Communist Manifesto

What Hacker News says

1. ben_wDec 2025
   Marxist definition: class struggle, abolition of capitalist property, collective ownership, systemic change.

   Starmer’s record: social-democrat, pragmatic, incremental reforms, accepts market economy.

   Why he's not Marxist: avoids ideological rigidity, no revolutionary agenda, shifted toward center-left, compromises for governance.

   I suggest reading the Communist Manifesto, so you know what to argue against if nothing else. It's, y'know, free.

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2. jalapenosAug 2025
   I think the problem with you premise is calling what you're living in a capitalist economy. You live in a mixed economy. I recommend you read the Communist Manifesto and check which items on its planned list could be reasonably claimed as actually having been done in the society you live in.

   My conceptualisation of socialism is the property rights concept as presented by actual monkeys. He who possesses possesses, and he who does not is to dispossess the latter of such if his force allows. In the modern era, this is: he who can, by sufficient narcissism and IQ, explain why other's fruits of their labor and risk taking is actually "theft", such that he can indirectly participate in a competing form of (true) theft himself.

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3. octopocOct 2024
   Personally I think everyone should read both The Communist Manifesto and My Struggle. It really helps understand the twentieth century.
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4. piva00Aug 2024
   Your preconceived notion that Marxism requires totalitarianism makes this opinion fall flat.

   Marxist ideals don't require totalitarianism, it also doesn't require the full implementation of socialism/communism to derive some ideals to strive for a fairer society.

   As another comment in this thread has posted, I recommend you to actually read the "Communist Manifesto" and see how much of it you'll actually agree with.

   > How about we go back to democracy and capitalism instead of trying on the Marxist hat?

   How do you suggest going about that when capital is power and power has a tendency to try to take over systems, such as democracy and exactly what's happening with oligarchies being a natural follow up from the structures of power created by capitalism itself?

   You complain about Marxism ideals leading to totalitarianism but fail to see how capitalistic ideals lead to a different form of social disease. What if capitalism is incompatible with the ideals of democracy? How do we deal with that to foster another system that could combine the best of both worlds?

   That's more what I think about rather than a fight between two ideologies stuck in the past...

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5. neomMar 2024
   I think quite often these days "wonder what Marx would think about all this" ... not trying to be cute here, but probably worth re-reading The Communist Manifesto. We're in for an interesting ride over the next 20-30 years, it's gonna get pretty wild methinks. In my humble opinion.. times a changing. (and I'll add, we have terrible philosophers these days, if we even have any at all, and I'd argue if we ever needed them, it's now)
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6. carlosjobimNov 2023
   I'm not the father of communism, Marx is, and he defined it pretty clearly in the Communist manifesto, which is still well worth reading.

   It's his definition that is interesting for intellectual discussion.

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