Theories explain reality. They're not blueprints. Purely nationalist forces could have won in Russia and China and they would have been faced with the same problems (and were in many other countries that got rolled by imperialism). Throughout this you are conflating economics and politics.
Marx did not opine on "human nature." Marx revealed the contradictions at the heart of the capitalist system which inevitably create the conditions for a socialist transformation. He was ahead of the curve and underestimated the concessions capital would make to stave of revolution 100 years ago.
"Inevitably" is doing a lot of work there. That's the part where it becomes a faith-based belief system. Objectively, it doesn't make sense to think that one thing "inevitably" leads to another, about any part of human history. None of the choices made were inevitable.
What did I say was inevitable though? That the conditions for a socialist transformation are created. The actual establishment of socialism requires our conscious agency. The alternative this time around is probably nuclear war and ecocide.
It's an article of faith that certain conditions create the possibility of a global socialist transformation though. In reality, no one ideology that will ever take over the whole world. Countless lives have been lost from people trying that. The world is too diverse for that to ever work.
Capitalism is already a mostly global system. The means of production/finance are highly consolidated and subject to a great deal of planning. Money is no longer a commodity but a book-keeping device. These are precisely the conditions for global socialism.
But all of these developments are still in private hands. To keep it that way, the private owners want fascism and war. The rest of us can stop it if we take away the source of their power, which is their wealth, which is their ownership of the means of production. Socialism. It is a choice, yes
Well, yes, people who own things generally don't want them taken away, even if a lot of other people would prefer to have them. But that doesn't mean they prefer fascism and war, which are actually pretty bad for business, unless you're a defense contractor.
If you seized the means of production, what would happen to all the shares of stock in corporations owned by ordinary shareholders, in their retirement and pension funds or privately held? Those all become worthless, right?
I think it would be hard to convince people to throw away their retirement savings and just trust that nobody will need retirement savings because communism will provide for all. Not like those other times when there was mass starvation or anything.
Apart from the fact that there was no mass starvation in post-war USSR or China today, these are questions best left to the democratic process when public ownership is secured. Again, the wealth of Western capitalism cannot be compared to pre-war Russia and China. Two different universes.
They will obviously resort to it if they think it necessary. Fascism is capitalism cannibalizing itself. You don't want to eat your own arm, or perhaps another person's arm, but you will if you think you have no other choice. The levels of inequality we have now can't be peacefully sustained.
Fascism is a specific form of authoritarianism focused on extreme nationalism and trying to restore a fabled past time of national glory, purifying the blood of the nation, and restoring traditional gender and social roles. It's not just something capitalism does sometimes.
You're the one whose arguments suggest that it all just happens sometimes! We can either find the reasons for things in the inner movements and tensions of material reality, or in the nebulous fog of human ideas. You could say I have "faith" that the former is more reliable, yes.
I mean, the conditions are as inevitable as steam when you boil water. But what are you going to do with it? That's up to you.
A lot of socialist ideas DID take over the world. Labor unions and safety regulations and minimum wages are the Western norm now. It's just the overarching prophesy of transforming all means of production worldwide, ending the profit motive, creating this new way of life that's faith-based.
There's no faith involved. Capitalism, by its very nature, consolidates, centralizes and coordinates production on a global scale. It creates the conditions for everyone, everywhere, to have a basic dignified standard of living. But it can't happen until ownership changes hands.
If anything is "faith-based", it is the faith that the working masses of the world will actually rise up and take for themselves what they need to thrive, the way the bourgeoisie took it all from the kings and aristocrats hundreds of years back.
Right. That's the thing that I am talking about, yes. The idea that all the various people of the world will someday see themselves as united as one mass in solidarity, because of their economic situation, despite their actual inner lives revolving much more around cultural and values issues.
Someone who does the same job as me, but who is a Christian Dominionist who thinks they are waging spiritual warfare by supporting God's chosen messenger as he purifies the blood of the nation and forces the ungodly people out of society has almost nothing in common with me.
That's true. People betray their own class all the time. They lick the boots of their masters. Or, like Engels, they support a revolution that would undermine their own wealth and privilege. I would not argue otherwise. But again, we don't need everyone.
We don't need all of the people everywhere for this to happen. A significant and determined minority supported or at least unopposed by the majority is sufficient.
But those days are over. Capitalism has no more concessions to give. That is why we are faced with a fascist dictatorship. They cannot give up wealth, property, power - nor can they maintain it without brute force. They could destroy everything before we get to socialism, though.
Everything else aside, this is such a terrible platform/medium for discussions like this.
I actually like it because you can branch new threads off of individual parts of an argument, and you can't really do that in longform forums.