I read the Communist Manifesto and I didn't understand it.

This all came about when I got into an argument on here with some dumb libtard. He was talking s**t so I called him a Marxist. This A-hole then told me that I live in an echo-chamber, that I didn't know what Marxism was and I should read some Marx to educate myself. I told him to educate his own fat ass and blocked him but I went to read it anyway just to see.

The book was real short but it confused me. It didn't even mention Russia or any politics and is just talking s**t in big words about olden times Europe. It goes on and on about production relations and social conditions or whatever but like WTF has that got to do with the Moscow or the KGB? And what is a bourgeoisie anyway? Were they like a cult or something?

I wanna know this though so I destroy libtardocommies when I debate them. I think calling one of them a class-antagonism could be a real zinger. I know all you fellow Conservatives who call people Marxists understand this BS way better than me so please could you help?

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Sicarium · 46-50, M

Marxism forms the basis of socialism and communism. Most of it comes from the ramblings of Carl Marx, although it's been expanded on and twisted by generations of people trying to explain away the failures of socialism and communism.

Essentially, Marx envisioned a three-tiered society. Workers, factory owners, and politicians. The factory workers would be working less hours but putting out the same productivity due to industrialization. This meant they would have a lot free time on their hands. Marx was an aristocrat. Workers, the unwashed masses, having free time on their hands would mean they'd be around him, an aristocrat. That would be bad. So, his perfect society would be workers with free time pursuing leisure activities. Sitting in a park, learning to paint, going on community vacations, etc.

To pay for this, he would take money from the factory owners, the people running the means of production. Politicians would exist to take that money and redistribute it to the workers so they'd leave the aristocrats alone. Aristocrats would be the politicians.

The three tiers were based on collectivism. All workers would be treated the same, the factory owners would be treated the same, the politicians would all be treated the same. That's three different collectives.

This general hierarchy evolved into socialism and communism. Socialism defines those collectives purely by socio-economic status, and is the most pure to Marx's vision. Communism, real communism at least, gets rid of those three collectivists by saying anything that's a commodity, anything that can be bought, sold, or traded belongs to the community. This includes the factories and political power. So instead of three collectives, pure communism has only one.

Some socialists took socialism and Marxism and adapted them to cultural classifications. instead of defining collectives based on socio-economic status, collectives are based on any number of cultural groups. Gay, straight, white, black, latino, or whatever made up gender you can come up with. This forms the basis of intersectionality and social justice. Because we're dealing with cultural collectives here, some people refer to this as cultural Marxism. But Marx himself never espoused any collectives based on cultural standing or distinction.