State of discourse would generally be better if people actually read Das Capital or the Communist Manifesto. For all the McCarthyism era propoganda floating around it's pretty telling when people haven't read it.

There's loads of problems you can pick out with both but for your average schmuck communism just means totalitarianism or authoritarianism which is just orwellian as fuck.

First half of the Commie Manifesto is a pretty good explanation of class politics and interests and a fairly decent explanation of how power structures evolved into Marx's era. The latter half with the ultimate victory of the proletariat is hilariously utopian and basically ignores the fact that humans are evil and will gladly enslave their brother if it enriches them. Why overthrow the capitalists unless you can take their place?

Marx gets shit for calling out religion as a way to placate the people as well but should be noted that the church is often a mouthpiece for the government, or even the government itself should it's leaders gain a taste of power. Even the most noble of intentions can be corrupted by power.

I think Marx also sees labor as a kind of exploitative relationship as well when, and indeed during the industrial revolution it often was, but it's not necessarily so. I think a lot of that comes down to the difference between what would be survivalist labor vs a career. I tend to agree with the Marxists that rent seeking isn't really something that provides much benefit to the economy as a whole and slowly leads to this kind of class difference where you have a kind of underclass that while not slaves are essentially beholden to employment for someone else's enrichment as they don't own anything for themselves, land being the general one.

It's the problem with the kind of homelessness situation we see now, not that it's any better under communism as they like to purge the unproductive, but if you own your own land and can till your own ground you aren't beholden to work for anyone else for your survival and I have a far easier time playing the roll of the ant in the Aesop fables against the grasshoppers of the world.

I think the issues we see now though is that while I'm generally very pro free market and find entrepreneurial and capitalistic desires to improve and make profit great motive forces for good in society, there are also certain moral rules of fairness and free competition/honest business that need to be followed as well, and often in our society they were not, and that can be attributed to the paradox of there being both too much and too little regulation depending on the area. Certain necessities need more regulation than they have to protect the poor, housing being a primary example, but the regulations that be are often written by large companies to ensure they benefit from them the most and squeeze out any smaller owners that would be closer to their tenants on a human level and more likely to not engage in gross profiteering at their expense.

We see examples like this in the rise of Airbnb, especially before the pandemic where landlords found running unlicensed hotels out of residential apartment buildings brought in more money than renting them out normally since tourists will pay more. This gave them the unfair advantage against the hotels since they weren't subject to the same laws and regulations as the hotels, but it also caused property values to go up and squeeze out the poor. Perhaps in a perfectly free market this would have sorted itself out, but in our market they played the regulations against themselves to get a large amount of money quickly without any concern for the social disruptions it would cause.

Uber was another example where they essentially found a loophole for running an illegal taxi business allowing them to not only screw over the existing taxi drivers that had to shell out for licenses, but also allowed them to pay their drivers less by crowd sourcing it out. I think the argument needs to be reached in a balance between, should we license taxis at all? Or should be allow it to be a free for all. Personally I think the entire system now is geared towards shutting the individual out. Taxi companies lobby the government to stop new competition from rising which is bad. Huge silicon valley startups throw money at loopholes with little care for the society or the problems they cause as they are removed from it, dumping scooters everywhere or otherwise wasting collosal amounts on what likely amounts to creative money laundering.

There's a place for large corporations in any society but ultimately I do think that certain things are more important than profits and the laws need to be written to respect that. I also think that as far as Marxism is concerned, having the workers control their own means of production is largely a good thing, not on the scale of collective state ownership, that's merely a facade designed to manufacture supposed consent. But if you own your own shit and make your own stuff, that's the means of production that matters. And I think our society would be far better off more decentralized and less urban than it is now. With a few exceptions. There's nothing wrong with being rich and having more than others, but the rich and the poor together do need to share some similar sense of community otherwise nasty class differences are allowed to fester beyond the simple case of people having more than others which is neither unfair nor wrong. What's wrong and unfair is when people are unable to work to make more for themselves.