Hey you

yes

you

I mean you personally, you reading this, you that call for liberation from the shackles of capitalism. That is until your own comfort is put into question. Then, you're not that different from Elon Musk or Bill Gates. Yes,

Musk

Want to know why? It's very simple really. But first we need a

Picture

Day 7 of the revolution. Communism is no longer a feeble dream but a palpable reality. You go to local warehouse to pick up some basics, sugar, milk, coffee, and maybe some chocolate. because

why not?

What's this? No sugar, no coffee, no chocolate? We're in commieland! All these should be readily available, what gives?! Turns out when you liberate all workers it means

ALL WORKERS

People enslaved to the land making it birth sugar cane, cocoa, and coffee, with no other choice or opportunity in life. In cases, some have tried only to have their bodies turn into munch, you know, as a warning.

Now that they have choices, what makes you think that they would remain in the plantation that embodied their whole life suffering, backbreaking labor to not enough to eat. And even still, the few pessimistic enough to remain, willing to till the unscorched plots of land, why would they send the few of their produce to

you?

But you don't mind that, deals could be made, you say. But that's not all, no, no no, there's something that hurts more than lacking your morning coffee or your weekly choco treat.

No NEW iphones

You know and are aware of the levels upon levels of exploitation and slavery are needed to make your little spy gadget. Yet, when you proclaim worker liberation, you cannot phantom the liberation of someone other than yourself. Because in doing so, you will have to admit that your life will change, that you will have to face personal sacrifices, personal discomforts, personal loss. Which is why every time someone points out industrialization will end, you swallow hard and scream

Primitivist!!! Primitivist!!!

to which I scream back

Colonialist!!! Colonialist!!!

Your desire to keep your life unfazed, but enhanced to star trek like conditions require the subjugation of the third world, the havers of raw material and infrastructure to build and hands to do it. By being unwilling letting go of your earthly tethers, you proclaim nothing more than communism for the first world, rugged capitalism for the third.

Our liberation does not require subservience to you in the north. So when you screen turns itself down one last time, and you get to see your sad little self in the black mirror, remember

You wanted this

  • KiaKaha [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Dude I just want a house, some food, a few good books, some company, and a world that’s not on fire.

    Keep your coffee and chocolate.

    • Doc14 [she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      And your lithium too! Tired of people thinking that we actually need all this shit capitalism has shoved down our throat.

    • ShitPosterior [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      Yeah, I want some land to build various structures & grazing spaces for all sorts of animals. Hell, I'm so down to share the surplus.

      I bet alot of folks would voluntarily produce & trade local specialities.

      Fuck my phone, I'd so happily make the trade. Fuck imperialism, fuck stealing from people, fuck oppression. It's never worth it

    • joshieecs [he/him,any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Trying to find the part about where everyone's brain apparently stops working as soon as the 7-day global revolution succeeds.

  • joshieecs [he/him,any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    A few contradictions in this scenario.

    1. I am confused as to which one of these conditions is true. They are mutually exclusive.
    • Colonialist with chocolate -> Communism in one country
    • NOT Colonialist with NO chocolate -> Global communism
    1. In the case of global communism, colonialism cannot truly exist. Either nation-states have been abolished, or at a minimum, there would free and unrestricted movement between administrative regions. If there is some kind of exploitative relationship between different administration regions, then you have not achieved communism.

    2. If it's only been 7 days, we can't really jump to conclusions based on one warehouse being out of some products. A similar case with the iPhone, they are released on a yearly cadence, not a weekly cadence. So it remains to be seen what will become of the iPhone.

    3. This is the real doozy. In your scenario, we have completed what I understand to be a global proletarian revolution in a matter of 7 days! That revolutionary movement, whether we are talking about the Party, the Vanguard, the trade unions, a system of confederated communes -- it doesn't matter the form -- in any variation of communism, to accomplish a revolution in 7 days would require virtually flawless execution of the revolutionary conflicts/wars, vast global communication network, global-scale political organizing capacity, overwhelming popular support of a class-conscious, mobilized working-class, and of course, dozens and dozens if not hundreds of brilliant revolutionary leaders.

      HOW then is it possible, that upon having succeeded in this truly astounding feat of a one-week global revolution, no one of the billions of class-conscious communists that supported the revolution would have thought to raise the idea that there would need to be some kind of plan for the day after the revolution? Or that all of these brilliant revolutionaries leaders decided to retire and the well-oiled, perfectly humming Party apparatus dissolved immediately into a herd of cats?

  • Terkrockerfeller [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I wanna say good post but I feel like there's a good chance this is pasta or some level of irony beyond my comprehension

  • thefunkycomitatus [he/him,they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Is your take really that chocolate wouldn't exist under communism because the only way chocolate can exist is if exploited workers produce it?

    Sounds like you want to own all the other leftists so you're desperately grasping for reasons to scold everyone else and prove you're actually the real leftist because you will go without candy bars after the revolution. The leftist project isn't a means to carry out petty personal grievances against people you don't like. You paint a caricature and then scream at it, comforted by your superiority. The lazy, comfortable leftist will be punished in the end.

  • volkvulture [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    global trade in commodities and techno-determinism through mass communications would make more sense without the incalculable history of genocidal nationalism... but then again those first two things wouldn't even exist in such a case

  • Dyno [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Fra Contidini - Errico Malatesta:

    Bert: You say everybody would make an effort, but I think that nobody would want to do the heavy jobs, they’d all want to become lawyers and doctors. Who’d till the land then? Who’d want to risk their health and life down the mines? Who’d want to get dirty in sewers and manure?

    George: [...] Today we prefer one job to another, not because it’s more or less suited to our faculties or corresponds more to what we want to do, but because it is easier for us to learn, we can earn more money doing it, and only secondly because the work is lighter than another kind. Especially when the choice is imposed from birth by chance and social prejudice.
    For instance, no town dweller would stoop to till the soil, not even the poor among them. Yet there’s nothing inherently repulsive about agriculture, and life in the fields is not devoid of pleasure.
    On the contrary, if you read the poets you’ll find they’re full of enthusiasm for rural life. [...]

    We ourselves, who were born here, stop as soon as we can, because we are better off and more highly thought of no matter what else we do.
    But who of us would leave the fields if we worked for ourselves and found in working the land wellbeing, freedom and respect?

    It would be the same for all trades. The way things are today, the more a job is necessary the worse it is paid, the more tiring and inhuman the conditions, and the more it is treated with disdain. [...]

    Think of it! someone who possibly knows nothing but puns and sugary sonnets earns ten times more than a farm worker and is considered to be above every honest labourer.
    Journalists, for example, work in elegant offices, cobblers in filthy basements; engineers, doctors, artists, and teachers, when they have work and know their job well, live the life of the gentry while builders, nurses, artisans, and you could also add general practitioners and primary teachers, are going hungry and even killing themselves through overwork. [...]

    I’m just saying that all useful jobs should be appreciated equally and be carried out in such a way that the workers feel equal satisfaction in doing them, and that intellectual work, which is in itself a great pleasure and gives man great superiority over whoever doesn’t work with his mind and remains ignorant, must be accessible to all and not the privilege of a few.

  • Shmyt [he/him,any]
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    4 years ago

    Good post comrade. Communism for all requires liberation of all. Many of us do not examine our exploitative behaviours, or realise how much of our lifestyles are built on the back of colonialism or imperialism. We must all accept that to liberate the global south we may feel discomfort, and we must remember that the freedom of our comrades is worth more than our luxuries. This might be one of the reasons that green capitalist ops like zerowaste initiatives or freetrade coffee might be a global good: by showing that exploitation is what keeps prices low and that low impact creates high cost we could wean the global north off of many of its excesses, or at least tie them to luxury rather than staples.

    • joshieecs [he/him,any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      the shrodingers third-world at the same time (1) colonialists slaves but also (2) post-revolutionary communists who executed a brilliant revolutionary struggle in only one week, but who can't figure out any fair way to organize labor to still grow coffee and cocoa to engage in international exchange with their comrades in other parts of the world who are producing goods they will need. a well-oiled machine of disciplined revolutionary communists fell immediately into an atavistic state of consciousness, forgot how to organize, and because to function like a herd of cats the very moment the revolution succeeded.

      • Shmyt [he/him,any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Thats a very fair critique; i was reading it as a first world revolution succeeded, or a general leftist movement that had success but not global power or centralised organisation. Apparently I just shouldn't try to understand things past midnight because it seems I can't fucking read

  • CatherineTheSoSo [any]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    I mean, I agree that a global revolution would impede a lot of first worlders' access to luxury goods. The specifics seem sketchy. Beet sugar accounts for 20% of world sugar use, was widely produced in USSR and was (and is) just another agricultural product, not associated with slave-like conditions. I don't see why other luxury good can't be produced without exploiting the workers and distributed fairly.

  • Owl [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    It's very strange to me that we all understand that everything capital does is for the benefit of the capitalist class, yet, as soon as we look colonialism, some of my comrades go back to falling for the capitalist propaganda that this exploitation was done on our behalf, for our benefit.