If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it.
Well, actually I am sharing “Wikipedia Propaganda” but if you want to call Wikipedia Nazi-Propaganda…
And yes, the only pro-Western nation ever falling into a serious Food-Crisis was… Haiti.
See, I know we are doing something right. I am not sure what we do right and there is enough things we don’t do right but… the right things we do amazingly right. If that is because the Ghosts of Hitler are possessing us all or that we are just not a bunch of utter idiots - you call.
And yes, the only pro-Western nation ever falling into a serious Food-Crisis was… Haiti.
Read Late Victorian Holocausts if you want to be less wrong.
Well, actually I am sharing “Wikipedia Propaganda” but if you want to call Wikipedia Nazi-Propaganda…
The holodomor was originally fabricated by a hearst press associate at a time when Mr Hearst and the third Reich were openly collaborating on spreading nazi propaganda in the US. The famine was bad but the myth that it was a genocide needs to die as it is literally nazi propaganda and was used as a justification for collaborating with the holocaust in Eastern Europe
This is in fact the mainstream academic position. You may look to Conquest, Davies, and Wheatcroft, who are genuinely anticommunist historians, for their analysis (they all say it wasn’t a genocide)
In what way is the Late Victorian Age “Pro-Western”? In the same way Dschengis Khan was “Pro-Western”? Besides, ONE book is quite vague for such an assumption as your claim isn’t even listed in the list of great famines.
Oh, and you claim the Holodomor didn’t happen? Well, let me guess, Stalin also didn’t got 30 million sowiet people killed?
Tovarishch, your lies gave away whose bread you eat.
It is literally a book about western liberal democracies committing genocide, including through intentionally creating famines.
Oh, and you claim the Holodomor didn’t happen? Well, let me guess, Stalin also didn’t got 30 million sowiet people killed?
Listen if you want to believe nazi propaganda that was used to justify collaborating with the holocaust you can be my guest. You just won’t be in line with the mainstream academic concensus on the subject.
Listen if you want to believe nazi propaganda that was used to justify collaborating with the holocaust you can be my guest. You just won’t be in line with the mainstream academic concensus on the subject.
Ah, the beauty of repeating the same stupid claim to make it appear more true.
While I appreciate your enthusiasm for alternative viewpoints, it’s worth noting that mainstream academic consensus is typically based on extensive research, rigorous analysis, and a wealth of evidence. If you’re inclined to embrace Nazi propaganda as a historical truth, you might find yourself in the rather exclusive company of conspiracy theorists. But hey, who needs consensus when you can have a party of one?
Well, I must say, your unique perspective certainly adds a touch of humor to the conversation! Your ability to find amusement in the unlikeliest of places is truly admirable. Keep those witty remarks coming, and you might just give the comedians a run for their money!
Have you read literally any academic literature on ukrainian collaboration with the holocaust, or any academic literature on the holodomor after the soviet archives opened?
Have you read any history on the way Hearst Collaborated with the nazis?
Have you read anything about the first time the holodomor story aired, and how it was debunked?
No?
Then you’re just following corporate media opinion because you trust corporate media more than actual historians(many of who are anticommunist), even though the corporate media opinion is literally nazi propaganda that was used to justify killing jews, and all the facts in the world wouldn’t reason you out of a position you’ve gotten into based on blind trust.
-Holodomor after the Soviet archives opened: The Holodomor was a man-made famine that occurred in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-1933. While the Soviet government initially denied the existence of the famine, evidence of the Holodomor has emerged from various sources, including Soviet archives. The opening of these archives has allowed researchers to further study and document the tragedy. You are basically claiming the Soviets and Putin themselves are lying. And you know what happens to people who say Putin lies.
-Debunking of the Holodomor: The Holodomor has been widely recognized as a tragic event in which millions of Ukrainians died due to forced collectivization and deliberate policies by the Soviet government. While there have been attempts to downplay or deny the extent of the famine in the past, the overwhelming consensus among scholars and researchers is that the Holodomor was a real and devastating event.
-Ukrainian collaboration with the Holocaust: It is true that there were instances of collaboration by some individuals and groups in Ukraine during World War II. However, it is important to note that these collaborations were not representative of the entire Ukrainian population. Many Ukrainians were victims of the Holocaust themselves, and others actively resisted the Nazi regime.
-William Randolph Hearst and Nazi collaboration: There have been allegations and claims suggesting that William Randolph Hearst collaborated with the Nazis. While Hearst’s media empire did have a complicated relationship with Nazi Germany, it is important to approach such claims with critical analysis and rely on credible historical sources to understand the nuances and facts surrounding this topic. Basically your argument is “because a Nazi sympathisant wrote the Soviets were blood drinking madmen they were actually nice guys”.
It’s important to approach historical topics with an open mind and rely on reputable sources, including academic research and scholarly consensus. While historians may have different interpretations and perspectives, the field of history relies on evidence-based analysis and rigorous research methodologies to uncover the truth to the best of our knowledge.
Sources Holodomor after the Soviet archives opened: “Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine” by Anne Applebaum “The Holodomor Reader: A Sourcebook on the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine” edited by Bohdan Klid and Alexander J. Motyl “The Holodomor: An Introduction” by Bohdan Klid and Alexander J. Motyl “The Holodomor and the Film ‘Bitter Harvest’: Soviet and Post-Soviet Memory in Ukraine” by Serhy Yekelchyk “The Ukrainian Famine: Sources of Information at the Hoover Institution” by Robert Conquest
ChatGPT is awaiting your next hate speech eagerly.
Lol you’re using a statistical model that isnt capable of discerning meaning to try to disprove mainstream academics like Conquest and Wheatcroft.
ChatGPT isn’t designed to say correct things, it is designed to put a bunch of letters together that are in the general shape of an essay assignment for highschoolers. This is comical.
Please note that the last book it cites(which doesn’t exist, in fact I dont think any of the books cited actually exist) is credited to Robert Conquest, and he says that the ukrainian famine was not a genocide.
All but one of the sources it cited either state the opposite of what chatgpt said they do or don’t exist
“Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine” by Anne Applebaum
From a guardian review of the book: “Though sympathetic to the sentiments behind it, [Applebaum] ultimately doesn’t buy the Ukrainian argument that Holodomor was an act of genocide.”
“The Holodomor: An Introduction” by Bohdan Klid and Alexander J. Motyl
This book doesn’t exist as far as I’m aware
"The Holodomor and the Film ‘Bitter Harvest’: Soviet and Post-Soviet Memory in Ukraine” by Serhy Yekelchyk
This book doesn’t exist either
"The Ukrainian Famine: Sources of Information at the Hoover Institution” by Robert Conquest
Don’t try to derail the discussion. Toothbrush argued that the Holdomor never happened while the whole world knows somewhere between three and five million Ukrainians died during this part of Stalins reign. We never even discussed if it was a genocide.
So show your true intentions and explain to me:
Did Millions die during the Holdomor?
Did it happen because Stalin stole the food?
Did Stalin and Putin forbid to talk about it?
And as a nice excursus, the total numbers of people dying to Stalins misrule is nearly the same as those who died to the Axis Invasion. A nice chap, old Stalin, isn’t he? But calm down, he is only number two after Mao in murdering his own people. And that is what Putin is aiming for, recreation of Stalinism.
Toothbrush argued that the Holdomor never happened
The argument is that the famine in 1932-1933 wasn’t a genocide, according to such notable anti-soviet historians as Conquest, Davies, Wheatcroft, and even Applebaum.
It was caused by, among other things, a lack of an independent review of numbers collected by local officials throughout the USSR, being forced to use wheat as a currency to trade with europe, the need for rapid industrialization in anticipation of another invasion (which eventually happened) and to a lesser extent sabotage of the harvest and killing of livestock by the local propertied class in opposition to collectivization among the poor peasants. All of these factors combined with bad weather within a normal range (that caused famines elsewhere) led to the famine.
And as a nice excursus, the total numbers of people dying to Stalins misrule is nearly the same as those who died to the Axis Invasion.
This is actually holocaust trivialization, according to Jewish experts on the holocaust in Eastern Europe.
The writer is notable as a historian and as an activist who fought to protect two jewish holocaust survivors who were being tried as soviet collaborators (they were just random jewish survivors of the holocaust). He does not, to my knowledge, have any connection to the soviet union or communism.
As someone who had family that survived a nazi death camp, I would consider trusting the source of that misinfo significantly less.
It means they want to shit on anyone who suggests any mechanism for social change that might actually work instead of wanking about some glorious revolution that’ll never happen. Just another way of maintaining the status quo while pretending to be a revolutionary.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try, try, try, try, try again, and also blame everyone else that you had to kill your own people for the good of the whole…
Yeah. Hold on, I’m just going to build a house, get access to fresh water, and produce food with my phone. After that I’m going to get vaccinated with my phone. And after that I’ll make some clothes with my phone.
Go read the first few chapters of capital on means of production.
Even if they did produce something, Jeff Bezos would steal it as soon as it started making a buck.
Seizing the means of production made sense when that was the leverage the owners used to strip the surplus value from you.
Today, they use gatekept platform and a captive audience with AI manipulation to insert themselves between you and the customers and strip you of your surplus value.
Now pay Bezos’ 40% tax until Amazon basic is ready to outcompete out of the platform entirely. Welcome to the second page of Google !
Genuinely speaking, do you really think Amazon will continue to operate if the “workers” took it over from the (evil) executives and owned all the power?
In my opinion, it’ll fall apart in no time, because not a single decision will be made to progress work and to solve problems, and every problem will be a vote to people who don’t understand the consequences and will prefer to serve their personal needs. Am I wrong?
Do you think the shareholders are active in problem solving? Workers include basically everyone but the shareholders. The tech guys, the executives, the managers.
It is a straw man that democracy means every problem is put to a vote. Workers can jointly decide to delegate decision-making to executives and managers. The difference in worker coops is that these executives and managers are ultimately democratically accountable to the people doing the work
So you’re saying someone will want to act as an executive, but without getting the executive pay?
Why would anyone want to do that stressful job and responsibility, instead of just being a cog in the wheel and typing on a computer or moving boxes? Who decides who does what? And what happens if the managers disagree with half the “workers/owners” when a decision has to be made that benefits a part but hurts another? Who has the authority to put their foot down for the “greater good” even though half the workers don’t like their decision?
I’m not sure I understand… are you saying that your plans don’t work on giant corporations, so maybe you shouldn’t propose things like OP did?
Well, according to the post, you want to seize the means of production and eat the rich. Sounds delicious! I would love to know whether you’re just a bunch of guys having wet dreams or whether there’s a framework where this can really work. Tell me how you’re gonna seize Amazon and keep it running like it does now.
It depends on the material conditions what specific action would be required. For example, the legal system could abolish the employer-employee contract that violates workers inalienable rights to democracy and to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor. Then, the contract could be reversed so that labor jointly hires capital rather than capital hiring labor. Amazon, in particular, has other issues that should be addressed, but we can ignore that for now
The executives can be paid more. In a system where all firms are worker coops, it would be a much more compressed difference between the least paid and most paid worker in a firm than the absurd pay differences we see today.
A manger in a worker coop has the same decision-making rights as in any company. The difference is that they are democratically accountable to the workers instead of being accountable to the employer, an alien legal party. Essentially, workers hold all voting shares
You said a bunch of nice things, but you ignored the core of the problem. If workers hold all voting shares, what happens when they’re split on an issue? Who can tell them to STFU for the better of the company?
Another similar question: What if there’s an issue that will lead to half of them getting fired? Like, say, a technological advancement? So if work can be optimized by 200% by adding computers, but then 50% of the people are useless then. Wouldn’t the workers vote to stay employed/paid instead of saving the company that can be destroyed in a competitive market where better, faster companies can emerge if this company doesn’t adopt the newer tech? Who will make that decision?
“Better” is in your opinion. I need answers based on concerns and problems that happens in the real world. A fast-paced world.
Assuming the revenue of the company doesn’t have massive growth (which is the normal situation unless a breakthrough happened), we need to hire more people who have the skills needed to keep up with the market. So, assuming we want to keep everyone (including useless people who’d rather have beer instead of reading a book to learn the new stuff), the income of everyone will just go down over time. Eventually, with no one getting fire there won’t be enough money to go around to feed them. What am I missing here?
See you’re still trapped within the logic of capitalism which maximizes profits and expansion over other concerns.
So, assuming we want to keep everyone (including useless people who’d rather have beer instead of reading a book to learn the new stuff), the income of everyone will just go down over time. Eventually, with no one getting fire there won’t be enough money to go around to feed them. What am I missing here?
That’s OK. I’m not looking to “win” here. Just think about what I said, and next time you have this discussion, have good answers. Maybe you’ll change your mind one day and understand why the world we live in is the way we live in. Not that things can’t be improve or that we’re drowning in corruption. But that’s another topic for another day. Have a good one.
You haven’t presented a valid argument. 2+2 is simple, but it works. When someone says the 2+2=10^50, and money falls from the sky, and everyone being lazy leads to growth, I’ll ask them to justify.
Unfortunately in the case of econ 101, you are taught that 2+2=5 most modern econ is neoclassical, which means operating on pre-marx economics and just ignoring marxist critiques of the political economy.
and money falls from the sky, and everyone being lazy leads to growth, I’ll ask them to justify.
Thats a mighty strawman you invented. Workers are going to do the bare minimum to not get fired when it literally doesn’t matter how much they work, their income will be the same. When workers are invested in an organization, they do more work.
Your only question is “what am I missing” and the answer is an economics education.
But to address your “concerns” you’re operating on the mindset of maximizing profit to compete against other firms maximizing profit, which is only a problem under capitalism (until you reach the monopoly stage)
You literally only have one question, the rest of it is opining.
You’re assuming a wage labor model and that people working twice as efficiently and at half intensity would result in decreased production.
wage labor models aren’t universal
there is no reasoning stated for why production would go down
You’re assuming people would have to be fired to maintain competitive growth. This is based on the logic of firms competing to capture market share. There isn’t really a rational reason for this to need to happen under systems were the point is to accommodate human need, not to maximize profit.
I haven’t said that people have to be fired to maintain competitive growth. I said that assuming a normal/average growth (and let’s even make it simpler for you and ignore growth), and assuming a breakthrough requires many new people to hired to work with a new technology, then the people who are there and who aren’t interested in learning the new way of doing things, will just become a burden to the company. Let’s do the math:
More people are hired
Same output is maintained
Let’s do the 5th grade math: Same output / More people = less earner per person every time this happens
Meaning: If this trend continuous due to multiple breakthroughs (which isn’t crazy, we have seen tons of those in the last 25 years in different sectors), then this company is destined to become bankrupt, especially because people will continuously keep earning less with no lower-bound to that other zero, to the point where it’s not enough to make a living.
Nothing you said answers this dilemma. You keep talking about general things and avoid this (very realistic) scenario that keeps happening. How will such a company survive?
Thats it interesting scenario, but why are you assuming that there is a significant segment that won’t want to learn, especially when they’re no longer alienated from their labor? And why are you assuming that the total laborers will increase with new technology, when you can retrain existing workers?
I dont think your scenario is realistic, it kinda reads as really misanthropic
Because the fraction of the current world that reads every day and learns every day is extremely small. Again, like I said before, how many people around you come back from work and want to read technical books and watch courses instead of chilling, or hanging out with friends? I have two friends who are nut jobs like me and work all the time. EVERYONE else is lazy and just wants to have fun after work, and that’s in my circle. This spans over decades in the different jobs and sectors I worked at, in different countries. Do you have a different experience around you? I have trouble convincing people to read for 30 minutes every day.
Are you trying to argue that the majority of people watch educational videos in their free time and read technical books and prefer that over hanging out?
Because the fraction of the current world that reads every day and learns every day is extremely small.
Socialist countries are famous for literacy and education drives
Again, like I said before, how many people around you come back from work and want to read technical books and watch courses instead of chilling, or hanging out with friends? I have two friends who are nut jobs like me and work all the time. EVERYONE else is lazy and just wants to have fun after work, and that’s in my circle. This spans over decades in the different jobs and sectors I worked at, in different countries. Do you have a different experience around you? I have trouble convincing people to read for 30 minutes every day.
I dont think it is reasonable to assume humans will act the same way in all conditions. I know people who just slack off, and its generally because there is no incentive not to do the bare minimum when you are alienated from your labor
But to summarize. You basically want to wreck the current system on the basis that everyone will be diligent, reading all the time, just for the “greater good”, more so than their own profit.
And btw, about the “bare minimum”. No one has a reason to not do the bare minimum as they don’t get fired (consequences). There will always be the lazy guy who does the bare minimum, and everyone will get lazier because they’ll get jealous with zero consequences.
But to summarize. You basically want to wreck the current system on the basis that everyone will be diligent, reading all the time, just for the “greater good”, more so than their own profit.
No, that’s a strawman. People won’t all be diligent. But they will be more productive in general when they are not alienated from their labor. This has been proven with a bunch of economic data on socialist countries and data on cooperatives even within a capitalist environment.
And btw, about the “bare minimum”. No one has a reason to not do the bare minimum as they don’t get fired (consequences). There will always be the lazy guy who does the bare minimum, and everyone will get lazier because they’ll get jealous with zero consequences.
You’re just literally describing capitalism and being like, what about this problem under socialism? The consequences are youre not contributing. Do you think everyone is suddenly going to be less motivated when they’re actually able to realize the product of their labor, instead of having a parasite on top taking it?
Yeah… right. People will stop being lazy even though they can be, and will just work day and night to benefit others. Very convincing. I’ve seen all kinds of people who were put in cushy cushion jobs for decades and didn’t learn shit. Never heard of boomers?
Under capitalism, you can do the bare minimum, but a job cut will always hit you first if you make yourself worthless to the company. Is it perfect? No. But the incentive is clear, at least.
Worker coops are better ethically not just based on opinion. The workers are jointly de facto responsible for using up the inputs to produce the outputs. By the usual ethical principle that legal responsibility should be assigned to the de facto responsible party, the workers should jointly be legally responsible for the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs.
Worker coops can fire people.
Worker coops can charge initial membership fee when a new worker joins.
OK, at least we agree we can fire people. That answers my question. The circumstances aren’t important. This idea that people can’t be fired is just ridiculous.
Do you think communities will be happy seeing their friends/family being fired, and not understanding why? This actually reminds me of the movie Casino (1995), where Robert De Niro fires that Texan guy for incompetence, and then hell breaks loose due to relatives not understanding how that works. This is human nature. People will always prefer to keep an incompetent relative vs firing them for a good reason, no matter what.
Agreed. It’s a nepotism problem. I’m just drawing the picture that removing money from the picture basically makes relationships the new currency. It’s basically how life used to be a long time ago, and those who were closer to the leader got better jobs with perks. People will always find a way to benefit and will centralize power eventually. I can’t say much about hypotheticals and whether your coop will fix that, but in my opinion, history suggests that we’ll just end up with a new system of power.
What you are talking about is called social capital accumulation, which is a problem in any system.
A justification for worker coops is the moral principle of assigning legal responsibility to the de facto responsible party. In an employer-employee relationship, the employer receives 100% of the legal responsibility despite the employee being inextricably co-responsible. This violates the aforementioned principle
Well, I don’t think you can use written laws to fight human plans to centralize power. I guess our current system is proof of that. People will always find a way to centralize that power to benefit themselves and their groups.
But anyway. I guess we’re getting into a dead end. This is becoming opinion stuff at this point, whether this will work. I’ll have to think more about this stuff.
Like I said, its like workers hold all the voting shares in the company, so these issues would resolved the same way that they are resolve in corporations owned by shareholders.
The rational action would be to adopt the new tech and instead of firing half of the workers, which is socially irrational due to the social costs of unemployment, dividing the remaining work among the existing workers. The extra time that each worker has could be used for producing something else
Like I said, its like workers hold all the voting shares in the company, so these issues would resolved the same way that they are resolve in corporations owned by shareholders.
You’re ignoring a key point I’m trying to make: The workers have a conflict of interest, unlike shareholders. The workers want to minimize their work and maximize their gain, which is mutually exclusive in one company. While shareholders in the current system just want to maximize their gain (regardless of whether that’s good or bad). So why would the worker strive to learn new things instead of keeping the status quo? Most people don’t see the big picture and don’t want to read a book to learn a new thing. How many people around you come from work and spend their evenings reading new things to stay up in their job? This is one problem.
Like I said before to another guy, if you keep dividing the extra without firing anyone, given a limited growth, eventually there won’t be enough money to go around. Everyone will go bankrupt. How do you solve that problem too?
I think your worries are misplaced. I work for an employee owned cooperative with about 60 employees. I think half of the employees are also owners. There’s still a CEO, chosen by the board of directors, who are elected by the employee-owners. Day to day operational decisions are made by whoever is in charge of the relevant department, just like a shareholder-owned corporation. Bigger decisions, like long term strategy or how to distribute profits among employees, are voted on by all of the employee owners instead of shareholders. It’s been in business for about 20 years and makes enough money to share profits with all employees regardless of their ownership status. So essentially this business operates like any other, but the profits are shared with the employee-owners and employees instead of going to shareholders or insane CEO salaries (compressed pay structure).
This is exactly the problem with such discussion. We end up with anecdotes. Yeah, I gotta see that company’s financial statements, their business model, and their growth, to decide whether this is a good thing. In fact, the idea that it makes “enough money” doesn’t sound good good. This kind of “stability” (I’ll call it) is either due to a niche field or a dying company that sooner or later will become irrelevant. It’s not how the real world works.
And even with this model you proposed, someone eventually can put their foot down. Those employees can sell their shares if they want, and we’re all the way back to the (evil) capitalist model you don’t like.
Worker coops are a good thing because unlike employer-employee-based firms they don't violate workers' inalienable rights. The justification is a principled ethical argument.
The workers' voting shares should be inalienable and attached to the functional role of working in the firm. The employer-employee contract would be abolished, so there would be no mechanism within the legal system for having a capitalist firm.
An inalienable right is one that the holder cannot give up even with consent
Until everyone fights what “rights” are, which is kind of the problem everywhere. You have a picture of these rights, which are pink and rosy. I believe you have good intention. But you have to imagine an contentious environment where everyone will disagree with you to maximize their gain, and minimize their effort. Any system you put in place and anything you define as rights will be malleable and will be up for thousands of debates, and eventually you’ll be the dictator for setting up a system that you think will work. Back to square one.
This is why I said it’s opinion. I got my answer. You agree with firing people. Good enough for me for now. Others don’t.
Why yes, of course. At least twice! Once with low heat (well more like “warmth” around 37°C if I remember correctly) to help the dough rise and then a second time to bake it.
On the part of labor. No matter how causally efficacious capital is. It can never be de facto responsible for anything because responsibility is imputed through the tools back to the workers using them.
The workers built the means, they just never owned them.
Let me guess, you think Steve Jobs made the iPhone because he pulled it out of his pocket on a stage and took the credit of engineers standing on the shoulders of publically funded basic research? Steve jobs couldn’t engineer his way out of a wet paper bag, and that is well documented.
I think Steve Jobs made the iphone by coordinating and funding a team of engineers to develop and produce the phone, then marketed it using his own name for brand recognition.
He could not have done it without those engineers and workers, and they would not have made the phone without Jobs.
You mean apart from not getting shot if you want to leave the country or being sent to be worked to death in a prison labor camp for a dissenting opinion?
Still don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyway, in capitalist free America people are shot for knocking in the neighbour’s door, is that better? Lest we talk about the private jail system that demands prisoners, in order to be sustainable.
Oh yeah that makes sense. Because a revolution automatically means that your life expectancy increases. At this point, let’s just have continuous revoltuions back to back. We’ll live forever.
No, overthrowing capitalism and beginning a transition to a more rational economic system increases your life expectancy. You can literally look up graphs.
What’s the other option? Continue to be fucked by a system the privatizes everything and destroys our environment? Continue to be fucked harder by the billionaire class?
And they will continue to become stuck in the dictatorship phase until you acknowledge that you cannot create political agency via mass murder of innocents.
Western society is built on genocide and slavery. Latest example of that is the war on terror where US regime massacred over 6 million innocent people to maintain its hegemony in the Middle East.
Okay sure, so what examples do you have of a successful modern revolution?
Bonus points if you can name one where the winners didn’t just immediately change the rules and continue fucking over the little guy.
Another bonus point if you can name an example where a revolution didn’t result in disproportionate civilian deaths relative to the ‘bad guys’.
Then again, maybe you’re one of those ‘the end justifies the means’ kind of guys, who fantasizes about saving the rest of us by way of firing squad. If that’s the case, I’ll expect you to be on the front line to fight the government funded military force that shows up.
Or maybe, just maybe you’re another lame ass tankie who talks a big game, but would piss their pants if someone so much as gave you a dirty look IRL.
Soviet revolution in Russia, Revolution in China, in Cuba, in Vietnam, in Laos, in Nicaragua, just to name a few.
Bonus points if you can name one where the winners didn’t just immediately change the rules and continue fucking over the little guy.
None of the above examples did anything of the sort as anybody with even a modicum of historical literacy knows.
Another bonus point if you can name an example where a revolution didn’t result in disproportionate civilian deaths relative to the ‘bad guys’.
Define what’s disproportionate and how you decide on what’s proportionate.
Then again, maybe you’re one of those ‘the end justifies the means’ kind of guys, who fantasizes about saving the rest of us by way of firing squad. If that’s the case, I’ll expect you to be on the front line to fight the government funded military force that shows up.
Then again, maybe you’re one of those people who are benefiting from capitalism and don’t care about the suffering of other people as long as you got yours.
Or maybe, just maybe you’re another lame ass tankie who talks a big game, but would piss their pants if someone so much as gave you a dirty look IRL.
Or maybe, just maybe you’re an ignorant dronie who is as illiterate as you’re ignorant.
i'd do some intellectual property reform.
some banking reform - more local / peer group/long term lending requirements, less fickle international finance. (and less fucking mortgage bubbles!)
some small business support / starter initiatives - link that in with how banks work.
i'd consider lobbying for some government sposored work to generate open source plans and enable production processes for useful tools - Okay that isn't going to happen , , ,
but it's not all or nothing, but you can do things to help some more workers control and access more of their tooling even if its not outright ownership of the end to end production process.
(By the way i'm basically arguing for a more "free" market in the ecnomic sense (easy access for a large number of small scale producers). . . which is exactly not what large-scale capitalists want.
They want a market "free" from any thing that might regulate their attempts to secure economic power and their abiity to use it to generate supernormal prices/profits.)
Progress doesnt happen in 4-5 year political cycles thats a hard one to improve without an electorate capable (any maybe secure enough) to thing about the longer term. Odd that it was extreme econmic and political uncertainty that brought out the likes of FDR and other post-war that people were most willing to think long term when it came to their governemnts - I guess it brought out all sorts of "crazies".
The big one in terms of bloodshed is land reform - and it has been done in a few places - sort of post-colonial type situations - but granted it does ususally have blooodshed. It's a personal judgment what degree is "excessive bloodshed".
What does bank reform mean? Banks already give loans to small bussinesses.
You can start a company that does what you want them to do. You can create all the innovative processes you want and open source them in the existing system.
Take the route California is taking and educate the kids about worker’s rights. Teach them it’s not okay to be exploited at the work place and encourage them to tell their parents about it. Civics classes should also be taught to learn how the government works and what people’s rights are under the Constitution. Encourage people to unionize now that they know how the system works.
Once the basics have been taught, elect people who care about government reform for social policies by paying for them with higher corporate and personal wealth taxes. Reform the tax system the wealthy have been using to hide their money. All their money is tied up in stocks and they’re living off of multimillion dollar loans? Fuck them, tax a big percentage of the loan. All these things can be done to indirectly seize the fruits of their production at least.
Honestly the whole “eat the rich” thing is pretty offensive if you know your Chinese history, considering ritualistic torture cannibalism actually happened during the cultural revolution and is pretty well documented from actual CCP sources. In this case “the rich” were actually teachers and scientists.
There’s nothing cringier than right-wingers who pretend they aren’t right-wingers… ie, liberals. For people who can be called leftist with a straight face, “liberal” is quite the insult.
You lump us with fascists. “Scratch a liberal a fascist bleeds” has to be one of the most ridiculous things ever said. We’re not your enemies! Democratic socialists are in the Democrat party in America. Social Liberals and Social Democrats have much more in common than Social Liberals and Conservatives. In Europe Liberals and moderate socialists form parliamentary coalitions
Scratch a liberal a fascist bleeds” has to be one of the most ridiculous things
Really? Liberals are invested in the maintenance of the status quo, but aren’t willing to do the dirty and bloody work that the maintanance of the status quo requires… fascists are. It’s a match made in the deepest pits of hell. There’s nothing new about this - the liberal Weimar regime climbed into bed with fascism right from the get-go to crush working class revolt. It’s the same reason the liberals USians vote into the Waffle House are more interested in “reaching across the aisle” than actually doing anything to prevent white supremacist terrorism.
Who else will protect the capitalist world order for you, liberal? You? Who did you think maintains the murderous exploitation in the 3rd world that makes your glorious 1st world existence possible? It’s fascists, genius… your precious world order cannot be maintained without them.
If a fascist regime rises, it’s only because a liberal regime came before it that loosened the ground for it to grow.
“Scratch a liberal a fascist bleeds” has to be one of the most ridiculous things ever said.
It’s not ridiculous, it’s simply historically true. Go ask any European and they’ll explain to you how Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco got to power.
They’ll also tell you how in all their respective countries, the liberals are currently normalizing the far right in their media to counter the rise of leftist movements.
Edit: oh and also, every liberal government is currently supporting the Palestinian genocide, so that should be a pretty big clue too.
THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
The women of Iceland went on strike in 1975, they stopped doing literally everything, walked out of the home, left the kids, to demonstrate how much the system would crumble without them, how important they are to everything being able to function, and ask for equal pay. They flipped everything overnight.
The current system is all the workers do all the work, and the profits from that work go almost entirely to some douvhe who won birth lotto. The system is already rigged. Unrigging the system would look like walking off the job, but globally. It’s going to happen. Society is squeezed too tightly, there’s going to be havoc.
It’s not like it’s gonna take that long. And if not climate change, the AI they don’t fully understand but are trying to monetize. And if not AI, CRISPR derived vectors they don’t fully understand but are trying to monetize, etc.
Lets just stay the course. It will all work out in the end, at least for the planet, and that’s ultimately what matters.
I believe humanity has passed the point where we can. We lack the will. We’re monkeys just barely smart enough with concerted effort to create technologies we lack the impulse control to wield responsibly. We figured out gun powder, and proceeded to use it to commit genocides, for example.
This wasn’t a problem for the planet, only one another, until industrialization. Now we’re addicted to technologies that make wealthy people wealthier while poisoning our only shared habitat. Now we’re monkeys with multiple, competing self-destructive but potentially profitable technologies all vying to blow up in our face in the quest to enrich those that hold their patents, and they answer to no one. World governments instead seem to answer to them.
So yeah, I don’t see a non-violent solution where you put a big red nuclear button in an orangutan sanctuary that looks like their food dispenser button, and taking thr big red nuclear button away from them, even by force, is off the table.
I can only control myself, I can’t force my fellow peasants to stop digging their own graves to further enrich a few thousand sociopath families who’ve convinced them this is the only way. There’s peace in acceptance I suppose.
The severe, civilization scale consequences of the damage we have done, are presently doing, and will continue to do for private profit to our only habitat we all depemd on for survival from one moment to the next also doesn’t care about statecraft or political science attempts to minimize/ignore/discredit it through self-serving rhetoric of those in political power attempting to maintain that power.
Sorry. No bullshitting our way out of this one like it’s just another human on human genocide we can rebrand and massage the messaging of. The physics are determinate, and no amount our patented human extracted snake oil will change that.
Try to spin the greed vice, failing, and personality deficit as a positive like “rational self-interest” all day. Humanity sanctioning and even encouraging that darkest of impulses did this.
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