Force the meme, force it, force it… FORCE IT, DAMMIT
TURN LEFT MF’ERS!
If anyone wants to read Marx and understand what people mean exactly when they say workers create value, but are intimidated by Capital, I recommend starting with Wage Labor and Capital It’s a short, concise work by Marx specifically made for people without any background knowledge, unlike the Communist Manifesto.
remember that a company can do fine without a CEO. they can’t earn shit without workers.
Lemmy.ml enters the chat
So you’re saying you’d rather have Corporations and Billionaires continue to rob the working class?
I’d rather my worker’s rights didn’t come with a side of authoritarianism, but maybe that’s just me.
There is nothing authoritarian about workers owning the means of production, and for the record you live under the authority of Capital everyday.
You’ll be hard pressed to have your average person online casually use the Engelian type use of authority in authoritarian. The authority of work or authority of capital isn’t what they’re thinking. What is being imagined is almost always despotic tyranny.
Same thing with dictatorship. Most people will see that word and not associate it with a philosophical concept that includes a kind of rule by a class of citizens. They’ll use it synonymous to despotic tyranny.
Outside .ml at least, and especially on .world.
lemmy.ml is run by marxist-leninists (hence the .ml), which is an explicitly authoritarian ideology, and for the record trading one form of authoritarianism for another is not a worthwhile improvement.
Yes it is, because authoritarianism isn’t the end goal of ML. You readily acknowledge that we currently live under an authoritarian Capitalist system, can you tell me what the end goal of this system even is? I mean most workers are one missed paycheck away from homelessness. While vast sums of wealth are horded by the top 1% of society with the only end goal being more wealth being extracted from the working class, with no actual goal besides more profit and greater wealth. The end goal of Marxist-Leninism is a classes society where each person contributes what they can to society and receives back what they need to live a fulfilling life. They are extremely different.
Alright, firstly, I think you’re mistaking me as advocating for capitalism. I’m not. Whilst I’m not a fan of labels (they’re so easily contorted away from their original meanings by those seeking to undermine the ideologies they describe), I believe “Socialist” would reasonably describe my beliefs.
Secondly,
[…]authoritarianism isn’t the end goal of ML.
I think you’ve got that backwards. Marxism-Leninism starts with democratic means, then implements an authoritarian regime.
[…]can you tell me what the end goal of this system even is?
No, because there isn’t one. Capitalism actively punishes any form of forethought or long-term planning.
[…]The end goal of Marxist-Leninism is a classes society where each person contributes what they can to society and receives back what they need to live a fulfilling life. They are extremely different.
In theory, maybe. Just like in theory Capitalism self regulates through competitive pressures, or whatever nonsense it is that Capitalists spout.
I’m more concerned with actual effects, and empirical evidence than hypotheticals. Authoritarian regimes invariably turn oppressive, one way or another.
Capitalism does not self regulate, it consolidates. You should try reading Marx and Lenin’s actual writings, you seem very earnest and dont come off as a troll. There are multiple free audio recordings on YouTube of their works. Humanity must escape the all powerful driving forces of the profit motives Capitalism enforces or perish off the face of this earth. That process if it is to take place will appear extremely authoritarian to those who value profit above all else.
My respectfully-written comment got removed for no good cause by a Lemmy.ml moderator (an authority figure. D’oh!)
You gotta remember your on Lemmy.cuck.world
Remember: When you make fun of rednecks, you make fun of Dale.
I prefer hillbillies to rednecks. Rednecks have “back the blue” stickers while hillbillies take pot shots at any car with federal plates. Rednecks have lifted mall crawlers while hillbillies have an old busted Tacoma or Geo Metro. Rednecks have pets, hillbillies have raccoon and possum neighbors who hang out on their porch together.
You’re only a hillbilly if you’re from the Appalachia region of the US, otherwise you’re just a sparkling redneck.
Originally rednecks were the hillbillies that wore red neckerchiefs at the battle of Blair mountain. They fought against Pinkertons who were hired by the coal mines to break up the rednecks who had taken over the company property.
That may have changed since the blue collar comedy tour, but originally rednecks were the works seizing the means of production.
Jsyk, looking up “etymology redneck” indicates the term comes from sunburn on the back of manual laborers’ necks and was in use for a bout a century before. I am always glad to see the West Virginia coal mine wars brought up tho so kudos.
is there a difference between hillbillies and hill folk or is that just playing with words
And Dolly!
Dolly’s a hick. Rebecca’s the Redneck.
I’m not well versed enough in the various cousins of hillbillies to differentiate. /s
Who’s Rebecca?
The Miley Cyrus to Dolly’s Hannah Montana.
Raise hell. Praise Dale.
Very few workers want to own their means of production. They just want a paycheck for their labor.
Because very few workers possess class conciousness due to decades of capitalist propaganda.
It’s more that investing in the place you work sucks because you know how shit of an investment it is. Most people would rather own shares in the s&p500 than their place of work.
Investment Capital should not be a prerequisite for workers to own their means of production.
I just think production machinery should be properly lubricated. You types always talk about it seizing.
So they should just be made responsible for tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment because they worked there for a week.
Nobody said anything like that. Keep straw-manning I guess?
Yes workplaces should be a democracy, not the dictatorships that they currently are.
What does a democratic workplace look like? I’ve seen it work on a small scale but I can’t see how having people voting on the direction of the company has any value when their job is not relevant to making those decisions.
The democracy comes in the form of shareholders. If you want a say in the company you must purchase part of the company and then you get a vote.
It’s not a prerequisite. It’s just an option that’s available to anyone who wants to own part of a publicly traded company. If you want to own it in the traditional sense go be a tradie plenty of tradies run their own operations.
And yet the C-level doesn’t mind being paid in shares.
I think thats for the following reasons. Because the c manager understands the value of investment long term and they believe they can impact the company in a positive way. They also likely have more disposable income.
A factory line worker has very little control over the performance of the company. He wants his weekly pay to be in full cash and that’s it because he either has less disposable income or doesnt understand the value of investment.
If the line worker wants to invest he would likely invest in another company than his own unless his company was preforming exceptionally well.
If workers were the owners they would also have decision-making power.
This isn’t just about stock options, ownership in a holistic sense involves control.
I think it’s more like, imagine if all the shares of Amazon were confiscated from Bezos and his main henchmen and his original remaining backers, and then those shares were equally redistributed to Amazon employees and contractors. I don’t think the workers would disagree with that move.
Of course they wouldn’t. They’d be making six figures overnight.
Honestly, every one who has talked to an owner operator can tell how much it sucks.
An owner/operator does not own a share of a large corporation. The idea of the workers controlling the means of production is that the workers collectively own the company, not that each worker owns their own dump truck.
As for most people not wanting that, I wonder if that would be true if they understood it meant that they got a share of the profits on top of their regular paycheck?
Hehe, I’m now only targeting jobs in the public sector, only way I can tell myself I’ll be happy getting out of bed in the morning
I’d rather have the workers own their own mean of living (house).
Yes, they’re not mutually exclusive. In fact owning the means of production would give the workers more financial stability and might lead to better home ownership.
Look around the status quo, how many people do you think can afford owning a home in the current situation?
No, it is an accurate thing to say. The fact that they didn’t find larger buildings in a settlement 10 thousand years old != Communism.
Communism is a decent “theory”, but that’s it. There hasn’t been a single attempt that wasn’t a wanna be dictator using it to seize power.
Yeah, you tell em!
What are you actually rambling about?
Regardless of whoever is voted in in my country (Canada) no politicians will be capable of facilitating a system where in the average working citizen can comfortably afford food and shelter.
No one can do this because there is overwhelming sentiment that any attempt to socialize necessities necessarily devolves into some kind of dictatorship.
If you want to suggest I should align myself with those people you’re going to have to do a little better than fear mongering because the writing is on the wall for how the country is going to end up if we keep following this route.
Being able to vote for one of three people who are either unwilling or unable to ensure some basic standard of living for me is pretty damn low on my hierarchy of needs.
I have no problem with socializing necessities, I find it amusing you went off on that unrelated tangent. Or that because I don’t think communism is a workable solution in the real world, that I think our current solutions are good.
Bitch the world is on fire and everyone’s uncles are turning into Nazis
Go back to bombing Ukraine and killing minorities commie
I don’t think you understand communism if that’s what you think the Russian oligarchy is.
The problem is every form of “communism” implemented to date has immediately become a authoritarian dictatorship. One could even say “communism” is just snake oil used to convince the populous to allow the installation of authoritarian dictatorships…
By “every form,” you mean the ones in the 20th century which were not actually communist because there were power hierarchies and class levels.
Çatalhöyük was an actual communist community. There was no division of labor, no ruling class, apparently not even division by gender.
It was around for 900 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Çatalhöyük
Communism was figured out thousands of years before currency, let alone capitalism. The problem isn’t communism, the problem is some people hunger for wealth and power and are allowed to accumulate both.
Exactly, but they claimed to be communist and the public was told they were becoming a communist state when they were created. Kinda fits my “snake oil” theory pretty perfectly hmm…
Your response is a 12k+ old community, not even a state or country. That “may” have some similarities to modern communism, based on the pure conjecture of the archeologists.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea claims to be democratic and a republic. Are they? Because that’s your reasoning here- countries are what they claim to be.
Also, not pure conjecture. That’s an ignorant thing to say.
as opposed to all of the anti-authortarian capitalist, aristocracy, fascist, monarchist, oligarchy, plutocratic, feudalist and herrenvolk societies?
I think the socialism implemented in some of the northern Scandinavian countries is the best we have right now.
But as bad as capitalism is and it is BAD. It’s still many times better than communism even for the average worker. And even though it is devolving into a oligarchy ( or dictatorship) at some point. It’s doing much slower than any attempt at communism we’ve had.
Flip it around.
They were authoritarian dictatorships and kleptocracies that paid lip service to communism.
The USSR was the closest to communism, but of course all the power and money got pulled to the top and the people got to live with the nominal structure of it.
Little bit like the US… a capitalist country with a free market, but again, all the power and money get pulled to the top to keep their bank accounts safe and the people get to live with the fallout of market volatility.
Lenin the guy that “brought” communism to the USSR was a dictator from day one. What are you talking about?
That’s what I said?
They’re dictatorships that someone slaps the world “communism” on? They have the trappings of communism for the common people but shovel all the money and power to the top like a dictatorship. Don’t know why it isn’t clear
If you’re not annoying both . world and .ml with your comments, why even bother?
