Our definition is slightly different. We say socialism is when workers own the means of production and communism is a stateless classless utopia.
What we basically mean when we say the workers own the means of production is that the people who work at a place decide how its run and that noone profits off anyone else's labour, so noone who doesn't work there collects a paycheck for doing jack shit and everyone who does work there gets a paycheck within one order of magnitude of each other.
I think that people are too smart and ambitious for that to ever work as intended. Classes and hierarchy are the natural states of mankind. It's in our blood to learn to game every system and put ourselves on top. I don't believe that a classless stateless uber-utopia is a bad thing, hell it sounds wonderful, i just believe that it can't be maintained. It's not in our nature to purposefully handicap ourselves, our families, or our communities for the benefit of others. It would be nice to live like that but it is not possible and will either lead to bloodshed in a vein attempt to maintain it, or more likely will devolve back into a class based society either through social developments, the natural accumulation of wealth; whether that be actual coinage, power, or just good old fashion hording of resources; or by the force of whoever has the biggest gun.
The smart and ambitious rise to the top, you can't raise the meek and stupid to their heights, so you must drag down the best of us down to the worst of us. That leads to problems as most people dislike the idea of being forced into mediocrity.
By it's defenition mediocraty is where most people are. This arguments only explains a little about how things came to be what they are. We are arguing to make things better.
Most people are mediocre, that's why it won't work. Those better than you or I will find their way back on top, where they belong, and those worse than us will sink to the bottom where they ought to be. You would have to support the weak and kill the strong to maintain the status quo of 'meh'. If my children were to be better than me and those around them, why would I want to leave them a world where the highest they can rise to is the same as his neighbor?
The thing about our current system, is it's not in the vast majority of people's best interests. Like, the people who actually violently defend capitalism, the cops and the soldiers and the propagandists, all of them would benefit far more under socialism. They're all workers who write and fight and die on the orders and to the benefit of very few people who "own" the world they're defending. Most billionaires have never personally killed anyone in their lives and most people who have actually pointed a gun at someone and pulled the trigger aren't billionaires, so the whole physical might makes right thing isn't really what's happening.
That seems to suggest that most people are willing to act against their material best interests for other reasons.
I strongly disagree that class is natural or in our blood as well.
Humanity has been around for at least 200,000 and we've only had class based society for like, 8000 years max or like, 4% of that.
In the animal kingdom, tool usage isn't that uncommon. The most unique things about humanity are our complex language and willingness to teach and cooperate with other humans who aren't related to us by blood. I'd argue that this natural impulse to help each other is what's made humanity so powerful, and these weird systems of thought that divide humanity along national lines and drive us to exploit each other along class lines are a disease of the mind that's making us weaker.
There has always been classes. The monkey men had alphas, the cavemen had chiefs, the peasants had kings, the citizens had presidents, and we have multi-billionaire trans-globalist megacorps. It's not fun, it's not pretty, but it's what we have, and 3 days after you have your communist utopia the guy with the most friends and biggest gun is gonna shoot the rest of em' and say "I'm king now"
On the "it's human nature to dominate each other" I'd say maybe, I'm not an anthropologist, so I can't dive too deeply with you on that, but it's at least as much human nature to help each other, and it's not human nature to be selfish. Helping other people, even random strangers, feels good, and hurting other people, or seeing them hurt, feels really shitty. Doesn't get much more human nature than that.
Honestly, noone knows how to achieve a stable communist society yet, if we did we'd have one. We've got a target but not a real blueprint and the target's beautiful enough we're willing to put in the work to try and come up with a blueprint.
What we're actively working to achieve is socialism, which we believe is a) the first step towards communism, as it would give us the breathing space and shared ideological commitment to work out how to progress towards communism and b) would make the vast majority of people's lives better. That's the part that's been tried and tested and we have some idea how to achieve.
Do you see anything wrong with everyone working at a place and noone who doesn't work at that place having roughly the same amount of say over how that place is run and getting pay roughly proportional to the work they do there?
No i see nothing wrong with it. A business isn't just labor, it's risk and capital. Most business' operate with almost no wiggle-room. Most business are investments of someones entire life's worth of work. If Cherries dog grooming shack down the street goes under, her entire life's saving goes with it. Her minimum wage hair sweeper loses nothing but another job. That worker is guaranteed a check, but if that Dog groomer has a bad month she can't just not pay her employees, it comes out of her pocket whether or not she can afford it. None of the risk is on the worker if something goes wrong.
Kingdoms ended because those liberal politicians gained more power; ie guns and men; than the kings. I said hierarchies are natural, not that they never shifted. They constantly shift. I only said that they were and will always be there in some form.
There were kings before farms, they were called chiefs, and before the chiefs were the alphas. Yeah sure the hierarchy got more complicated, maybe added in a few more layers, but it never went away.
Well Horsefucker1488 and IEatHorseAss911 got banned because i guess they're ebul nasees
Serious question, what's your working definition of socialism/communism?
They abolishment of private property and the collectivization of it within government control
That's a pretty good answer.
Our definition is slightly different. We say socialism is when workers own the means of production and communism is a stateless classless utopia.
What we basically mean when we say the workers own the means of production is that the people who work at a place decide how its run and that noone profits off anyone else's labour, so noone who doesn't work there collects a paycheck for doing jack shit and everyone who does work there gets a paycheck within one order of magnitude of each other.
Do you think that's a bad thing?
I think that people are too smart and ambitious for that to ever work as intended. Classes and hierarchy are the natural states of mankind. It's in our blood to learn to game every system and put ourselves on top. I don't believe that a classless stateless uber-utopia is a bad thing, hell it sounds wonderful, i just believe that it can't be maintained. It's not in our nature to purposefully handicap ourselves, our families, or our communities for the benefit of others. It would be nice to live like that but it is not possible and will either lead to bloodshed in a vein attempt to maintain it, or more likely will devolve back into a class based society either through social developments, the natural accumulation of wealth; whether that be actual coinage, power, or just good old fashion hording of resources; or by the force of whoever has the biggest gun.
I think people being smart and ambitious is exactly the reason why "It's just the natural state of things" arguments are always moot.
The smart and ambitious rise to the top, you can't raise the meek and stupid to their heights, so you must drag down the best of us down to the worst of us. That leads to problems as most people dislike the idea of being forced into mediocrity.
By it's defenition mediocraty is where most people are. This arguments only explains a little about how things came to be what they are. We are arguing to make things better.
Most people are mediocre, that's why it won't work. Those better than you or I will find their way back on top, where they belong, and those worse than us will sink to the bottom where they ought to be. You would have to support the weak and kill the strong to maintain the status quo of 'meh'. If my children were to be better than me and those around them, why would I want to leave them a world where the highest they can rise to is the same as his neighbor?
I used to think that.
The thing about our current system, is it's not in the vast majority of people's best interests. Like, the people who actually violently defend capitalism, the cops and the soldiers and the propagandists, all of them would benefit far more under socialism. They're all workers who write and fight and die on the orders and to the benefit of very few people who "own" the world they're defending. Most billionaires have never personally killed anyone in their lives and most people who have actually pointed a gun at someone and pulled the trigger aren't billionaires, so the whole physical might makes right thing isn't really what's happening.
That seems to suggest that most people are willing to act against their material best interests for other reasons.
I strongly disagree that class is natural or in our blood as well.
Humanity has been around for at least 200,000 and we've only had class based society for like, 8000 years max or like, 4% of that.
In the animal kingdom, tool usage isn't that uncommon. The most unique things about humanity are our complex language and willingness to teach and cooperate with other humans who aren't related to us by blood. I'd argue that this natural impulse to help each other is what's made humanity so powerful, and these weird systems of thought that divide humanity along national lines and drive us to exploit each other along class lines are a disease of the mind that's making us weaker.
There has always been classes. The monkey men had alphas, the cavemen had chiefs, the peasants had kings, the citizens had presidents, and we have multi-billionaire trans-globalist megacorps. It's not fun, it's not pretty, but it's what we have, and 3 days after you have your communist utopia the guy with the most friends and biggest gun is gonna shoot the rest of em' and say "I'm king now"
On the "it's human nature to dominate each other" I'd say maybe, I'm not an anthropologist, so I can't dive too deeply with you on that, but it's at least as much human nature to help each other, and it's not human nature to be selfish. Helping other people, even random strangers, feels good, and hurting other people, or seeing them hurt, feels really shitty. Doesn't get much more human nature than that.
Honestly, noone knows how to achieve a stable communist society yet, if we did we'd have one. We've got a target but not a real blueprint and the target's beautiful enough we're willing to put in the work to try and come up with a blueprint.
What we're actively working to achieve is socialism, which we believe is a) the first step towards communism, as it would give us the breathing space and shared ideological commitment to work out how to progress towards communism and b) would make the vast majority of people's lives better. That's the part that's been tried and tested and we have some idea how to achieve.
Do you see anything wrong with everyone working at a place and noone who doesn't work at that place having roughly the same amount of say over how that place is run and getting pay roughly proportional to the work they do there?
No i see nothing wrong with it. A business isn't just labor, it's risk and capital. Most business' operate with almost no wiggle-room. Most business are investments of someones entire life's worth of work. If Cherries dog grooming shack down the street goes under, her entire life's saving goes with it. Her minimum wage hair sweeper loses nothing but another job. That worker is guaranteed a check, but if that Dog groomer has a bad month she can't just not pay her employees, it comes out of her pocket whether or not she can afford it. None of the risk is on the worker if something goes wrong.
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Kingdoms ended because those liberal politicians gained more power; ie guns and men; than the kings. I said hierarchies are natural, not that they never shifted. They constantly shift. I only said that they were and will always be there in some form.
There were kings before farms, they were called chiefs, and before the chiefs were the alphas. Yeah sure the hierarchy got more complicated, maybe added in a few more layers, but it never went away.
deleted by creator