It’s a meme
That’s it? That’s the meme? That’s just a piece of toast with the words “The workers should seize the means of production” written on in it.
That’s not toast? It’s bread.
What sort of bread is it?
“Wheat” I assume
What sort of wheat bread?
Of the rectangular cuboid shaped variety
Has it been prepared in some way? With some sort of heat, perhaps?
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.
Has it been prepared in some way? With some sort of heat, perhaps?
Sliced.
What sort of sliced bread?
It’s not toast until it goes through the toaster. Out of the bag it’s just baked. Quit.
What sort of bread is it before toasting?
That’s undercooked toast
I feel very sure that there’s no way it’s any kind of toast. I will never concede this argument
Raw toast?
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There’s a meme of a frog puppet drinking tea, and a meme of a pootoo, and a meme of some beans. It can be literally anything.
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.
What does that even mean? Give us some practical advice
Make your own bread I guess.
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.
Because it worked to well in Zimbabwe, Sowjetunion 1, Sowjetunion 2, China, and many more
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…
Classic communist tactics, Tovarishch, and if it fails you just didn’t believe hard enough…
yeah you call it a meme and put it on the meme community but I don’t see a meme here
I made a bunch of Dalle pics on this topic last night:
Look there, Zach, a message on the toast!
And in the coffee? Revolution.
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They are bitter and stringy and taste of used currency - not at all worth eating, but for use as fertilizer.
Directly seizing I don’t think would end well. I think it’s one of the short comings of communism.
Encouraging employee owned companies is where it’s at. But to be honest I’m not sure how you would incentivize that.
I’ve debated people at length on this topic and have concluded that this is a half-baked idea that is impossible to implement without destroying society in any form that has been presented to date.
You can’t call an idea with 200 years of history and hundreds of books on the subject “half-baked” without explaining what about it you think is unfeasible. Either you have never actually talked to a socialist, or you’ve simply never listened.
So, a few questions:
- Why is it “half-baked”?
- What ideas does it propose?
- What is wrong with those ideas?
- How is it “impossible to implement”?
- What methods are proposed?
- What prevents those methods from working?
- What do you mean by “destroy society”?
- What exactly do you define as society?
- How would socialism “destroy” that?
The factory has owners. It would be unfair to not compensate them for their capital investment. You are describing a situation where you disallow private enterprise, but all systems describing this type of agreement to date have resulted in terrible outcomes. It will destroy competition. I am reminded of hearing about my brother’s visit to the Soviet Union when he was younger. He went with his group to an ice cream shop and asked what flavors they have and they said vanilla. As in, this limits options and provides a shitty quality of life. It also leads to issues where people who are able to provide a high value to society are not rewarded at a higher rate than a lazy or dumb person. The incentive is gone. These are issues that no text has reconciled. Even Plato’s dreamed Utopia, he knew that such a thing only would work if you brainwashed people generationally to value the idea of communal ownership. He basically left it at the leaders not being able to own things, but having all that they need while other classes under them could still own things. In essence, his utopian society was totally unrealistic in any meaningful timeline and still formed different classes of people.
It destroys society to take away people’s possessions because we built a system where property ownership is a central component. Having possessions is such a basic human construct that your are living in a pipe dream if you feel that you can remove that. The idea that people would share with one another and not get what they are worth to society is salient in describing why socialism as a whole crumbles. You can have socialized policies, but destroying the whole economic system doesn’t work. See my reply later in this thread for examples of real incremental changes.
Let’s start with your first assumption. Why must a factory have individual owners? Why not instead have it owned by the workers who are the ones actually producing?
Also, don’t conflate private and personal property. If you are indeed talking about private property, it is very unlikely you have any to begin with. The vast majority of private property is owned by a few billionaires.
Lastly, people do not need money to incentivise work. Boredom, creativity and the desire to help and or contribute to society does that well enough. Given a stable level of comfort, people will seek work that matters to them.
Because the workers didn’t find the money to buy a whole factory…
Even if we ignore the artificially increased transaction costs and hold out problems associated with private ownership that make acquiring means of production more expensive, this point only justifies some sort of compensation from the workers as part of the negative fruits of their labor in production. It does not justify the capitalist appropriating 100% of the positive (legal right to produced outputs) and negative (legal liability for the used-up inputs) fruits of the workers’ joint labor
The workers get money for their labor…
Property’s moral basis is getting the positive and negative fruits of your labor. Capitalism denies the workers this as the employer solely appropriates the positive and negative fruits of their labor. The core of property’s moral basis is the principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match. Receiving wages is not sufficient because the workers remain de facto responsible for the whole (positive and negative) product of the enterprise and are entitled to it on that basis
I own private property and am not a billionaire, so not sure what you are on about with that statement. I got educated and have a decent living situation with a nice corporate remote job. I’ll have my student loan paid off around 40. These things were all easy to do. The people with issues do this to themselves. Sorry you are lazy and want to leach off my success.
It’s like you’re ignoring everything I say. Unless you’re a landlord or the owner of some business, you probably don’t own private property. If you can sit back and let other people make money for you without your input, you own private property.
Your comment reads like a copypasta. Why are you callibg me lazy? Did I say I don’t want to work? Of course I want to work. You’re not paying attention. There are huge barriers to people being able to succeed, and getting past thrm requires immense effort, luck or privilege. And the last one is the only guaranteed win.
I learned ro code from handmedown computers at a young age and worked my way up the corporate ladder. I own a nice big home and am a millennial. I completed a part time MBA while working and am able to take vacation every three months or so. Nothing is stopping you all from being successful, but yourselves. I agree that the system has massive flaws, but destroying capitalism isn’t the answer. The risk-reward system works.
Sounds like you don’t own any private property, then.
- Why is it “half-baked”?
Here a nice example what happenes when you give the means of production to “the people”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1gpQV57doM
Because it worked to well in Zimbabwe, Sowjetunion 1, Sowjetunion 2, China, and many more
Literally sharing nazi propaganda from Hearst press lol
Anyway, capitalism is known for never having famines or economic crises, especially not cyclical ones
but capitalism still has issues mabye ecofashisim is the way for as minimized issues as possible?
Oof, too real, you have to add a sarcasm tag
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.
Late Victorian Age
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.
Suuure… Stalin was an agent of the West, send to kill Russians. Just like Dschingis Khan and Mohammed. All Agents of the West.
Thank you for making me aware of everything.
I will repeat:
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.
How exactly? Other than excessive bloodshed, which - other than edgelord tankies - most people would neither want, nor have the stomach to pursue.
Revolutions have happened and will continue to happen regardless of how much smug liberals will bloviate about edgelord tankies.
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.
Creating political agency via mass murder of innocents is the basis for the western system of government buddy.
This doesn’t make any sense
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.
Be me. Swedish. Wake up and go to genocide factory. Get home from genocide factory. Make chicken potstickers.
not far from the truth really https://www.corpwatch.org/article/swedish-paper-manufacturing-giant-blacklisted-child-labor-practices
Read “riding the wave” fo learn about how Scandinavian countries are beneficiaries of the imperialist system
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.
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.
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.
Start by talking about your wages. Most people won’t even do that, for fear of reprisals. Even though it’s protected federally.
Casually bringing up support for unions, and those on strike.
This is base level, and in many places, will take a long time to see movement.
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.
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.
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.
So they didn’t eat the rich.
Time to stop blocking the people who post this stupid shit.
Did you mean to say start?
dbzer0 has been probably one of the most consistently low quality posting instances not ending in .de
Cause, you know, it’s always worked soo well in the past…
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?
So you think when the state owns the means of production things are gonna be better?
Nah but When the workers do it will be.
It has, and anybody who has even a bare minimum of historical literacy knows this.
Which past is this that you speak of? And how is the present a better option than anything at all, really?
The Soviet Union, Cuba, Vietnam. Are these countries you want us to model ourselves after?
Yes. All of those countries had more civil rights and longer life expectancy after the revolution
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.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041395/life-expectancy-russia-all-time/
