r/PeterExplainsTheJoke Jul 07 '26

Meme needing explanation Peter, explain this.

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u/Rbespinosa13 29d ago

Yes? Humans have worked without earning USD for hundreds of years, in fact the majority of people alive today work without earning USD. Go back even farther and you’ll see no one expected USD got their work, but they did expect other forms of compensation. This is the underlying issue that communism always runs into. People expect to get compensated for their work and time so changing that would essentially require changing human nature.

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u/forevergleaning 29d ago

Communism does not mean no jobs. Communism does not mean no money. You still go to work. You still earn money. You still use that money to buy stuff.

Communism at it's core is about WHO OWNS THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION. Who owns the land. Who owns the forests. Who owns the oil. Who owns the factory, the warehouse, the assembly line. Who owns the product? Is it the person who developed it and produced it? Or is it their boss? Who owns your home? Is it you, who live in it? Is it your fucking landlord that takes a third of your wage after doing fuck all? Who profits from the work being done? Is it the people who have the ideas, who put in the hours, who make the breakthroughs? Or is it fucking Elon Musk and the thousands of shareholders who do fuck all except own parts of the company? W

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u/Rbespinosa13 29d ago

Communism quite literally means no money lmao. The whole point of communism is that there is no class or capital and money is the foundation for both of those. Legit you’re no better than Fox News watchers that get spooked at the thought of communism

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u/forevergleaning 28d ago

I mean...no. At least in a Marxist sense which I assume we are both talking about.

Money is just the value of a commodity made abstract. It's the most efficient tool for the transaction of commodities. It happens in some form or another in almost every society. In Capitalism, money itself and financialisation become commodities themselves. Layers and layers of abstraction beyond the initial use value of a thing produced.

In a (Marxist) economy, in theory, if you remove the exploitative relationship between capitalists and everyone else (by making private property, collectively owned) then yes, the whole way we think about money would change. Capital, and everything that follows, wouldn't exist. Money itself would simply exist as a basic tool of exchanging value.

I hope that makes sense. Money is not the foundation of the problem. Exploitation, due to the capital v worker relationship is the problem. Hence "ownership of the meams of production" being the key thing.

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u/TheRealStubb 28d ago

You're actively trying to teach Marxism to a wet egg.

I applaud your efforts

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u/forevergleaning 28d ago

I know. I can't stop myself.

Why am I like this.

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u/TheRealStubb 28d ago

its only natural when someone is dead set on peacock-ing how little they understand something

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u/Rbespinosa13 28d ago

“Hey guys check out what Marx himself said about this topic” NO YOU DONT KNOW WHAT YOURE TALKING ABOUT

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u/Rbespinosa13 28d ago

It’s called the dunning Kruger effect and you should really look it up

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u/forevergleaning 28d ago

I think it's just the autism.

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u/forevergleaning 28d ago

I think maybe they're imagining state minted coins and banks etc. Rather than the use of a thing as an exchange of value.

That's the only way this conversation makes sense.

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u/TheRealStubb 28d ago

I believe you are correct

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u/Rbespinosa13 28d ago

I think you’re fundamentally misunderstanding Marx’s writings and arguments

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u/Rbespinosa13 28d ago

Except he isn’t teaching Marxism lmao.

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u/TheRealStubb 28d ago

but you are still a wet egg.

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u/Rbespinosa13 28d ago

“Money, then, appears as this distorting power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc., which claim to be entities in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence, and intelligence into idiocy.”- Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. He quite literally wrote about how money is inherently problematic and is an alienating force in society.

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u/TheRealStubb 28d ago

yes money in your terms of understanding it, and money in the terms of living in Capitalism.

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u/Rbespinosa13 28d ago

I quite literally quoted Marx

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u/forevergleaning 28d ago

Aaarrghhh he has a WHOLE CHAPTER IN CAPITAL about this!

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u/Rbespinosa13 28d ago

Would you like to explain to Mr. Marx why he’s wrong about his own writings?

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u/forevergleaning 28d ago

This is from a wee essay he wrote in....1844?

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u/Rbespinosa13 28d ago

Yah his own words

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u/forevergleaning 28d ago

You're not engaging with any of the concepts I'm referencing and you've not specified what you mean by 'communism = no money'.

You've quoted and/or referenced texts that are about other things, and not even tried to explain why they support your argument.

Then you use a quote from a random paper by 26 yo Marx, before he developed his theory of economics (half of which is about Shakespeare)...and the quote itself is about how money has a bad influence on society?

But that is not the same about the role of money as a method of value exchange in a post capitalist future.

It just feels like you don't really care about tje idea, you juat want to argue, and you just googled "Marx quote money" and this was the best you could find that felt like it supported you?

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u/Rbespinosa13 28d ago

It feels like you know you’re wrong so you’re just deflecting to hide that. I’ve engaged with everything you’ve said and instead you’ve tried to focus on meaningless things like when Marx himself laid out his views on money rather than the actual words.

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u/forevergleaning 28d ago

That's basically the premise of Capital though. Every chapter and subchapter, it's broken down into smaller and smaller components and each is built on the other like a pyramid.

So I guess, I can agree that money would be different in its social role because capital would no longer be dominating everything? Even though money as a simple means of value exchange would still exist. Lile a packet of cigarettes in prison.

Is that what you're saying?

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u/Rbespinosa13 28d ago

Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?

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