It was after the railroads had mostly been finished, so the racism took precedence. White conservatives got really scared that the Chinese would have enough population to gain significant political power. Sounds familiar?

People act in their own perceived self-interest

No, they don’t. That is where he is wrong. People frequently act against their perceived self interest out of fear, hate, mental instability, or any number of other reasons.

Further, Marx’s theories absolutely do work in practice

Ah, like the USSR? Nope. Venezuela? Nope. Cuba? Nope. China? Trick question, they adopted state capitalism in the 70s and are a totalitarian state domestically.

This is not socialism and capitalism working together, but public property helping the dominant private property in the context of a capitalist system.

Corruption is a problem with any system. Capitalism or communism is irrelevant. Marx would probably argue that greed is a social construct, but I think psychology has conclusively shown that while elements of greed are social, it is fundamentally an evolutionary adaptation (as is altruism).

The reason classes are directly related to ownership of the means of production is because classes have shared class interests.

Ownership of the means of production is just a type of power. It is the power to grant or deprive others of resources. Shared interests by class is another falsehood bred from lack of psychological understanding by Marx. A black woman who works at a grocery store in a city and a white male farmer from a rural area are the same class to Marx. However their interests are vastly different because of intersectionality (which Marx had no way to know about).

The US is a dictatorship of capital, and is far less democratic than the USSR was.

The USSR was on no way democratic. It was an authoritarian state with one party who regularly presented voters with one single party-approved candidate to vote for. The public was not allows fundamental democratic principles like freedom of speech or independent political opposition. Stalin literally won 100% of the vote because of uncontested elections.

https://www.nytimes.com/1937/12/14/archives/stalin-wins-poll-by-a-vote-of-100-no-opposition-is-shown-in-count.html

The US political system is heavily impacted by capital, but capital isn’t a single entity. It is a wide range of groups with a wide range of conflicting interests. Beyond limiting government regulation of capital and taxation, they rarely agree. Capital spends heavily influencing voters opinions, BUT the voters do still vote and those votes are counted honestly. We absolutely need to get money out of politics and we need to get rid of first past the post style voting. That being said, we are a democracy. And imperfect democracy, but a democracy.

Newton understood that gravity was a natural force. He didn’t understand where gravity came from. We later learned that gravity is created by time itself. In the same way Marx didn’t understand why people acted the way they do which limited his ability to accurately predict behavior. That is largely why so few of his theories work in practice.

Recipe please!

Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson.

The story follows Hiro Protagonist—a pizza delivery driver in a fractured, hyper-capitalized future reality and an elite hacker/swordfighter in the virtual “Metaverse”.

If you like that, his other books are fantastic, especially Cryptonomicon, Anathem, and Diamond Age.

You are trying to slice up parts of a cohesive system and treat those constituent parts as though they form an independent system themselves, but this is incorrect.

Ah, I see the issue here. I am not arguing that the system is entirely capitalist or socialist. I am arguing that a system can contain sectors that operate under one system while other sectors operate under the other. The “principal aspect” certainly applies as a general description of the whole, but that doesn’t change the nature of individual elements.

Classes are relations to ownership of production and distribution, not simply income levels or levels of administrative authority

I would argue classes are determined by power. In the USSR, the power was held by the government and organized crime, not workers.

The US is a democratic republic. No matter how much capital you have, you can’t gain power without convincing people to vote for you. Granted money makes this easier, but it is not sure thing. Look at Elon Musk. He tried to use his money to force his way into government with that DOGE thing, but it failed miserably and he was pushed back.

The majority does not run society, they pick between outcomes already decided as okay by the capitalist class.

Was it any different in the USSR with the party making all the choices? Power always sets up the game board we all play on.

I am not going to explain to you the entire history of modern psychology which developed since Marx lived. He didn’t incorporate any of it because it didn’t fucking exist! How hard is that to understand?

If she’s helping Trump, she’s still helping the disabled.

Immigration law in the US is and has always has been racist. The first federal immigration law was called the Chinese Exclusion act for fucks sake.

You keep ignoring large parts of my argument. Think about how wrong the understanding of biology that doctors had in the 1860-70s compared to what we do now. Marx had the equivalent lack of knowledge about human psychology. His theories do not accurately describe human behavior on a fundamental level.

Marx did not understand the psychological and sociological needs that religion fulfills (I.e. fear of death). He confuses properties of Judeo-Christian religions as being universal to religion itself. Did most pre Columbian Native American faiths struggle with the exploitation of the proletariat? No. If anything several were closer to the Marxist ideal of a classless society than any attempts at communism.

The working classes do not control bourgeois elections,

Excuses excuses.

Welfare can be and often is socialism.

Both are modes of production dependent on which aspect of the economy is principal,

which class controls the state

This is an interesting element. The USSR under Stalin was controlled by a few elites. That doesn’t make it capitalist. The US is a democracy, so it is controlled by the people . That doesn’t make it socialist. An economic system is not a political system and vice versa.

Regulation is not separate from capitalism, but we aren’t talking about regulation. We are talking about state control, which is explicitly socialist. State ownership vs private ownership is literally the fundamental distinction between socialism and capitalism. In a fully capitalist system there can be no state ownership of means of production

capitalism requires contract law and the protection of private property rights, which requires a state, state-operated courts and police forces, whose existence cannot be subject to market forces as with private companies

Incorrect. Many corporations include arbitration clauses in contracts. This stipulates that disputes do not use government courts, rather using private third party arbitrators to litigate disputes. These courts are capitalist. Government courts are not capitalist (not saying they are socialist either).

The problem is you are thinking of capitalism and socialism as a binary. An economy can incorporate elements of both (and usually does). Most capitalist economies incorporate some amount of socialism with utilities and essential services. Most socialist economies incorporate some amount of capitalism with entertainment.

The definition of socialism is literally state ownership of means of production and state administration of the market.

Are you saying this is capitalist state ownership and market administration?

If the studies were done primarily on people with sleep problems, then the reduction in pain could easily be explained by getting better rest due to the melatonin, not directly from the melatonin itself.

Gerrymandering maybe?

Why?

With the fire department , the government owns the means of production (fire houses, trucks, etc) and sets the prices instead of the free market (paid for by taxes). That is socialism. Public healthcare may or may not be depending on what system it is.