Funny, because for myself, reading about these events from a marxist perspective, not a single one of them is surprising. In fact, all of them are completely predictable.
The story that we've been sold about laissez faire capitalism and neoliberal economics is a farce, pushed by the epic levels of deregulation during the Reagan era.
There is no "crony-capitalism," it's just capitalism. That's it, that's what capitalism does. It breeds inequality.
Your statement is light on meaning unless you can explain how X avoids breeding inequality. Alternatives to capitalism breed inequality as well. Compare any ruling Communist Party to a civilian in their regime.
Sorry, to answer your question, capitalism breeds inequality because private ownership is a hierarchy.
There are those who own, and there are those are required to pay the owner for use of their property. People who own amass capital at an ever increasing rate thanks to exponential growth. People who pay the capitalists for things like food and housing never amass much money at all, certainly nowhere near the order of magnitude that the capitalists do.
Private property allows people to profit from the surplus of workers labor without having to work themselves. It's Marxism 101.
what I don't understand is how I'm supposed to be satisfied with false equality where the vast majority of power and wealth get concentrated into a few controlling hands as opposed to the situation that exists in capitalism now, with that power and wealth spread out more vastly than at any point in human existence.
> what I don't understand is how I'm supposed to be satisfied with false equality where the vast majority of power and wealth get concentrated into a few controlling hands
You're not describing communism, so I guess that's a straw man. You're not supposed to be satisfied with that situation, and that's what communism, idealistically, tries to address. Whether it's effective in the real world is certainly debatable, but we can't have that debate if you change the definition of communism to essentially mean authoritarianism.
Yes, a member of the communist party cadre in certain historical times was separated from the workers they represented. They were full time revolutionaries, no longer part of the working class. This was one of the main issues (in my opinion) with the USSR.
In modern socialist revolutions, the representation must not be separated from the working class. Though, I am also more supportive of tendencies that uphold grassroots democratic behavior. See Rojava for more interesting ideas on that.
The system you are talking about sounds like a cross between a direct democracy and a post-scarcity communist society, if you've not read the works of Iain M Banks you should check them out, you are pretty much describing The Culture :).
Haven't read the others, but Red Mars is excellent, and better than Culture, in my opinion (though the latter varies in quality).
For another vision of a futuristic post-scarcity anarchist adhocracy, see James P. Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear, which features less "magical" AI and is more of a reflection on cultural conditioning.
But how is that justification any different from the ones proponents of free-market capitalist use to explain why our system is different from what they propose?
There's a difference between debating the merits of communism and the tactics to get there.
I think communism is better for people than free markets because markets run on competition, which is in stark contrast to mutual aid, which is how communism works. There are of course many other factors that go into why I think communism is better than free markets, but there's many other reading resources on that. There are also market socialists who oppose capitalism, but support free markets.
Within the left, there are many different tendencies that people have developed to get to some sort of socialist economic structure. The main one we've experienced in the 20th century is Marxism-Leninism. This was developed by Lenin, and basically issues in socialism by the proletariat seizing control of the state and using it to suppress the bourgeoisie until the class no longer exists, at which point, the proletarian state withers away and tada! Communism.
There are also anarchist movements that involved destroying the state at the same time as seizing the means of production. See Revolutionary Catalonia or currently Rojava for interesting movements in these veins.
There is also democratic socialism, which basically involves communist parties getting elected into the government and issuing legislative changes that move toward socialism. This tendency is not revolutionary, but evolutionary. This is sort-of what has been going on in France and Greece. My opinions on this tendency aren't favorable, but to each their own.
Leninism, Stalinism, etc. (countries you mentioned) are attempts to fix problems with capitalism identified by Marx and Engels.
Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis and it true that Marx and Engels writing offered scientific/philosophic background for revolutions (which ended up worse than capitalism). But their critique of capitalism is still very much valid.
Which is the perfect example that both republicans and democrats have the same objective. They are both capitalist parties, I wish there was a true left party in the US to represent the working class.
They haven't explicitly come out against capitalism yet. Though, their youth caucus has drafted a proposal to change their platform to come out as explicitly anti-capitalist. Richard Wolff[1], Democracy@Work cofounder helped draft it.
You can't use Marxism because it's critically based on Malthus and Malthus has been completely discredited.
The story is a farce. But actual capitalism - the creation of value for other people - doesn't breed inequality. What we have is a parody of capitalism.
The story that we've been sold about laissez faire capitalism and neoliberal economics is a farce, pushed by the epic levels of deregulation during the Reagan era.
There is no "crony-capitalism," it's just capitalism. That's it, that's what capitalism does. It breeds inequality.