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 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.
"If you see nothing wrong with that then you don't have a problem with socialism ;)
I think the rest of what you've written here is kind of bullshit though.
By having minimum wage as their only source of income, a worker is living a much riskier life than the business owner who employs them and reaps profits from their labour, and at worst what the business owner is risking is having to work a minimum wage job themself.
Also, the opportunity to start a business is available very arbitrarily and the ability to benefit from the running of a business (ie, do so without taking out a massive loan or selling everything to investors) even more arbitrarily. The issue isn't with people who have to mortgage their everything to start a dog grooming business, it's with the banks who offer those loans at 0 risk and the people who own those banks and the whole global infrastructure that's been set up to force the majority of the world into positions where one of their only options (other than rebellion, degradation or starvation) is taking a subsistence wage job while a few people up the chain reap massive benefits and the 10-20% of the world in the middle does kind of ok.
Most buisnesses aren't multi million dollar enterprises that buy you governors support. Most are small family affairs that can litterally sink and drown an entire family at a moments notice. So yes someone who has enherited none of the risk of owning the buisness should not attempt to usurp the labor, capital, and risk of the owner.
You haven't really addressed what I said here though, namely that minimum wage workers live riskier lives than business owners so the risk argument is kind of BS and the opportunity to
a) take the "risk" of starting a business and b) benefit from other people starting businesses is available very arbitrarily
Frankly because i don't believe it. If you can't afford to live on the wage you agreed to work for you either negotiate a better wage or you find work willing to pay you more. If you can't find and hold a job like everyone else then i'm sorry i no one can help you at that point.
Well no i think they do so because they work in state owned factories with such a huge overpopulation problem that there is no room for negotiation as you are incredibly replaceable. But i think that's just my genuine hate for easterners coming through.
Most sweatshops are owned by (or at least operated almost exclusively to the benefit of) US corporations and their shareholders, not "states".
In fact, when I was talking about children making T-Shirts in sweatshops until their fingers bleed, I was talking about Guatemalan garmet factories. The Guatemalan "state" tried to put an end to their people working in sweatshops and plantations and the CIA couped them so US corporations could continue making money. Even wikipedia says so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
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?
No you wouldn't. You would just have to redefine the top as contributing most instead of, as it now is, extracting most. Don't you think enormous potential for greatness is lost working long grueling hours just to survive?
You can redefine whatever you want, but value has always, and i do mean all the way back to flinging our monkey shit around always, been about whoever has the most stuff period. Collecting the most shit; guns, cars, raw cash, precious metals, food; has been the name of the game forever for every one. If you squander you potential on a 9 to 5 that's your prerogative. Get on a greyhound and stop living in a city where living wage is twice what i make. You don't get to pick your hand you just play it, make the best of you situation because no one will give you anything. I grew up with nothing but bills and lights every other month, but i made the most of it, i don't need someones handouts and i don't want them. Everything i have i clawed for with my own two hands. If someone else lacks the resolve to just fucking deal then I don't know what to say.
I don't care about how unequal everyone is, i care about my family, me, and my community in that order and i'll provide for them in that order. And upheaval of the system puts me, my family, and my community in danger from either the dissidents, the establishment, or the sure to be their gangs of criminals taking advantage of the chaos. Don't work hard work smart, if you can't get by in your current situation you gotta figure that one out on your own, because me and most people are busy working within and around the system for our own benefit.
My grandfather cared about, his family, himself, and his community. My greatgrandfather cared about his family, himself, and his community. My great great grandfather cared about his family, himself, and his community. And so on ad infinitum. The ideas of caring for yourself and your family first are as old as shit.
I don't lack empathy, i am no indifferent to the suffering of others, I just care more about providing comfort for those I love, than food for those I don't.
You are so sure of the collapse of the current system that you've turned into a monster hiding in your closet.
When the system collapses I will remain, to provide for my family, myself, and my community. Those are the pillars I hold important above all others. If I have to shoot a stranger to feed my neighbor I'll do it. But for now i will adapt to the system and i will succeed in it regardless of my start in it.
Yes YOU want to distribute it all, until someone smarter or more charismatic usurps you and does now use this wonderful all powerful holder of property to become a huge tyrannical cockwad. Remember that hitler was democratically elected. YOU are not interested in ruling, but you are making a power structure that is easy to rule from.
Except then your working class spilt up into groups for whatever arbitrary reason of the week it is and both start to seek to enforce their will because, let's be honest, the working class isn't just one amorphese blob of beliefs, and boom two party system back at it.
Well no they tend to devolve into wanton violence and cannibalism as the government becomes more corrupt and either unwilling or unable to meet the needs of the people.
The election was between Hitler and Hindenburg and when Hitler lost Hindenburg basically abdicated in his favour due to pressure from the old Prussian ruling class.
He achieved power because completely unelected people, the capitalists and old prussian generals, actually ran the show and the decided Fascisim would serve their interests better. Weimar Republic's "democracy" was a farce and the communist argument is that modern liberal democracies are also a farce for similar reasons. If the majority of society is organised unequally and anti-democratically then holding elections every four years isn't actually going to achieve rule for and by the consent of the governed.
And yet you say you were born with nothing but bills. It's a giant pyramid scheme and you, my equestrian friend, are fighting for the ones at the top at the cost of the ones at the bottom.
I could give a rats ass about the system. The system will always suck ass for someone. I will work around whatever system is in place, not hope for one willing to spoon feed me.
No you are willing to larp on Chapchat... and every once in a while commit acts of domestic terrorism. I'm not going to dedicate my life or the lives of my family to be cut short for a cause i don't beleive in to start with
You know what the real difference is between us? I get that you want to fight for your family. We all do. Except we're fighting for you and your family, too.
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.
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 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.
"If you see nothing wrong with that then you don't have a problem with socialism ;)
I think the rest of what you've written here is kind of bullshit though.
By having minimum wage as their only source of income, a worker is living a much riskier life than the business owner who employs them and reaps profits from their labour, and at worst what the business owner is risking is having to work a minimum wage job themself.
Also, the opportunity to start a business is available very arbitrarily and the ability to benefit from the running of a business (ie, do so without taking out a massive loan or selling everything to investors) even more arbitrarily. The issue isn't with people who have to mortgage their everything to start a dog grooming business, it's with the banks who offer those loans at 0 risk and the people who own those banks and the whole global infrastructure that's been set up to force the majority of the world into positions where one of their only options (other than rebellion, degradation or starvation) is taking a subsistence wage job while a few people up the chain reap massive benefits and the 10-20% of the world in the middle does kind of ok.
Most buisnesses aren't multi million dollar enterprises that buy you governors support. Most are small family affairs that can litterally sink and drown an entire family at a moments notice. So yes someone who has enherited none of the risk of owning the buisness should not attempt to usurp the labor, capital, and risk of the owner.
You haven't really addressed what I said here though, namely that minimum wage workers live riskier lives than business owners so the risk argument is kind of BS and the opportunity to
a) take the "risk" of starting a business and b) benefit from other people starting businesses is available very arbitrarily
Frankly because i don't believe it. If you can't afford to live on the wage you agreed to work for you either negotiate a better wage or you find work willing to pay you more. If you can't find and hold a job like everyone else then i'm sorry i no one can help you at that point.
...
Do you really think children who work in sweatshops making T-Shirts until their fingers bleed are doing it because they're bad negotiators?
Well no i think they do so because they work in state owned factories with such a huge overpopulation problem that there is no room for negotiation as you are incredibly replaceable. But i think that's just my genuine hate for easterners coming through.
Most sweatshops are owned by (or at least operated almost exclusively to the benefit of) US corporations and their shareholders, not "states".
In fact, when I was talking about children making T-Shirts in sweatshops until their fingers bleed, I was talking about Guatemalan garmet factories. The Guatemalan "state" tried to put an end to their people working in sweatshops and plantations and the CIA couped them so US corporations could continue making money. Even wikipedia says so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
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?
No you wouldn't. You would just have to redefine the top as contributing most instead of, as it now is, extracting most. Don't you think enormous potential for greatness is lost working long grueling hours just to survive?
You can redefine whatever you want, but value has always, and i do mean all the way back to flinging our monkey shit around always, been about whoever has the most stuff period. Collecting the most shit; guns, cars, raw cash, precious metals, food; has been the name of the game forever for every one. If you squander you potential on a 9 to 5 that's your prerogative. Get on a greyhound and stop living in a city where living wage is twice what i make. You don't get to pick your hand you just play it, make the best of you situation because no one will give you anything. I grew up with nothing but bills and lights every other month, but i made the most of it, i don't need someones handouts and i don't want them. Everything i have i clawed for with my own two hands. If someone else lacks the resolve to just fucking deal then I don't know what to say.
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I don't care about how unequal everyone is, i care about my family, me, and my community in that order and i'll provide for them in that order. And upheaval of the system puts me, my family, and my community in danger from either the dissidents, the establishment, or the sure to be their gangs of criminals taking advantage of the chaos. Don't work hard work smart, if you can't get by in your current situation you gotta figure that one out on your own, because me and most people are busy working within and around the system for our own benefit.
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My grandfather cared about, his family, himself, and his community. My greatgrandfather cared about his family, himself, and his community. My great great grandfather cared about his family, himself, and his community. And so on ad infinitum. The ideas of caring for yourself and your family first are as old as shit.
I don't lack empathy, i am no indifferent to the suffering of others, I just care more about providing comfort for those I love, than food for those I don't.
You are so sure of the collapse of the current system that you've turned into a monster hiding in your closet.
When the system collapses I will remain, to provide for my family, myself, and my community. Those are the pillars I hold important above all others. If I have to shoot a stranger to feed my neighbor I'll do it. But for now i will adapt to the system and i will succeed in it regardless of my start in it.
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Yes YOU want to distribute it all, until someone smarter or more charismatic usurps you and does now use this wonderful all powerful holder of property to become a huge tyrannical cockwad. Remember that hitler was democratically elected. YOU are not interested in ruling, but you are making a power structure that is easy to rule from.
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So hitler won... dispite a democratic system.
Except then your working class spilt up into groups for whatever arbitrary reason of the week it is and both start to seek to enforce their will because, let's be honest, the working class isn't just one amorphese blob of beliefs, and boom two party system back at it.
Are you trying to say that communist states naturally and inevitably devolve into two party liberal capitalist "democracys"?
Well no they tend to devolve into wanton violence and cannibalism as the government becomes more corrupt and either unwilling or unable to meet the needs of the people.
Do you think capitalist governments are better at meeting the needs of the people they govern than communist governments?
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There is no need for a lot of things, you overestimate the intelligence of the masses.
Which is it, people are too smart or people are not smart enough?
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Hitler wasn't democratically elected lol.
The election was between Hitler and Hindenburg and when Hitler lost Hindenburg basically abdicated in his favour due to pressure from the old Prussian ruling class.
Fine let's be pedantic, he achieved power in a democratic system through scheming. But that's 2/3 of democracy anyway.
He achieved power because completely unelected people, the capitalists and old prussian generals, actually ran the show and the decided Fascisim would serve their interests better. Weimar Republic's "democracy" was a farce and the communist argument is that modern liberal democracies are also a farce for similar reasons. If the majority of society is organised unequally and anti-democratically then holding elections every four years isn't actually going to achieve rule for and by the consent of the governed.
And yet you say you were born with nothing but bills. It's a giant pyramid scheme and you, my equestrian friend, are fighting for the ones at the top at the cost of the ones at the bottom.
I am fighting for me and my family no one else, even if someone else happens to benefit from it.
Does that sound like a system worth defending to you?
I could give a rats ass about the system. The system will always suck ass for someone. I will work around whatever system is in place, not hope for one willing to spoon feed me.
So you're willing to lay down in accaptence. We are willing to fight.
No you are willing to larp on Chapchat... and every once in a while commit acts of domestic terrorism. I'm not going to dedicate my life or the lives of my family to be cut short for a cause i don't beleive in to start with
You know what the real difference is between us? I get that you want to fight for your family. We all do. Except we're fighting for you and your family, too.
No you are yelling on a messageboard about your beliefs, and i am going to work in 9 hours.
We are doing both, actually. Get some sleep, brother. You have a long day of being exploited ahaed of you.
Naw my jobs pretty nice. They team up with the local church to provide food bags for the local meth addicts way too off their shit to get a job.
Good for you.
Thanks :D
And that is exactly the problem. That in this society you have to choose between those things. It's a pyramid scheme.
Again, an argument that things "just are what they are". We are trying to make things better.
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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.
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