BartsBigBugBag @ BartsBigBugBag @lemmy.tf

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Joined

2 yr. ago

Cheers! Thanks for chatting. I’m out too for now. Take care!

I appreciate that insight, and while I don’t agree, it does give me something to chew on for a while, and another excuse to read the soviet archives to see what they were discussing internally at that time. That archive is a godsend, it’s how you can prove definitively that the Holodomor was not intentional, and that attempts were made to not only ease it, but to preempt it from happening. Attempts which were sabotaged by a class of people who wanted to keep their privileges and place above the ordinary people.

Well, I’m not sure this will get a good response, but I highly recommend reading the works of successful revolutionaries. Guevara, Lenin, Mao, Nkrumah, etc.

Those peoples books fucking blew my mind. They enacted revolution, and then spent a long time reflecting upon them. There’s decades of works from each, except Nkrumah :(

I’d say the first thing to do is to join a local socialist organization and get active in organizing in your community. Direct action groups are good too, but mostly serve to cauterize wounds inflicted by capitalism, rather than actually healing them, so they’re best used in tandem with direct organization. Unionize your workplace if you can. If we get massive union movement again, those unions can collaborate to massively extend our power. A hundred individual unionized factories mean little, but 100 unionized factories acting as one, that will get some movement. You can look to the UAW for the power of collective unionism. It’ll be even more powerful if we become so unionized that we can use solidarity strikes regardless of the oppressive laws against it.

Know that nothing will be won without blood though. You cannot ask a man to give up his immense privilege without expecting him to try to stop you. People died to win us the 40 hour week. People died to win us Overtime. People died for the 8 hour day and unemployment insurance and an end to company scrip. We will have to be willing to make that same sacrifice in order to win our current battle. Nothing will be won tomorrow either. This is a struggle. Every day, for as long as it takes. Take the concessions when you win them, but do not be satisfied, for they are only that, concessions, and concessions can be taken away as easily as they were given. We must continue through, until we reach the finish line. And once we do, the real race starts. We have to avoid the mistakes of movements in the past like the CNT, and USSR, and various other countries, while still looking to their successes with a clear mind.

Cheers.

Cheers. I had a bit of an epiphany lately, and can no longer stand by idly while such atrocities happen. I now actively seek to spread information and make myself well known as a communist, even knowing the dangers if the nascent fascist movement wins in the US.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

-Karl Marx

We don’t have to hide who we are like the fascists, who take various names (libertarians, anarchism-capitalists, national socialists, etc etc) specifically to hide their true nature. As communists, we know our solution is not only right, it is inevitable. As Rosa once said, “It is socialism, or barbarism.” And we’re approaching the breaking point. So I’m done being subtle, slowly radicalizing people. It’s a successful venture, but it takes too long. We don’t have the time anymore. The best time to organize was 10 years ago, the second best time is now.

Join your local orgs. If you’re anarchist, food not bombs has always been great for me, but I encourage you to look into local socialist parties, and attempt to help them where they need. Direct action is important, but so is class consciousness and learning how to effectively organize mass movements. I was an anarchist for decades, only recently making the switch to communism, I still empathize with most of anarchism, and I think anarchists have an important part to play in our liberation struggle.

Why does it matter that these machines are in factories? They should still be used for the benefit of mankind, or at the very least, the benefit of the workers at the factory. Currently, we have no democracy in the workplace, and no say in how new technologies are implemented.

A machine costing a lot of money, only matters when most of the money is hoarded by a few individuals. Had we workplace democracy, those same machines, in those same factories, would be used for the good of the workers, rather than the good of the shareholders.

The factory is part of the community. It’s emissions effect the community, it’s output and profits effect the community, it’s size effects the community, it’s investment or lack of investment in the community effects the community. In fact, I can’t think of a single aspect of a factory that does not directly rely upon or impact the community immediately surrounding it. And yet, people in suits a thousand miles away in board rooms in skyscrapers, get to determine how that factory effects that community, and the community gets no say, because “private property”.

We don’t need to take the machines out of the factory to make them help people. We need to return the factories to the people and allow them to help themselves.

Then why do they have over 500,000 settlers illegally living in what is internationally recognized as Palestinian territory? Why are they bombing the exact escape routes they demanded that Palestinians use? Why are they bombing the West Bank, where Hamas has no presence? Why has literally the entire world called this a genocide except for two countries: the US and Israel? Why did the Israelis kill 248 Palestinians, 40 of which were children, just this year, and just prior to the attack? Why do they call their periodic bombing campaigns “mowing the lawn”? You have to be literally delusional to think that THE ENTIRE WORLD EXCEPT FOR YOU is wrong. There’s only two countries that support this horrific genocidal campaign, and one of them is committing it, the other is arming them to commit it.

Edit: The big one, why have the Israelis prevented adequate amounts of food aid to enter Gaza to ensure healthy nutrition? They literally control how much food and water Gaza gets, and have for decades. They control how many building materials get in, they control the border and don’t let people leave. It’s literally called the “largest open air prison” in the world, by international watchdogs and its being called a genocide by holocaust survivor genocide awareness groups.

Regulatory capture was predicted well over 100 years ago. It is in inevitable outcome of the liberal Democratic capitalist model.

So while you might say, that many of our problems would be solved if we just stopped this damn regulatory capture, to do so, would reflect a lack of understanding of the inevitability of actors gaining enough capital to influence and even overpower the state. You cannot fix it through capitalism. Even soft social changes like syndicalism would only result in syndicates capturing regulatory processes , rather than corporations.

Say it again from the rooftops!

That’s the excuse people always give. Human nature is a lot of things. Greed, avarice, jealousy, definitively part of that. Just as much a part though, are empathy, caring, and selflessness. Human nature isn’t a fixed predetermined set of rules. If it was, there would be no variability in humanity whatsoever. Human nature as used here is just another thought terminating cliche designed to stop intelligent conversation.

The material conditions within a given society determine the most likely expressions of human nature within that society. Of course a society structured around elevating greed, violence, misogyny, etc, would see that reflected in its institutions and among its people. Materialism is a science, “human nature” is pop culture.

That’s not a libertarian refrain, just one that they stole from the left. Like the name Libertarian itself, which actually means communist essentially.

How is anyone going to afford the food that is no longer being marked up? If the food is cheaper, somehow less people will be able to afford it than now? Is that the position you’re coming from?

I’d like to answer your question, it’s just… not really a question that makes any logical sense.

And yes, you should. I can provide plenty of economic texts if you would like to come to understand the economic system you live under. We can even start all the way back with Adam Smith, and move up from there. Like the part where he says that someone holding land without working to improve it does not deserve the land, and should not be allowed to keep it.

Maybe some of the millions of people who are currently unable to even afford adequate food for themselves because of the profiteering of these very landholders, who engage in such sabotage as mass slaughter and burial of animals to prevent price drops. You know, profits are after wages, right? Profits aren’t wages. You only make profits after you pay wages and costs. So… you pay wages.

Settler-colonialism is a capitalist ideology. It has everything to do with capitalism.

That’s delusional. They’re furthering their settler colonialist system at the expense of a subjugated minority. They’ve admitted as much on National TV. Their intention is genocide. Definitively. The Palestinians have a international law stating that as occupied peoples, they have the right to resist their occupation, up to and including through violent means. What international law gives the Israelis a right to genocide them? The US and Israel are the only countries in the world in support of this genocide.

People under communism starved through droughts, or poorly thought out Five year plans. People under capitalism are starved intentionally, whether by failure to provide resources to those unable to secure adequate work (over 25% of US children are food insecure, almost a million people are homeless), or through policies like the settler colonial policies of apartheid Israel or apartheid U.S.

3d printing is cool, and i agree, it is great for reclaiming things from the capitalist profit incentive structure. I print pretty much everything I can instead of buying it, and it’s great for fixing things that manufacturers don’t want you to fix.

It’s not really much in the way of reducing the exploitation of the working class though, nor its reliance upon coerced labor in order to maintain basic human living conditions. It’s also primarily being used by corporations to further increase profit margins.

There’s not many Vorons or Prusas. There’s a lot more profit seeking printing services than there are Print it Forward programs. This is inevitable under our current system. The resources available to those seeking to help humanity are far fewer than those seeking to exploit it.

Technology itself is not a solution. Technology only matters as much as how you use it. If the dominant forces in society are utilizing technology for profit, rather than to increase human dignity and freedom, then what you get is what we have; Machines that do the work of 1000 men, not so that 1000 men can focus on other things, but so that ONE man (or realistically, a group of shareholders and board members) can extract super profits from those workers. If technology was used in service of humanity, the majority of humanity would be working very little, and things like starvation and homelessness would only be possible under unexpected circumstances like droughts and after wildfires.

Yes, I have run a business haha. Profit doesn’t mean either gross or net profits, it means, and I quote from the dictionary,

“Profit: The amount by which revenue from sales exceeds costs in a business”. Profit: a financial gain, especially the difference between the amount earned and the amount spent in buying, operating, or producing something.

That is profit. Now, people can break it down further, but, when someone is referring to profits, you should assume they mean the dictionary definition of profits.

Exploitation and coercion exist now. So, that would be a maintanence of the status quo, not “giving way” to it. But we can look at the by every single measure that we have objectively better lives of the vast majority of people in countries where they have dismantled capitalist systems. The average life expectancy in pre-revolution Russia was less than 30 years. Before the Communists started their labor struggles, the average work weeks was over 100 hours. The average literacy rate was among the lowest in the world, as was the education attainment rate.

They by any and all measures reduced exploitation by entire orders of magnitude. They reduced coercion, especially on women, by granting equal rights(5 decades before the us even attempted to do so, btw), and by making housing, food, and education legal rights that ALL citizens are entitled to. When your basic needs are met, then and only then are you even capable of laboring without coercion. Meaning, coercion is already a driving force behind our entire economic system, and exploitation is literally, not figuratively, LITERALLY the entire basis upon which capitalism rests. The extraction of profits is known as the process of exploitation.

Profits aren’t wages, you obviously haven’t read much economics. Profits are what’s left AFTER wages and costs.

What economic system do the countries currently perpetrating genocide have again?

Really? Where has this happened? Which countries have been able to reform away the exploitation and coercion inherent in the capitalist economic structure whilst maintaining it?