The bias is justified. The left is correct. Markets don't create wealth without necessarily simultaneously creating poverty
Socialists don't hate markets, they hate workers not having any power or democratic choice in how they interact in the market.
Workers owning the means of production just means the workers are doing the same work but they are in ownership of the factory and the profits. They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
Within the context of one person's career, socialism on its own can do quite a bit to transform people's relationship to their workplace. No longer would your job be at risk because you've all done too well and it's to "cut labor costs" while profits soar. No longer would you be worried about automating away your job, instead you'd gladly automate your job away and then the whole organization could lower how much work needs to be done as things get more and more automated.
Democracy would massively improve work-life balance.
Of course this comes with problems, all of which exist in capitalism (how do we care for people outside of these organizations who won't have access to work, for example). But if I had to choose between market socialism and capitalism, the choice is pretty clear, and it's something much easier for liberals to stomach.
Not saying I'm in favor of it, but there's still market socialism out there as a political stance
The idea of centrally planned economy ignores the lessons of the past. Bronze Age empires and recent examples all display universal inability to adjust to changes.
It’s the same magical thinking as the blind belief in market forces exhibits.
Priests of “invisible hand of market” ignore information exchange speed limits and market inertia, believing that markets will just magically fix everything in time for it to matter.
Preachers of central planning ignore information exchange speed limits and market inertia (and yes, there is a market, as long as there is goods and services exchange, however indirect) by believing they will have all the relevant information and the capacity to process it in time for it to matter.Neither is true. Neither school of thought even attempted to show itself to be true.
I think the better way would be a centrally planned economy for some goods (electricity, "normal" food, health, ...) and something more "free" for the rest of the market. Bread has a marked price but a PS5 doesn't.
I, a socialist, hate markets. They are simplistic and functional artifacts of the available way to pass information.
So, you would never trade with someone else something you have for something they have? You want to be entirely self sufficient?
If this isn't true, why do think markets serve no purpose?
No because I don't give you a gift only if you give me one. It's not a transaction. They are gifts.
...but you turned it into a semantic point. If I farm sheep and you bake bread, it's a market when I trade you wool for bread. If trade even as basic as this can't occur then you're relying on everyone to be self-sufficient.
The alternative is you're expecting everyone to put everything they produce into a kitty which is distributed to all, and I think that is a sure fire recipe for everyone to go hungry and for society to stagnate. There's little incentive to be productive, and no incentive to be inventive.
They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
There is no rule that states they have to sell squat in a marketplace. They could, but they also couldn't. That's the whole point of the workers owning the means of production - the workers involved makes those deicisions, not a capitalist or bureaucratic parasite class.
Do they actually trust their coworkers to run the company without tanking it almost immediatly? Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks without fucking something up, let alone actually having input on how the business is run.
Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks without fucking something up
This is a problem with the company you work for, not your coworkers. I'm sure if they were paid more, were given more agency, and received better training, they'd be better elployees
Either that or the reason they purposefully hire meth-addled freaks is because they want desperate people who won't fight for any of those things.
Source: Friend who works in a warehouse and has coworkers who are obviously there to get a paycheck to afford their fix and then move on. It's the company culture. They could choose to hire better people, or mentor the people who could grow, they don't.
thats because they want addicts (of any variety, not just drugs) cuz their labor is cheap. its a form of exploitation
No, they're just idiots. Myself and others have had the same training and responsibilities and do fine. It's not that difficult of a job.
i shall surely reap the rewards of working at the same level as these irredeemably dumb people. then i will prove my point online or something
I'm several levels up from them. But I have to deal with the problems they cause constantly. I did start at their level though.
I didn't say all I said most. It's really probably not even most just a large enough portion of them that there's always some issue going on caused by their negligence.
Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks
I guess you haven't met many CEOs, then.
if you dont raise your children to be adults, they won't act like adults when they grow up. A revolution would mean people learning entirely new skills, like making decisions in the workplace. Most workers have no agency, theyre treated like machines, so I dont expect people raised in that society to know how to run a completely different one from scratch. Revolution is a process, it has to be built. Keep shitting on your coworkers tho, im sure its a productive activity
They can't even learn to do the tasks they are expected to do now. Even with frequent coaching. How the fuck can you expect them to learn to make business decisions?
You've clearly never worked close with anyone making business decisions in the real world.
I used to work for a food type company and the way they decided to import and sell stuff locally was if the board of directors (the CEO who inherited the company from daddy + his siblings) liked the item. They hired someone, my coworker, to actually run the market tests and everything and then promptly ignored any suggestion she had to make about the viability of this product on the local market, instead relegating her to a busser that was in charge of ordering the samples they decided they wanted.
I remember one item nobody liked (they would give us the remaining samples in the break room like some dogs getting the leftovers), but one of the siblings liked it and they got that close to putting it on the market because of it.
I have so many stories from there. At the end of the year they would sell the soon to be expired stock to the employees for like half the price. On paper it was half (you're just giving money back to your employer so fuck them I stole as much food as I could), but the person who actually took the money was super nice and often gave us further discounts. For them the difference was like a decimal in accounting.
They announced these sales by email with the time and date. And in 2020, the year of covid, when half the workforce was working from home, they made the sale as usual. I learned afterwards that on that morning, the siblings who owned the company went and parked their cars right in front of the warehouse where the sale took place, and filled the trunk with as much stuff as they could. Then 2 hours later the sale happened and there was almost nothing left.
Technically legal but a fucking shitty thing to do lol, your job is to have a blurry monitor and pretend to do Excel sheets and you drive a Porsche, I think you have the means to load up your car at the store like a grown adult if you need to.
same way we expect students in 9th grade to be capable of more complicated tasks once they're in 12th grade. The nature of labor in capitalist countries is to sort out wheat from chaffe. "Good" workers become managers (although this is theoretical, ive had plenty of shitty managers), leaving the "bad" workers down at the bottom. This how the economy works right now, but it doesnt always have to. For example, unions sometimes have a probation period where you work as a temp, then join the union after a month or two. This gives you time to learn the job, before you have a say in how things are organized.
I have more thoughts, but im working rn 😝
Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks without fucking something up, let alone actually having input on how the business is run.
Your coworkers aren't incompetent. Your coworkers are just half-assing at work because they correctly realize they're not going to get paid more if they actually tried.
So they're just selfish assholes that don't mind creating more work for everyone else and potentially putting people's safety at risk? That doesn't do anything to convince me that they should have a say in how the business is run. If they're not happy with their pay they can go elsewhere.
It's not selfish to not go above and beyond what you need to do to help a business that doesn't care about you.
Where did I say anything about helping the business? I don't expect them to go above and beyond, when they don't do their assigned tasks correctly their coworkers then have to deal with the problems this causes getting bitched at by angry customers and such. On top of that some things if not done properly can create a safety issue. We have safeguards in place for this but again it's just extra work for someone else to redo it. This attitude is causing far more problems for their coworkers than it is for the business.
I don't expect them to go above and beyond
Yes you do, they are doing enough to get paid, and you want them to do more.
They're on track to get fired so they're not going to get paid for long. You totally ignored what I said about making all their coworkers suffer for their laziness. I thought all us workers were supposed to be in this together?
You must need a better job. I've had plenty of workplaces where I could count on everyone around me.
You know, the hiring manager usually has something to do with the quality of people hired. Maybe you could talk to them instead?
If I made my hiring manager worried more about quality I wouldn't be hired
Nothing in America stops the workers from owning the factory or the profits.
Fully stop? No, not technically. But our society makes it as close to impossible as it can be without being illegal
Bezos had to start off somewhere.
Just a small loan of a quarter million dollars from his parents to bail out his failing company, which one would be hard-pressed to imagine he would have even had that much success in founding if not for his wealthy parents supporting his upbringing as they did.
He started out with a small loan of $250,000 from his parents, in 90s $s if memory serves.
You're just a
aren't you? Lazy workers could be billionaires if they just tried
Where do they get the business owner who wants to do that? Can it happen? Sure, it has. But thats not going to happen for most bussiness operation in capitalist countries. Can workers get the money to buy out their owners? Sure. But that's not super likely in most situations either.
Nothing stops them! except shitty wages that are not enough to pay your absurdly high bills for housing, utility and shitty food plus competition which does not treat their eorkers fair and is therefore much more profitable and can easily destroy your worker-friendly cooperative, which they totally will do because CAPITALISM
Those lazy commies with their limp wristed excuses like: "The reality of living under a capitalist society". Why don't they just eat some bootstrap stew like my pa did and die of preventable illness generating labor value for someone else?
Massive inefficient redundancies that ended up making rich people money and hurting the poor? Yeah, fuck that.
Wait...so these are your examples of people who "did something"
Do you realize that the edge every single one of these companies had over the others is the willingness to do whatever it takes to extract as much value from labor for the least amount of money, right?
You are just making the case for the complete destruction of capitalism. Only soulless psychopaths are rewarded here. Winning is not beating these people at the same psychotic game that they're playing.
The problem with notable examples is that they're pretty much never representative examples.
Tesla is not close to bigger than GM. They only make consumer vehicles and maybe a model of semi truck but I don't think that's being produced yet, while GM has been making consumer cars in addition to commercial and military vehicles for decades. They might be valued as more but that doesn't really say anything in practical terms.
The system actively discourages that. It was tried in the 70s. Banks wouldn't work with coops because they were diffrent. Other companies wouldn't work with them because they didn't being as high a ROI. They were more efficient and stable, but under capitalism none of that matters.
Did... did I say they couldn't? I think this continues to be a misunderstanding of what socialists believe.
The hell of capitalism is the firm, not the fact that it has a boss
How would that even work.
It's very very easy to do something like have a capitalist system where business and the rich are taxed. But you aren't on about that.
You could divide everything up today. But with change and new business ideas that system will never work. You think the people would want to invest in new automation, new ways of working, new industries. If it means growth and job losses? No never. Just look at the western car industry, or any big government owned industry. People don't want change, even things like running a factory 24/7 instead of a nice 9-5 is difficult.
Then Japan's comes along and does all this new stuff and puts most of the western workforce out of business.
Under capitalism automation benefits the owners (on a small timescale, they worsen the totroptf) under socialism time saving just means the population has more time.
That is why workers currently push against automation under capitalism.
Not a market socialist though, just a socialist.
Are people investing in new automation currently because I've been using the same crappy tools for over 10 years now and they keep getting crappier.
Oh yeah we automate creative work now, the one thing that could still be a cheap hobby.
Marxists do hate Markets though, that's part of why Marx advocated for abolition of Money. Over time, of course, but that's the entire point of Labor-Vouchers.
To paraphrase this cool guy named Ernesto: Its not our fault reality is marxist
You'll be happy to know there's a social media site just like lemmy run by capitalists. It has all the benefits that capitalist ownership provides.
middle class between what class and what class? the rich class and the having a great time class?
I know Hexbear skews very, very liberal. I haven't spent much time in other lemmy places.
I am on hexbear because I like the memes. I consider myself a centrist, but I do agree with their general stance of a revolution that leads to the abolition of private property, there should be a dictatorship of the proletariat, and the complete dedication to elevating our marginalized comrades. I just try not to get political there, and it's fine really.
I'm a centrist; Anarchists and Marxist-Leninists both make good points
Everyone left of me is red fascist and everyone right of me is normal fascist
Every time his face gets posted, a grocer in Canada gets the sudden urge to raise the price of bread.
Liberal? They’re as extreme as conservatives who call communism everything they don’t like (cause they call everything they don’t like “fascist”)
(cause they call everything they don’t like “fascist”)
Maybe you don't understand what fascism is.
Or maybe you do, and you're a supporter of it.
I believe the comrade is making a joke about our politics. Not everything we don't like is fascism, some of it is liberalism. But of course, we all know what bleeds when a liberal gets scratched.
I like the communism talk. I don't like the pro russia talk on hexbear.
What exactly are you seeing as pro-russia?
As communists we're staunchly anti-NATO and against the US imperialist order. There's a degree of critical support for the Russian Federations struggle against NATO, but thats not really pro-russia, or at least how we would define being pro-russia.
Similarly we have critical support for Iran in its struggle against the US led imperial order, and we support when they do things like engaging in trade with AES like Venezuela. Thats not the same as direct support for the theocracy there or all their domestic policies for example
They want all the us state department propaganda included with the communism talk.
Im no fan of US imperialism, but you all conveniently leave out the alternative to NATO aid in Ukraine right now.
Without NATO aid, Ukraine will just plainly be taken over by Purine Russia.
If you think that end result is OK, then I don't know what to tell you.
As far as Im concerned, Putins expansion is really helping NATOs by giving them a justification to exist.
How does communism inform your perspective?
NATO aid and their not allowing Ukraine to negotiate peace is what is prolonging this war. We aren't arguing for all of Ukraine to become Russian territory, which hasn't been the position of the Russian Federation either.
We would like a negotiated peace that alllows the Donbas republics to leave Ukraine and join the Russian Federation as they've voted to do, and a promise for Ukraine to not become part of NATO. That senario is not the alternative you're talking about, or what you're implying we support.
We act as if the land wasnt invaded. The quickest way to achieve peace is for Putin yo withdraw. If the Ukrainians push into Russia after a withdraw, then we are having a different conversation.
You cant claim to believe in peace while in another territory.
Without NATO aid, Ukraine will just plainly be taken over by Purine Russia.
The war would end, a whole lot of people would stop getting killed, and it would open a sliver of space to organize on class lines instead of nationalist ones.
As it is, it is basically illegal to be a communist or an anarchist in Ukraine, and the country is under martial law with NATO-armed and trained fascist brigades doling out summary justice. Could it get worse? Why should the left advocate for people to die on the hill of a country which arrests communists, dismantles labor unions, and liquidates public infrastructure on internet auctions for foreign investors?
If you take the most vulgar Anarchist approach, all states are bad, full stop. Political practice doesn't even operate on that paradigm. You struggle to undermine oppressive hierarchical systems that you come in direct contact with through direct action. If you take the vulgar Leninist approach, the Proletariat should struggle for the overthrow of their Bourgeoisie (this would include the proletariat of Ukraine and Russia respectively, as well as the proletariat of Western countries which see this conflict only as a means to strengthen their military alliances and diplomatic positions). Of course, the situation is too nuanced to apply such a vulgar approach, but that should be the STARTING POINT for anybody who considers themselves anti-capitalists. You should be able to justify any deviation from those bedrock positions.
Im no fan of US imperialism, but you all conveniently leave out the alternative to NATO aid in Ukraine right now.
Nope it's mentioned all the time: diplomacy, peace talks, and to make that even possible, establish legitimacy by abiding by your own agreements. The undermining of all of these things has been discussed at length. They don't really need to be rehashed in our spaces for the benefit of new people that don't ask questions, though.
Without NATO aid, Ukraine will just plainly be taken over by Purine Russia.
lol RF could take over UA any time they wanted to if they took the NATO approach of completely destroying civilian life and essential resources via bombing. Military "aid" to Ukraine just keeps Ukrainian soldiers getting killed en masse, which is characterized by Russia as their compromise version of Denazification.
As far as Im concerned, Putins expansion is really helping NATOs by giving them a justification to exist
NATO obviously requires no credible justification to exist. This doesn't matter.
I find it completely unreasonable to request a peace talk whilst in a neighboring sovereign nation invading. That's lunacy to think Ukrainians are being the unreasonable ones here in regards to a peace talk.
Ukraine offered neutrality which was what Russia wanted and Russia rejected it. Then Ukraine accepted aid.
Without NATO aid, Ukraine will just plainly be taken over by Purine Russia.
No it wouldn’t. At most they would take the southern half, Novorossiya. The rest they just want a guarantee won’t align with the West.
Putin has started multiple times that he does not consider Ukraine a legitimate country. If he does not think they should exist, where would the other portion of it go?
As far as Im concerned, Putins expansion is really helping NATOs by giving them a justification to exist.
You have that backwards and are welcome to learn about the context behind the conflict, just ask
Without NATO aid, Ukraine will just plainly be taken over by Purine Russia
Ah, I think I've found the issue. Here at Hexbear we only support Pyrimidine Russia. We hate fuckin' cytosine, don't we folks?
I think you are being reductive. One can simultaneously be anti Russia and Anti US imperialism.
Idk why America being bad means oligarchic Russia is good. There's no nuance in your ideology. The US generally sucks. They happen to be in the correct side of this conflict. They arent always, but here they are.
Are you implying NATO is just the US? That no other NATO nation has sway, and that they are all US puppet?
This isnt a US vs Russia issue. Its the majority of Europe as well. I tend to trust them as a collective before Id trust Russia.
Again. I think you are being reductive and turning this into a US bad issue when the US isnt even the most important player here. ID argue Ukraine is the most important player here.
The US is not the center of the world. Its a very American perspective
Haven't liberals been the ones calling us fascists ever since we federated?
This is essentially what I used to think as well, until I spent more time there. There's some stock phrases busted out, and some users probably leave it at that and don't engage beyond it. However, they genuinely have a deeper framework for an analysis of the world than what you're going to see from conservatives.
Basically as part of their extremely liberal ideology, they analyze things through a materialist lens, even the non-marxist liberals there, and through that there is a lot of seeking out of what material causes and contradictions have lead to where we are which can be really neat.
There is probably some disagreement over what is fascist, what's not, blah blah. But it's really not as simple as "what I don't like is fascism".
They stay inside and rant and rave about how things SHOULD be while we are out there actually making the incremental changes to try to bring it about.
Incremental changes like allowing abortion bans, trans bans, the cost of living to skyrocket, drone striking workers around the world, doing nothing about the climate, allowing millions of avoidable covid deaths for the sake of the rich... Oh and presiding over the restoration of child labour? Those incremental changes? Anything I missed?
You're useless. You are projecting enormously when you say we socialists only talk when literally everything is going backwards even when you're in power.
What do you even do anyway? Are you organising? Or do you just vote every few years and act like that means you do something? We organise.
Team? You're not on our fucking team you side with fascists every fucking chance you get. You're fake, full of shit and untrustworthy allies.
Comrade Patrick Stewart playing Lenin says it best.
brigading people
And brigading ain't fucking organising numbnuts, nor is anyone doing any brigading when it's at the top of our /all/ page right now. I'm talking about unions, salting, activist groups, direct action, REAL shit. Not fucking voting and posting on the internet. What do you do? Anything at all?
Completely skipped over the fact that ALL of the above things happen when liberals are in power too didn't ya? Just utterly sidestepped it. You ignore the reality happening in front of your eyes and only listen to meaningless words. You're naive as fuck and very easily fooled.
I can't speak for everyone but there are a lot of union members and organisers among the ranks of Hexbear. Before I went back to school I used to organise with my local Tennant Union personally, but trying to balance 2 jobs, school, and organising work came to be a bit much for me so I guess we really aren't that different
Brigading is when silly posts appear on my federated front page and I make fun of your bad opinions.
brigading
Once again, the moment someone whips this one out, all I gotta do is look at when they joined. And see yup, that's a reddit refugee. Works 100% of the time, every time.
You've been here two weeks, cool your jets and enjoy federation.
Me personally, I teach and make my students aware of the dictatorship of capital, imperialism, the profite motive.. Basically marxism-leninism 101 on a introductionary level.
Other than that, I'm active in the teachers union and volunteer in the local chapter of the Marxist leninist party tog et local projects of the ground, like extending the public transport network, social housing, and most important of all, talking with people about their problems, the rise of fascism where I live and how to counter it, as well as the current neoliberal line of thought in both local and federale government.
What have you done?
while we are out there actually making the incremental changes to try to bring it about.
lmao most of the activism by liberals here is voting every 2 - 4 years and posting, don't kid yourself. Just keep carrying water for an unrepentant segregationist and telling yourself that the incremental steps you are supporting are towards progress and not a third world war.
Sorry, I'm sure you'll get your anti-imperialism candidate on the Primary debate stage one day! They still can't win, but they'll be on the stage once. And to make sure that that day comes, it only makes sense to do the bidding of imperialists in the meantime.
I have no idea what point it is that you think was proved so well here
You're not doing anything you're literally just actively promoting fascism. Congratulations, you beat the Republicans by becoming Republicans. So cool and very effective!
They stay inside and rant and rave about how things SHOULD be while we are out there actually making the incremental changes to try to bring it about.
Phonebanking for Biden doesn't count as doing shit btw
Exactly why I've been phone banking for Hilary since 2016. We will overcome. ✊
Hexbear also has a large number of Putin and CCP apologists. Authoritarian bootlicking isn't liberalism.
if supporting a project that lifts 800M out of extreme poverty is wrong, I don't wanna be right
To apologize for gigachad acts of poverty alleviation. This is a twelfth type.
--
Pushing Native Americans onto reservations lifted a lot of European immigrants out of poverty.
Burning fossil fuels lifted entire nations out of poverty.
Campaigns against the barbarians lifted many Romans out of poverty.
If you think this "lift" is some example of public good in action that hasn't come at the cost of exploitation, you're delusional.
China lifted 800 million people out of poverty by building healthcare, transport, housing, jobs, education and food security? Heh, but what about that time European settlers got richer by genociding Native Americans? Technically that was "poverty reduction" too, commie
All governments are authoritiarian. They have the authority to tax you and can do that cuz they have a monopoly on violence. But if you have "HUMAN RIGHTS" written on a piece of paper in your capital building that basically makes you a democracy, right?
Any argument in favor of Ukraine surrendering territory to Russia is pro-Putin. It doesn't have to explicitly say "I support Putin". If the comment suggests that the invasion is in any way justified or that the conquest of Ukrainian territory should be legitimized, it is a pro-Putin argument.
It's only the most brainwashed liberals that turn into this kind of frothing cult of personality turning an entire country of hundreds of millions into a single figurehead.
Evidenced further by the reactionary stance "I'm not listening to a single fucking thing that doesn't 100% align with the most one sided propaganda that I exclusively seek out"
Real good way to not know a single thing you're talking about and look like an idiot when you try
"I'm not listening to a single fucking thing that doesn't 100% align with the most one sided propaganda that I exclusively seek out"
Careful, your projection is showing.
Dumb fuck. You literally said that exact thing in your own words. Projection is something you can accuse someone of if you HAVEN'T completely walled yourself off from knowing the nature of their arguments.
I'm sorry, are you arguing that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is justified? Is that your point?
Also, if you can't make your point without insults then your point isn't worth making.
Pro-Putin is when I want there to still be Ukranians after this. Pro-Ukranian is when I cheer on wave after wave of old men and young boys get mulched by artillery while a bald guy with a sonnenrad tattoo points a rifle at their backs to make sure they don't try to run.
"Anyone who doesn't want to maximise the amount of dead Ukrainians is pro-Putin!"
You know what would keep more Ukrainians alive? If Russia stopped attacking them.
If you were legitimately interested in fewer Ukrainians dying you would be overtly critical of Russia's invasion.
Abstract principles really do matter more than human lives to you libs. Don't talk about "legitimate interest in fewer Ukrainians dying" when you wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice every last one of them for one inch of soil.
I thought this exact thing, but the more I learned about them, it turned out to really not be true. While there is a kind of meme culture there of asking Xi to nuke the town they're currently residing in, and pointing out all of the white supremacist symbols used by the Ukraine's army or whatever, there is a deeper context for it.
They don't necessarily support every move these people make and particularly in regards to Putin there is a lot of criticism towards his social stances.
They're more looking at this through the lens of what a nato conflict is causing in terms of a more multi-polar world and also Russia turning away from the neoliberalism that has dominated it since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Not saying you have to agree with it. I'm more of a centrist myself, but it's really not fair to say this as a blanket statement with no context.
Authoritarian bootlicking isn't liberalism.
It's the core of liberalism.
"Me saying that if I had a genie in a bottle I could marginally improve the world"
uncorrupt government
I think you meant "free real estate for the CIA and their a puppet dictators".
It's what happens every time another country doesn't want to sell their natural resources for pennies.
All types of governance and economic systems are susceptible to despotism.
It takes a constantly educated and involved population to fight it.
Exactly. We could also eliminate carbon emissions by moving everything via unicorns and fairy dust.
I think you will find any place thats well moderated and cracks down on bigotry and hatespeech will skew left.
Weird how that is, huh?
yes
posting
wait for it
in here
