a scientific reason for hope.
bipedal hominids who thought and lived like us emerged 2 million years ago. we invented agriculture 12,000 years ago, writing 5000 years ago, and industry 200 years ago. imagine compressing humanity's entire story into a week: that means we invented agriculture on Sunday, at 11:00 PM. we invented writing at 11:30 PM. we invented industry at 11:59 PM. It's midnight currently. you understand the scale now.
2 million years! 2 million years of people dying pointlessly, huddling around fire, being afraid of evil spirits and dying of bacterial infections. 12 thousand years! 12 thousand years of rising in the morning, working the farm, eating a modest meal, going to sleep, repeat until you die.
thousands of years under rulers who told you they were God and God's chosen, and you believed them and that was the norm. thousands of years! the last 200 years of human history have been something so impossible and beautiful our ancestors could've never imagined it.
hunting-gathering was replaced by the agricultural city-state, which was a force of progress at the time. this was replaced by feudalism, which was a force of progress at the time. this was replaced by capitalism, which was a force of progress at the time.
for all that time, humans specialized into classes to divide labor, for the same reason bugs have evolved queen, soldier and worker castes. specialization is efficient, it helps the colony survive harsh conditions! man and woman. king and priest and slave and laborer. noble and merchant and artisan and peasant. division of labor perpetuates society, but it is also the source of imbalance and exploitation.
now two classes remain: the factory-owner and the factory-worker. there are others, and the factory doesn't need to be a literal factory. but this is what it boils down to. because all the forces of capitalism promise that you may become a factory-owner (startup CEO, artist with your own cartoon series...) or threaten to drag you down to become a factory-worker (AI is the latest of such forces).
it is easy to pit artisans and peasants against each other. but it is more difficult to pit factory workers against each other. for the first time in two million years humans are reduced to two classes, the last remaining stronghold of all division and exploitation and evil, and we can defeat it for good. because of course the factory-workers don't need the factory-owners. we the workers can own the factories together, as a society. this is the core of socialism, of communism.
each new mode of social organization and production was a force for good, and defeated the previous one because it worked better. city-states defeated hunting-gathering, capitalism defeated feudalism. the factory-owners (capitalists) played an important role by hoarding the wealth (capital) needed to build these factories, and their role is over now. they are parasites, they are vestigial, they are meddling obstacles between the factory and the worker. they create waste and shortages.
a society that gets rid of factory-owners, that gets rid of these vestigial capitalists will get rid of waste and shortages and meddling. it will work better and defeat capitalism, as capitalism defeated feudalism.
the model works. think what you will of the USSR, but 40 years after its birth, after it industrialized from scratch, it put the first man in space. it outpaced the USA, an obscenely rich 200-year-old empire gorged on the wealth of exploited colonies and slave labor. China eradicated poverty so hard they lowered the global average, even though it's rising outside China. spare me your thoughts on North Korea, acknowledge that the USA killed 1 in 7 North-Koreans and isolated them from the world economy for decades, yet they survived and rebuilt so efficiently they have fewer deaths from hunger than the USA.
even if you hate these communist countries and don't respect them, their efforts and successes can be studied, replicated. and they will be, because getting rid of capitalists grants an advantage while keeping them weighs you down, as we see with the USA's weakening power.
we stand at the edge of a unique moment in human history. we are not insects programmed to have queens forever- the conditions that created our specialized exploiter class have disappeared for good. and for the first time ever we can eradicate the oppressor class completely.
an end to this division of labor means an end to all divisions, or at least it finally opens the possibility of an end to all divisions. it will allow humanity to stop surviving and start living. if we want welfare for animals, ecological stability, art and leisure for all, space exploration, transhumanism, or just quaint and simple lives- there is no telling what humanity will choose, but it will be able to truly freely choose.
capitalism is dying and communism is struggling to be born. and even if it is strangled and killed, it will be born again and again because capitalism has no choice but to die, and communism has no choice but to be born. we will evolve communism just as insects evolved wings and castes and queens, just as animals evolve white fur in snowy lands: because the conditions push us to. because it is advantageous.
that is not to say it will be easy. but remember that we can win without winning elections, without everyone loving us. because we workers have our hands on the levers of all factories and technologies that make the world function. we can shut it down. we hold all the power.
workers and oppressed peoples of all countries, unite! you have nothing to lose but your chains!
