At their heart, both capitalism and marxism are ideologies describing how things “ought to be.” Proponents of either of them seek to influence political decision making around economic decisions, but neither is/was/will be reality.

No, Marxism does not just describe things as they ought to be. It’s main aspects are:

Anthropological: a methodology for understanding how capitalism happens and how it changes to suit changing conditions (many of which it brings about)

Scientific: a process based ideology for developing an understanding of our local conditions and our ability to change them through sociological investigation, mediated through democratic process

The political program extends from an understanding of those two aspects, and is very variable, because the programs are applied to the local conditions of their environments.

Capitalism postulates that all capital ought to be privately owned and working in individual interest,

No, that strain of bourgeois thought died out as a ruling ideology hundreds of years ago, when state intervention in some failed ventures if the west indies trading company demonstrated that it is more profitable for capitalism to maintain a strong state to protect profits.

Communists dismiss this by pointing out that inequal access to capital causes internal problems in society,

I mean yeah but that’s not the main thing. The main thing that Marxists believe is that as capitalism moves into its monopoly stage, it ceases to be a historically progressive force (in opposition to feudalism) and it starts to be fettered by its own issues, just like feudalism was.

Marxists believe that as production becomes socialized and planned, capitalist control makes these socialized production processes inefficient and ultimately leads to a cycle of crises.

The former option. Why, would you pick the latter option?

Sure, but it is incentivized by capitalism as a real system that exists and is studied. It doesn’t have to exist in capitalist theory for it to be a real phenomenon that has be empirically proven.

One of the most basic economic arguments of Marx’s Capital is that 1) firms compete for higher profit margins 2) it is easiest to reduce wages in order to increase margins 3) you only have to pay workers enough that they’re able to, as a whole, maintain your workforce (the available workforce in general can shrink though, especially as automation shrinks the needed size of the workforce)

Throw in some accumulation by disposession theory(the need to proletarianize the population, separating them from ownership of their own means of subsistence) in order for capitalism to function, and you have good old social murder, the end result of a system designed for efficient accumulation without consideration for human suffering outside the practical consideration of stability.

Socialism, which is designed to manage the needs of a population through democratic processes, does not have this issue, except in the context of fighting capitalism where accumulation needs to be prioritized to some extent, in order to defend their social project from covert and overt hostility by existing capitalist powers.

I’ve cited Capital, you only really need the first dozen or so chapters to understand the primary argument. Marx provides detailed figures to cite his arguments. I would also suggest reading about accumulation by dispossession/primitive accumulation, social murder, and siege socialism.

Because killing people through neglect can improve the efficiency of your workforce

Okay, so are you not able to or not willing to answer the question of “what has to happen for you to start giving a shit?”

Do you not understand that this topic includes democratic politicians straight up being collaborators, and how that might be relevant to the argument you’re trying to make?

The immediate alternative was still worse.

This is right after the election.The immediate alternative is that democrats don’t fucking cave on whether they should take part in genocide, when taking part in that genocide is actually incredibly unpopular with voters.

When do you plan on actually contributing to an alternative?

Seriously, what concrete things need to happen before you’re like “a better world is worth taking risks for”?

You said:

In the meantime: this is the hole we are in. Act accordingly.

AKA “I’m acting like this reality is inescapable”

And also:

If you could actually fucking do that, I would welcome it with open arms.

AKA “I’d love it if someone were to do the work for me”

As we all know, systemic forces can not be worse than being robbed at gunpoint.

You do understand that fucking holocaust survivors have called this anti-trans push genocidal, right? Democrats who are also pushing it are also pushing extermination.

whenever someone tells you to stop letting outright fascists take power

Read Fascism and Social Revolution by R. Palme Dutt

Read Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism by A Sohn-Rethel

Then tell me that it is possible to keep fascism out of power through voting.

So what are you doing right now to fight fascism? If the answer doesn’t include being active in a socialist organization, the only people that historically have been effective at opposing fascism, then the answer is effectively “diddly-squat”, and you should get your ass in gear.

Someone saying “your access to lifesaving medication or your life” is functionally the same thing as them saying "your life (slow) or your life (fast)

So your solution to getting out of the hole is to pretend like the hole is inescapable until someone else does the work? Isn’t that kind of cowardly?

Do you conceive of your entire political reality as waiting anxiously who to vote for in November? Do you not see any political action you can take outside of elections that are ultimately owned by the capitalist class?

“But I’m being oppressed under democrats”

“We will let the other guy torture you if you do not comply(well actually it entirely depends on what white cishet people vote for), and our core base will say you deserved it for not voting hard enough.”

The adults in the room like you rely on complicated concepts, like philosophical problems that they interpret shallowly and put in meme format

Meanwhile us goofballs actually see a horizon beyond alternating which boot will stomp on us for the rest of eternity.

It is because they care about the population more than they care about profits, both for moral reasons and because the whole mandate of socialism is prioritizing democracy (and therefore the needs of your constituency) over capitalism

Let us take medicine as an example:

Higher doctor to patient ratio, better life expectancy for countries income level. Doctors in Cuba go door to door for routine checkups.

Cuba life expectancy is comparable to US life expectancy and has a hard time acquiring sterile needles due to the blockade if that gives you an idea

Were you around when the Fort Detrick conspiracy was going around? Obviously not true but has more evidence than the Wuhan shit so was fun to use to push back against that.