Just finished watching an HBO movie on the early years of the collaboration between Karl Marx & Friederich Engels and the Birth of the Communist Party.  After watching the full film two thing stood out most.

First, how Capitalism as it began with the Industrial Revolution and the application of the Energy of Fossil Fuel truly was based on Wage Slavery, which in many ways was even worse than explicit slavery.  In the case of explicit slaves, each one represented a significant financial investment by the person who bought one.  If that slave died after a milling machine scalped him or ripped off his arm the first day of work, the owner took a big financial hit having to buy a new one to replace him.  With wage slavery, if a worker died on the job there was always another one outside the door ready to work for whatever the owner would pay.  Poor People were always in unlimited supply, and we all know the supply-demand equation.  No pricing power.

Second is that contrary to popular belief Communism DID NOT FAIL!  It's the workers movement over the latter half of the 19th Century that put a stop to the worst abuses of the Capitalist system.  It's the FEAR of workers organizing and taking control over property that forced the Bourgeois to make changes in work hours, job safety and pensions in order to maintain their control over the system and their ability to extract most of the wealth from an enterprise, while the workers responsible for that success earned only enough to survive.  An improvement over the condition of dying by the truckload of course, but only a partial victory.

The complete victory never arrived either, despite the attempts made in places  like the Soviet Union and China.  In both cases there though, it was a vast improvement over the Monarchies they succeeded, and the failures were in many ways engineered by Capitalists who undermined the ideals through war, theft, bribery & corruption.  Now as Capitalism is in its Death Throes swimming under the mountain of debt it built over the last 200 years, it's ability to stop the inevitable victory of Communism is vastly diminished.

Below is the trailer.  Full film also available on UTube for a fee.



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How would Uncle Karl feel about paying to watch it?  The workers who made the documentary gain no proceeds now.  It was made nine years ago.  Only useless eaters now reap the fee.  Your thoughts?  How would Uncle Karl feel about me getting it for free on Pirate Bay?

Knowledge should be free, and I'll not watch it to be entertained.  I will watch it to learn.

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 04, 2026, 01:49 PMHow would Uncle Karl feel about paying to watch it?  The workers who made the documentary gain no proceeds now.  It was made nine years ago.  Only useless eaters now reap the fee.  Your thoughts?  How would Uncle Karl feel about me getting it for free on Pirate Bay?

Knowledge should be free, and I'll not watch it to be entertained.  I will watch it to learn.

UK would of course view it as EXPLOITATION, which is how he viewed the concept of all PROFIT.  He also would be aghast at the way the idea of INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY has evolved with the use of Patents & Copyrights to reduce knowledge to a commodity people have to pay for, with the Profit generated from the knowledge controlled by the "owner" of the property.

I'm sure he would be fine with you downloading a Pirate copy of the film and in fact encourage it.  I get HBO along with my Amazon Prime membership, which I bought for the Free Shipping, not for the Video.  In AK, the free shipping pays for the membership after about 5 items you buy in a year.  It is unfortunate that Bezos gets the Profit of course, but among the many ways my pocket gets picked by Capitalists, this one is fairly modest.

RE