Peter Joseph and Marxism
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Socialism failed. Communism failed. Every attempt at collectivism ends in disaster.
What these phrases are actually doing — quietly, without acknowledgment — is substituting for a much larger claim: that market capitalism is the only viable way to organize a modern society, and that any deviation from it leads to catastrophe. That is the true meaning. That is the true intent, even if people don’t know it when they say these kinds of things.
What he’s saying basically is the same as we say about the 57 varieties of ‘socialism’, none of which are socialism as we understand it and all of which tend to distract people from the non-market society which we would like to see and which he also appears to want. The difference is that he’s concerned to construct a model of the specific details of that society, i.e. precisely how it will work. But such a model will only make sense once it is clear that there is increasing support from the world’s people for a non-market society and we are therefore relatively close to bringing it in by democratic action. That’s why Marx warned against ‘recipes for the cookshops of the future’. He was quite right and any recipe Peter Joseph may cook up at this point may well look ridiculous at a later stage of capitalist deveoplment and social consciousness.
This is the reply to Peter Joseph I’ve put on his substack page:
What you are saying is basically what the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the World Socialist Movement say about the ’57 varieties of socialism’, none of which are socialism as we understand it (i.e. a non-market, free access society) and all of which tend to distract people from the idea of that society. The difference between us is that you’re concerned to construct a model of the specific details of that society, i.e. precisely how it will work. But such a model will only make sense once it is clear that there is increasing support from the world’s people for a non-market society and we are therefore relatively close to bringing it in by democratic action and can start to plan for it. That’s why Marx who, somewhat contrary to what you say, did advocate that kind of society, warned against ‘recipes for the cookshops of the future’. He was quite right and any recipe you may produce at this point may well look entirely irrelevant at a later stage of capitalist deveoplment and social consciousness.
Actually, he is making a valid point about the word “socialism”. The word is used in practice to cover such a wide variety of different political and economic regimes that it has become virtually meaningless.
He has always been consistent about this, refusing to call his alternative to “free market” capitalism “socialism”, even though its content — a system based on “no ownership” with “open access” — is what we can recognise as similar to what we mean by “socialism” and “communism”. He doesn’t want to call this “socialism” as he thinks — in fact, knows — people will associate this with other systems that call themselves or are called “socialist” and the failure of some of these will be used discredit the whole idea of an alternative to “private enterprise” caputakusm.
We know this is the case from our own experience and that many of the arguments we have with others often end up being often about terminology rather than substance. Which is why some members have suggested that we too drop the word “socialism” and use some other forms of words such as “world of free access” and “world cooperative commonwealth” to describe what we stand for.
What this brings out is the importance of defining the meaning of the words that are used in any debate. Which is something we have always insisted on and why we always define from the beginning of any discussion what it is we mean by the word “socialism”.
Interesting post from PJ again. Since some people reading this might not be on FB I will copy and paste:
For a very long time now, I have described how one of the worst symptom tumors of modern life is Wall St. speculation, which is an umbrella term that embraces everything from stocks to bitcoin/cryptocurrencies, futures, and endless derivatives.
If the toxic nature of these completely unnecessary, meaningless, wasteful, and DEEPLY socially damaging elements were not bad enough, as a side effect of the sickness of market economics, a.k.a. capitalism:
Meet the Polymarket.
It’s a prediction market platform where people bet on the outcomes of real-world events—politics, economics, global crises, and more—based on what they think will happen.
Kinda might seem like an innovative way to aggregate public knowledge, as some argue… but no.
Step back, and it becomes a system that turns reality itself into a speculative asset. Human events—often serious, complex, and consequential—get reduced to binary wagers.
Yes. It’s just about as grotesque as it can get.
The root idea traces back to the aftermath of September 11, 2001, when some “genius” proposed that there might be a kind of emergent intelligence in collective betting behavior. The theory was that if people could gamble on things like possible terrorist attacks or geopolitical instability, the market might actually predict them.
This is the same mythology that underpins Wall Street: that markets are somehow intelligent, that speculation produces truth, and that the aggregation of self-interest leads to meaningful insight. But what it actually produces is an abstraction layer where human suffering, instability, and even death can be reframed as $opportunities.
The only possible “positive” in this structure is if someone were using it to track insider knowledge—if bets reflected real, privileged information about events before they occurred. But even that collapses under scrutiny. If that were widely understood, no one with real knowledge would risk exposure just to participate. The system would undermine itself.
So what remains?
A feedback loop of detached, indifferent speculation. A culture where everything—war, elections, disasters—can be converted into a position to take. It doesn’t matter if the outcome is good or bad. The only thing that matters is whether you were right—and whether you made money.
This is the deeper issue. Gambling platforms like this, and financial markets more broadly, don’t evaluate reality based on human well-being or long-term progress. They operate on a completely different metric: selfish, narcissistic profitability. And once that becomes the dominant lens, everything else is secondary.
The incentive structure oriented around this kind of thinking is beyond psychopathic
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1491426675680919&set=a.255266979296901
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