The foremost proof of this (and beginning of this process) was the end of the gold standard in 1931 by the Bank of England. This was done due to Great Depression that occured from the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which caused the bank to nearly run out of gold. Gold was the direct measure of value as understood by Marx as all commodities were tied to it:

“[Measure of Value] The first phase of circulation is, as it were, a theoretical phases preparatory to real circulation. Commodities, which exist as use-values, must first of all assume a form in which they appear to one another nominally as exchange-values, as definite quantities of materialised universal labour-time. The first necessary move in this process is, as we have seen, that the commodities set apart a specific commodity, say, gold, which becomes the direct reification of universal labour-time or the universal equivalent; gold is converted into money by commodities” - Karl Marx

Marx himself stated that as soon as labour in it’s direct form has ceased to be the creation of wealth, that exchange value breaks down. I will explain this in further detail later:

“As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few, for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down” - Karl Marx

Marx also recognised that gold was the one true universal commodity. In order for money to serve as the universal measure of value, it has to contain intrinsic value, i.e. it has to itself be a commodity imbued with a definite magnitude of labour. Marx stated that it would be impossible for the capitalist class to get around this:

“Money - the common form into which all commodities as exchange values are transformed, i.e. the universal commodity - must itself exist as a particular commodity alongside the others, since what is required is not only that they can be measured against it in the head, but that they can be changed and exchanged for it in the actual exchange process. The contradiction which thereby enters, to be developed elsewhere. Money does not arise by convention, any more than the state does. It arises out of exchange, and arises naturally out of exchange; it is a product of the same; Gold becomes the measure of value because the exchange-value of all commodities is measured in gold, is expressed in the relation of a definite quantity of gold and a definite quantity of commodity containing equal amounts of laobur-time. To begin with, gold becomes the universal equivalent, or money, only because it thus functions as the measure of value and as such its own value is measured directly in all commodity equivalents; Their golden equivalent reflects the universal character of the labour-time contained in them” - Karl Marx

“But it should never be forgotten, that money, in the first place, in the form of precious metals, remains the basis from which the credit system naturally can never detach itself; Secondly, that the credit system presupposes the monopoly of social means of production by private persons; capitalist production forever strives to overcome this metallic barrier, the material and fantastic barrier of wealth and its movements, in proportion as the credit system develops, but forever breaks its head on this same barrier” - Karl Marx

This is also further elaborated on in ‘An Introduction to Karl Marx’s Capital’:

“In Capital, Marx assumes that money always has to be linked to a particular commodity. During Marx’s time, gold played the role of this ‘money commodity.’ But even back then it was hardly the case that pieces of gold were widely used in everyday commerce; small sums were paid with silver or copper coins, larger sums with ‘banknotes.’ Banknotes were originally issued by individual banks, which promised to honour the notes in gold. Ultimately, banknotes were only issued by state central banks, which also promisesd to honour the notes in gold. As a rule, the central banks of individual countries were not allowed to print an arbitrary amount of banknotes, but rather had to ensure that the banknotes were covered by a proportionate amount of gold reserves. Gold was hardly circulated, but the paper money in circulation acted as a representative of gold. At the end of the Second World War, at a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, an international currency system was agreed upon that was still based upon a gold standard. But only the U.S. dollar was covered by gold, thirty-five dollars corresponding to an ounce of gold. All other currencies had a fixed exchange rate to the dollar. However, the obligation to honour dollars in gold was not valid for private individuals, only for state central banks. At the end of the 1960s, it had become clear that the massive amount of dollars in circulation had rendered the coupling of the dollar to gold a fiction. At the beginning of the 1970s, the gold standard was formally abolished, as were fixed currency exchange rates. Since then, there is no longer any commodity that functions at a national or international level as a money commodity. Now money is essentially the paper money issued by the state central banks, and there is nothing for which this paper money can be redeemed. Of course, one can still buy gold with this paper money, but now gold is just another commodity like silver or iron, and no longer plays the special role of a money commodity, neither legally nor by default. Marx could not imagine a capitalist system existing without a money commodity, but the existence of such a commodity is in no way a necessary consequence of his analysis of the commodity and money. Within the framework of the analysis of the commodity form, he developed the form-determinations of the general equivalent, and the analysis of the exchange process yields the result that commodity owners do in fact have to relate their commodities to a general equivalent. But that the general equivalent must be a specific commodity was not proven by Marx, merely assumed. That which serves as a general equivalent (whether an actual physical commodity or merely paper money) cannot be determined at the level of simple commodity circulation (for a more extensive analysis, see Heinrich 1999, 233). Only when the capitalist credit system is taken into consideration does it become clear that the existence of a money commodity is merely a historically transitional state of affairs, but does not correspond to ‘the capitalist mode of production, in its ideal average’ that Marx sought to analyse” - (Michael Heinrich, An Introduction to Karl Marx’s Capital)

Where it is stated that “Marx could not imagine a capitalist system existing without a money commodity”. The collapse of the exchange value means the collapse of the countervailing tendency for the rate of profit, Marx talks about this in Capital Volume 3. Clearly you do not understand the LTV if you think otherwise. Surplus value is not guiding the economy. Capitalists make more money off of ground rent, which Marx predicted would be the last bit of surplus value left. the prerequisite of exchange value is commodity money.

Marx explains the collapse of exchange value via absolute overproduction of capital. Commodities can still be sold, but capitalists would not make a profit by selling them. Production based on exchange value has become incompatible with production for profit; which is to say, the capitalist cannot make a profit selling commodities at their values. How can surplus value be said to drive the economy when products are no longer profitable? Hence the M-C-M’ circuit no longer applies. Price has drastically fallen below value… so much so that it cannot be said wage labour is the primary driver of the economy. This is why Marx introduced a theory of absolute overproduction of capital, and why capitalists become national capitalists. Both Marx and Engels said “the expropriators expropriate themselves…”. Clearly something fundamental occurs in the production of commodity’s, however Commodity-Money does not exist today. Meaning the value of money is socially and politically determined, not rooted in a universal commodity. What we have since 1971 is Fiat currency. Fiat has no value in a Marxist sense because the more that is printed the less valuable it becomes as it is not tied to a universal commodity.

The point is the money made from surplus today, is not commodity money or even money as Marx defined it, it is government credit being redistributed through speculative market signals. Financial profits are nothing more than redistributed government credit, backed not by any ‘real profits’ or even production, but information signals that themselves direct production. Marx explicitly outlied how, as a prerequisite for general commodity production, abstract labour and universal exchange, there has to be a universal commodity that crystalises a definite magnitude of labour value. The need to ‘socialise’ production by using the state so as to fulfill ‘social’ interests of any kind, was precisely why Marx said socialism was inevitable, and arising out of capitalist production itself.

Now when it comes to the topic of Chinese Socialism. In the west it is the normal view that China is capitalist, state capitalist to be exact. However the ruling Chinese Party, the CPC, completely disagree with this assessment and have actively been engaged in the construction of their own socialism since 1949. The Chinese understanding of Marxism is among the least dogmatic, China is in real time innovating and discovering what socialism is and means:

“But the idea of ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ means that socialism does not really have a fundamental developmental model, and instead consists of a handful of basic principles and ideas. These principles and ideas must be continually explored and developed in practice following the advance of time. ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ is not adding Chinese characteristics to an already defined ‘socialist framework.’ Rather, it uses China’s lived experience to explore and define what, in the final analysis, ‘socialism’ is. For this reason, ‘socialism’ is not ossified dogma, but instead an open concept awaiting exploration and definition. China is not blindly following socialist ideas and institutions produced by the Western experience of socialism, but rather is charting the socialist developmental path on the basis of a greater self-confidence, taking the project of the modernisation of socialist construction to its third phase. For this reason, the report of the Eighteenth National Congress correctly talked about ‘self-confidence in the path,’ ‘self-confidence in the theory,’ and ‘self-confidence in the institutions’ involved in the construction of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” - Jiang Shigong

Even when it comes to dogmatic definitions of Socialism: I have proven that China is still socialist according to them when you bend the rules of these dogmatic criteria to actually apply to material reality.

However when it comes to the question of socialism today, the burning question of the inevitability of socialism must be addressed. It is the monopolisation of capital inherent (capital accumulation) of the capitalist system as well as the conditions that arise from that monopolisation (socialisation of production) which make inevitable the development of socialism, this is how us Marxists know that socialism is inevitable, and in just the same way it is the contradictions that arise in socialism which make Communism inevitable. So from this it is no wonder that capitalists would try and remain in power with some kind of bourgeois socialism as the processes they themselves created from their own system necessitate the development of socialism. Profit (while still a still a significant determinant in smaller firms) no longer dominates society, there is no anarchy of production. Social control (social end) and holding onto their power is far more important to the capitalist elite.

Engels himself referred to bourgeois socialists (which he distinguished from us Communists) as one type of socialist in the ‘The Principles of Communism’:

“[Bourgeois Socialists:] The second category consists of adherents of present-day society who have been frightened for its future by the evils to which it necessarily gives rise. What they want, therefore, is to maintain this society while getting rid of the evils which are an inherent part of it. To this end, some propose mere welfare measures - while others come forward with grandiose systems of reform which, under the pretense of re-organising society, are in fact intended to preserve the foundations, and hence the life, of existing society. Communists must unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois socialists because they work for the enemies of Communists and protect the society which Communists aim to overthrow” - Friedrich Engels

As did Marx in ‘The Communist Manifesto’:

“A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society. To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems; The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie. A second, and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government; It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois - for the benefit of the working class” - Karl Marx

Martin Luther King Jr. also referred to the concept of socialism for the rich:

“We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor” - Martin Luther King Jr.

It is up to the Communist party to seize power and scientifically (serve social ends) guide this process of socialisation in the interests of the proletariat (gear society towards the implemention of serving the working masses), as either way we are heading into some kind of bourgeois socialism (or arguably have been for a long time since the Wall Street Crash due to the falling rate of profit).

As Lenin said:

“Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive socialisation of production; it, so to speak, drags the capitalists, against their will and consciousness, into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialisation” - V.I. Lenin

The idea that socialism was not inevitable is revisionism. Capital transformed into an alien, occult object of socialist planning, sustained by institutions and U.S. military violence, not economics. MMT is the Hitlerite theory of economics, made by theorists of the American Empire which is trying to save its economy through the raw power of state violence (war). Mao discovered there is still class antagonism under socialism. Socialism is not the fulfillment of your ideological, moral and psychological aspirations. It is a mode of production. The question is why does there remain a class antagonism? That was Mao’s question:

“In China, although in the main socialist transformation has been completed with respect to the system of ownership, and although the large-scale and turbulent class struggles of the masses characteristic of the previous revolutionary periods have in the main come to an end, there are still remnants of the overthrown landlord and comprador classes, there is still a bourgeoisie, and the remolding of the petty-bourgeoisie has only just started. The class struggle is by no means over. The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the class struggle between the different political forces, and the class struggle in the ideological held between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie will continue to be long and tortuous and at times will even become very acute. The proletariat seeks to transform the world according to its own world outlook, and so does the bourgeoisie. In this respect, the question of which will win out, socialism or capitalism, is still not really settled” - Mao Zedong

‘Socialism’ is not heaven on earth, it is a mode of production, production for social ends. I can see dogmatic responses to this which hold onto dogma of Marxism specific to another era:

“…Volume One of Marx’s Capital gives a detailed description of the condition of the British working class for about 1865, i.e. the time when Britain’s industrial prosperity had reached its peak. I would therefore have had to repeat what Marx says. It will be hardly necessary to point out that the general theoretical standpoint of this book - philosophical, economical, political, - does not exactly coincide with my standpoint of today” - Friedrich Engels

Which Mao further elaborates on with his opposition to dogmatism and book worship:

“The dogmatists do not observe this principle; they do not understand that conditions differ in different kinds of revolution and so do not understand that different methods should be used to resolve different contradictions; on the contrary, they invariably adopt what they imagine to be an unalterable formula and arbitrarily apply it everywhere, which only causes setbacks to the revolution or makes a sorry mess of what was originally well done” - Mao Zedong

Marx, Engels and Lenin all spent significant time debating fellow ‘socialists’ because of an adherence to dogmatism:

“Marx and myself have fought harder all one’s life long against the alleged socialists than against anyone else (for we only regarded the bourgeoisie as a class and hardly ever involved ourselves in conflicts with individual bourgeois)” - Friedrich Engels

“But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism” - V.I. Lenin

Now I know that is controversial, but to put it simply, the capitalism from Marx’s day is long dead due to its innate contradictions. We now live in a socialistic centrally planned economy for the elites. We call ourselves Communists because we want a Communist party that can implement a planned economy for society. Yes, I know socialism is synonymous with the state explicitly calling itself socialist, establishing common ownership of the means of production by directly attaching them to some political power (or co-operative) that directly controls them, etc. This view of ‘socialism’ does not recognise socialism as an actual mode of production. It only conceives socialism as a political, not economic force. Stalin explicitly rejected this notion in Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.:

“Some comrades deny the objective character of laws of science, and of laws of political economy particularly, under socialism. They deny that the laws of political economy reflect law-governed processes which operate independently of the will of man. They believe that in view of the specific role assigned to the Soviet state by history, the Soviet state and its leaders can abolish existing laws of political economy and can ‘form,’ ‘create,’ new laws; These comrades are profoundly mistaken. It is evident that they confuse laws of science, which reflect objective processes in nature or society, processes which take place independently of the will of man, with the laws which are issued by governments, which are made by the will of man, and which have only juridical validity. But they must not be confused; It is said that some of the economic laws operating in our country under socialism, including the law of value, have been ‘transformed,’ or even ‘radically transformed,’ on the basis of planned economy. That is likewise untrue. Laws cannot be ‘transformed,’ still less ‘radically’ transformed. If they can be transformed, then they can be abolished and replaced by other laws. The thesis that laws can be ‘transformed’ is a relic of the incorrect formula that laws can be ‘abolished’ or ‘formed.’ Although the formula that economic laws can be transformed has already been current in our country for a long time, it must be abandoned for the sake of accuracy. The sphere of action of this or that economic law may be restricted, its destructive action - that is, of course, if it is liable to be destructive - may be averted, but it cannot be ‘transformed’ or ‘abolished’” - J.V. Stalin

Do not think of socialism as an ideal but an objective mode of production. I am saying that the capitalism of the 19th and 20th century gradually evolved through the course of history. The cycle of capitalist crisis eventually led to an increasing socialisation of production. We can observe this not only in 1929 but in 1947, 1972, 2004, and 2008 and even today as we speak. So the contradictions of capitalism led to the transformation of itself. It is only that the political and ideological superstructure has not replicated this fundamental change in the relations of production:

“Man, who moved from the simple and coarse Communism of primitive times, returns to a complex and scientific Communism; capitalist civilisation elaborates the elements, having removed the personal character from private property; Capitalist civilisation, which begins to put together the economic form of Communism, also brings into the social and political field, the institutions and customs of it. Universal suffrage, which the savages-men and women-used to choose their sachems and their military leaders, after having been suppressed, was put back in force by the bourgeoisie, who limited it to one sex, but boast of it as the sole source of public powers. It presupposes, at least in appearance that equality and freedom of citizens, which really existed in the bosom of primitive Communism. The dwellings of the Communist tribes were common; common also were the meals, and the education of the children. Communal school children are educated in common at the expense of the municipality; they are likewise fed together, at common expense, in socialist municipalities. The civilised, on the other hand, are poisoned and robbed in common in the inns and quartered together in the six - or seven-story houses, of the big cities. So far, universal suffrage has been a deception; if the houses are nothing but rooms where people get sad and fever-generating centers, if the other institutions having a Communist form are backwards, i.e., directed against those who are forced to endure them, he is that these institutions were introduced into bourgeois society only to give profit to the capitalists; however, in spite of their imperfections and all the drawbacks they draw with them, they weaken and erase the individualistic feelings of the civilised, and adapt them to the customs and mores of Communism” - Paul Lafargue

All that socialism boils down to is the sublation of production for profits sake to transform into production for social ends. That has already happened. The Socialism of the United States is a kind of Socialism for the rich. We as Communists want a socialism for the people. Socialism won the cold war. What remains now is a socialist civil war between the West and China.

Today no organisation represents this system more than the WEF. We cannot let the Great Reset Agenda of the WEF and Club of Rome (which are at the forefront of bourgeois socialism) win out. The proponents of this agenda are the elite of the elite, the Wall Street and City of London elite. These parasites want us to own nothing and be renters of the capitalist class in every aspect of life. They want complete control over us. They do not care about the consequences of what a nuclear war would entail and see overpopulation as the greatest threat to their existence. This malthusian agenda sees us merely as ants to be squashed, they see us as in the way of their continued existence as they recognise that even with all of the propaganda and attempts at dumbing down the masses with overdoses of dopamine, that they cannot hold back the angst of class antagonism. The Great Reset is a recognition of bourgeois socialism, it seeks the ending of democracy, ending of property rights for us commoners to the gain of the bourgeoisie, overall increasing state intervention and authoritarianism to serve the neoliberal cartels. The interesting thing is that they are doing it openly, and (almost) everyone just accepts it under the guise of ‘emergency measures’. Thing that would have been unacceptable and obviously seen as aggression of the elites and the powers that may be, are now seen as completely acceptable, even by the left. For a long time the establishment had to hide the fact that it is building capital’s socialism, but it was necessary because people intrinsically understood that this is very bad for them, but now it is becoming more and more open and the Great Reset is the proof of that.

“It reproduces a new financial aristocracy, a new variety of parasites in the shape of promoters, speculators and simply nominal directors a whole system of swindling and cheating by means of corporation promotion, stock issuance, and stock speculation. It is private production without the control of private property… Success and failure both lead here to a centralisation of capital, and thus to expropriation on the most enormous scale. Expropriation extends here from the direct producers to the smaller and the medium-sized capitalists themselves. It is the point of departure for the capitalist mode of production; its accomplishment is the goal of this production. In the last instance, it aims at the expropriation of the means of production from all individuals” - Karl Marx

“[Petty-bourgeois socialism] This school of socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty-bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities. In its positive aims, however, this form of socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian. Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in agriculture. Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues” - Karl Marx

We need to overcome this bourgeois socialist system and establish proletarian socialism (Communism) and scientifically guide society towards social ends for our class. There is no going back to capitalism, we have already eclipsed it economically, it is time to end this barbarism and to put power in the hands of the people themselves, not back into the hands of smaller capitalists who will just repeat the same process all over again. We must advance forward to proletarian political power!

“With the seizing of the means of production by society production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then for the first time man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature because he has now become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face to face with man as laws of nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man’s own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, with full consciousness, make his own history - only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the humanity’s leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom” - Friedrich Engels

“We propose that production be made to serve the needs of those who work, rather than to serve the needs of a few parasites” - Moissaye J. Olgin

Further proof of this comes from Michael Hudson. In his work ‘Super Imperialism’ he states that through the institutions of the IMF and the World Bank that the Western elite effectively plan the economies of the third world for the benefit of themselves. The states of today are planned by the bourgeoisie for their own benefit directly, profit is no longer the primary determinant of society. Since the end of the Vietnam War, imperialism has moved from capital exports to primarily keeping third-world countries indebted, old metrics of determining imperialist powers such as net-capital exports, no longer apply as even the United States, the foremost imperialist power in the world since the establishment of Bretton Woods, has net capital imports. The imperialism of the 21th Century is based in America’s ability to borrow, not invest. What changed was that in 1971 the gold/dollar convertability was terminated (and Bretton Woods), instead it was replaced by the petrodollar (Fiat), which pegged all petroleum exports (and essentially all trade as a result, due to the importance of energy to the economy) to the U.S. dollar. This process took two years to complete, and was the beginning of neoliberalism, where before the pioneers of bourgeois socialism wanted to implement some social-reforms at home to keep the first-world in check, others wanted to self-imperialise the country at home. It was not just privatisation but it was privatisation for the benefit of the capitalist elite who were subsidised by the government to complete the tasks previously performed by the state, planning actually increased it just became more alienated. It also has to be said that the anarchy of production does not exist to the dominating degree it once did, and as Lenin stated, imperialism was the highest stage of capitalism, a transitional phase between capitalism and what came next, we have passed to that new social order and it is socialism, albeit bourgeois socialism. James Connolly spoke all the way back in 1916 as living in the “last days of capitalism”. Rosa Luxemburg stated that it would either be “barbarism or socialism”.

Since the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash the system we live under has been synarchy, bourgeois socialism or simply put barbarism. None of this would be possible if not for the bourgeois-socialists to implement it. For example, Andrew Carnegie, who made his fortune in the steel industry, and today would have wealth valued at $310 billion by today’s standards, proclaimed himself in favour of socialistic doctrines. As did John D. Rockefeller who was stated to ‘sound more like Marx than our classical image of a capitalist’. Henry Ford was stated by Kojeve “as the one great authentic Marxist of the twentieth century”. Elon Musk also proclaims himself to be a socialist, which obviously at first seems contradictory given that he is a monopoly capitalist, however given what has just been elaborated as well as all of the government subsidies his companies benefit from, it is of no suprise.

This has been a gradual process which actually was completed in 1971 with the diminishing of profit and the start of the neoliberal era which effectively brings imperialism home to the developed countries. There is no free market, for example BlackRock manage assets worth over a total of $21 Trillion with it’s Aladdin portfolio management tool, it effectively is planning these assets on a rational level. BlackRock seeks complete control, ‘surplus value’, in the Marxist sense, only matters to BlackRock insofar as it is a measure of their general investment success, as represented by the return to investors. What is more important to a BlackRock executive, how much ‘profit’ they receive as a return on investment, or the general confidence in their brand? Inspiring confidence is how acquisitions are made in this day and age. They are interested in ground rent, not surplus value, so they will prioritise their image of good management over profit, since what matters is owning everything. Amazon is also known for it’s internal planning and has been unprofitable since it’s founding and is heavily subsidised by the government while effectively being an oligopoly of ecommerce. Also companies cannot just do what they want, they have to go along with government sanctions even if that means loss, as social ends of the capitalist elite dominate.

Economically the system is (bourgeois) socialist but it is politically capitalist (as in led by the bourgeoisie), whereas China is both economically and politically socialist (as it is led by the proletariat and is ruled by a Communist system). What we need is to seize power for our class (proletariat) and scientifically address the contradictions of our society, while gearing society towards the well-being of the people as opposed to a few parasites on top.

Socialism is an objective mode of production, detractors of this piece who hold socialism as an ideal are debunked by the dialectical materialist outlook of Marxism which recognises that matter is constantly in motion:

“The new productive forces have already outgrown the capitalistic mode of using them. And this conflict between productive forces and modes of production is not a conflict engendered in the mind of man, like that between original sin and divine justice. In exists, in fact, objectively, outside us, independently of the will and actions even of the men that have brought it on. Modern socialism is nothing but the reflex, in thought, of this conflict in fact; its ideal reflection in the minds, first of the class directly suffering under it, the working class” - Friedrich Engels

“Needless to say, of course, all boundaries in nature and in society are conventional and changeable, and it would be absurd to argue, for example, about the particular year or decade in which imperialism ‘definitely’ became established” - V.I. Lenin

In this bourgeois socialism the fundamental contradiction of the capitalist mode of production still dominates, carries on from the old system:

The contradiction between socialised production and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie; With this recognition, at last, of the real nature of the productive forces of today, the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual. Then the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production: upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production - on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment” - Friedrich Engels