But to add more details that someone coming by might want, there is a reason that people like us think revolution is the only way.
1: The rules in place right now incentivize top-down corporate power, as long as “profit” is the only thing that is “rewarded” in our system (Or, the potential for profit, ie: futures gambling, stocks, etc.), powerful people will always find a way to gain more power, and therefore, will always create an exaggerated economy of wealthy and non-wealthy (Though, there are always the petty class, those that buddy up to the corporate powers and do their bidding, making them wealthy, just not quite as wealthy, or quite as powerful, as their corporate masters).
2: Powerful people have shown time and time again that they will use their power to keep their power. That means influencing public opinion (By buying up media outlets and creating media giants) and influencing politics directly (Paying representatives to change the laws to benefit themselves).
3: Based on 1 and 2, the small iterative changes that bring equality & regulation (Such as welfare, regulating pollution, medicine, quality of food, etc.) have shown to be rolled back time and time again, and therefore are ineffective at reducing wealth disparity, or guaranteeing rights or higher quality of life for everyone.
4: The overall culture of Capitalist nations have embedded into them a sense of “justification”. If you are poor, you ‘deserve’ it, if you are rich, you ‘deserve’ it. The systemic issues that we observe, and our research into fixing those systemic issues, are ignored and the success of those systems blown off by the capitalists as “not scalable” or some other bullshit. Therefore, evidence and reasoning are not enough, in our experience, to change the minds of regular people who are constantly inundated with false solutions and propaganda.
5: Any countries making real progress on fronts that progressives really believe in (Giving money to the poor, moving away from fossil fuels, reacting to terrorist attacks with education instead of war, etc.) are immediately demonized by the capitalists, and lies and propaganda surround these nations. Yes I’m talking about China (And historically, the USSR). Though China is not necessarily the golden example of socialism (This is just my opinion. This is debatable among well-read Marxists, and I’m not saying anyone is wrong if you think China is correct in it’s actions. For example, it was able to survive when the USSR didn’t, so they are doing something right for sure), they sure are more progressive than the west is, and now they are seen as the #1 enemy of the west, even though when you look at the west and China’s actions from afar, you see that on paper, China is much more progressive and much less aggressive than the West is.
That’s all I have time to put down for now. This was just the reason for believing that revolution is the only way to fix, this, but it doesn’t even touch what happens after the revolution. There is so much more theory/examples from history that cover that, and I don’t think the answer is obvious, especially because things that worked elsewhere or on paper may not work for any other particular nation or culture. Hopefully you found this informative anyway. If anyone thought I missed any piece, please feel free to continue adding things to the list. The many, many aspects of our society are intertwined so I’m sure there is so much more we could say, I just felt this, in my head, was a good distilled version of the minimum evidence I’ve seen that’s convinced me that the west has no intention of bettering the lives of average people, and never will.
As others have said, revolution.
But to add more details that someone coming by might want, there is a reason that people like us think revolution is the only way.
1: The rules in place right now incentivize top-down corporate power, as long as “profit” is the only thing that is “rewarded” in our system (Or, the potential for profit, ie: futures gambling, stocks, etc.), powerful people will always find a way to gain more power, and therefore, will always create an exaggerated economy of wealthy and non-wealthy (Though, there are always the petty class, those that buddy up to the corporate powers and do their bidding, making them wealthy, just not quite as wealthy, or quite as powerful, as their corporate masters).
2: Powerful people have shown time and time again that they will use their power to keep their power. That means influencing public opinion (By buying up media outlets and creating media giants) and influencing politics directly (Paying representatives to change the laws to benefit themselves).
3: Based on 1 and 2, the small iterative changes that bring equality & regulation (Such as welfare, regulating pollution, medicine, quality of food, etc.) have shown to be rolled back time and time again, and therefore are ineffective at reducing wealth disparity, or guaranteeing rights or higher quality of life for everyone.
4: The overall culture of Capitalist nations have embedded into them a sense of “justification”. If you are poor, you ‘deserve’ it, if you are rich, you ‘deserve’ it. The systemic issues that we observe, and our research into fixing those systemic issues, are ignored and the success of those systems blown off by the capitalists as “not scalable” or some other bullshit. Therefore, evidence and reasoning are not enough, in our experience, to change the minds of regular people who are constantly inundated with false solutions and propaganda.
5: Any countries making real progress on fronts that progressives really believe in (Giving money to the poor, moving away from fossil fuels, reacting to terrorist attacks with education instead of war, etc.) are immediately demonized by the capitalists, and lies and propaganda surround these nations. Yes I’m talking about China (And historically, the USSR). Though China is not necessarily the golden example of socialism (This is just my opinion. This is debatable among well-read Marxists, and I’m not saying anyone is wrong if you think China is correct in it’s actions. For example, it was able to survive when the USSR didn’t, so they are doing something right for sure), they sure are more progressive than the west is, and now they are seen as the #1 enemy of the west, even though when you look at the west and China’s actions from afar, you see that on paper, China is much more progressive and much less aggressive than the West is.
That’s all I have time to put down for now. This was just the reason for believing that revolution is the only way to fix, this, but it doesn’t even touch what happens after the revolution. There is so much more theory/examples from history that cover that, and I don’t think the answer is obvious, especially because things that worked elsewhere or on paper may not work for any other particular nation or culture. Hopefully you found this informative anyway. If anyone thought I missed any piece, please feel free to continue adding things to the list. The many, many aspects of our society are intertwined so I’m sure there is so much more we could say, I just felt this, in my head, was a good distilled version of the minimum evidence I’ve seen that’s convinced me that the west has no intention of bettering the lives of average people, and never will.