are then ignored.

Hubris and sloth can be impossible things to fight against once the snowball gets moving downhill. The consequences of such circumstances, given history, are much more likely to involve loss of life or injury, or worse.

It is all about class identity with Marxism. I think you may be conflating aspects of dialectical materialism with Marxism. The two while linked, are not the same. Marxism is a political and social philosophy that aims to change society, while dialectical materialism is a way of understanding the world.

Understandably there is some overlap, but there are distinctions and conflicts too in practice.

For Marxism, it ultimately comes down to class identity which is treated as unchanging in practice. Analysis is all about the class not the individual, which goes to classic Marx and Engels in their Manifesto. Praxis was a transformation of Hegel's Idealisms Geist as a method of change (albeit its been awhile, so I may misremember the details here).

Dialectical materialism unlike Marxism doesn't have unchanging class, instead it says classes support their class interest, sidestepping the issue, albeit allowing for some change but not much. A nuanced distinction.

Under Marxism, if you were born as a a worker proletariat you remain a proletariat, everything else is structured around this overdetermination. The dynamic change you mention is based in praxis and is only ever in relation to their unchanging class identity.

If you were born as a petty or hauty bourgeoisie, you are always one who supports them, regardless of change in circumstances, or free will, your perspectives are only ever first of that identity, and then may change through praxis but are always tethered to the former, and remain consistent and unchanging, where observation may deviate from ideology.

This is the fundamental issue, because people can and do change their class identities over their lifetimes, based in the structured relationship of the means of their production. But members of such have nullified, discredited, and claimed that these don't change. Its only right to take them at their word (in practice).

While variations have evolved over the years none really get away from the structuring element of class identity directing all other struggles. Marx uses the concept of overdetermination as does Hegel to describe this. All other struggles are in relation to this element. Its a static element, in most major derivations.

There are also significant conflicts. Identity politics for example is more rooted in idealism as is intersectionality than in Marxism's dialectical materialism, and there's a philosophical conflict between idealism, and dialectical materialism, that goes to the core of this philosophy. Discussions often results in reductionist behavior by its proponents on either side.

If I'm remembering correctly I believe Žižek covers these nuances in some detail, though not very satisfactorily overall in my opinion.

Digesting some of the things Zizek says, going back to basics in the Manifesto, and a number of other experiences led me to this rationale culminating in the observations I relayed before.