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
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