#I'm tired and I don't want to become another one of tumblr's armchair revolutionaries so please if this confuses or intrigues you

[the-stabbiest-dragon]

me when I've definitely read up on my economic theory.

for real though, none of these terms can be defined in these simple happy terms - this statement is designed to assuage the fears of people who think they like capitalism but are scared of social welfare programs because they think it's communism, and they think communism is when the government steals your toothbrush or some shit.

using the premise of "you can be rich" as a selling point for both capitalism and socialism is fucking paradoxical, nobody can just "become rich" under capitalism, that feeds into the myth of meritocracy. and socialism is a nebulously-defined extrapolation of communist principles, but it's often used to identify actionable transitional steps from a capitalist society to a communist one, such as market-socialist economic structure, expanded wellfare systems and U.B.I, and, oh yeah, dismantling the systems of exploitation and wage theft that allow people to become ultrawealthy. in its most refined states, socialism is an umbrella term that refers to a system where workers have democratic ownership of their own labor and what they produce.

of course, if we actually read Marx, a lot of what he advocated for would, in the terms used in today's leftist spaces, be considered anarchism and syndicalism.

anyhow, dismantle all social hierarchies, car bomb the rich, and if anyone tries to wrap any political ideologies into neatly packaged little sentences they're trying to sell you something.