Correct, except smaller pyramids, those were also for the kings only, workers building pyramids had their own cementaries iirc.
But knowledge of this fact actually makes this meme even more relatable - the people in it were closer to wage slaves like us.
Correct, conditions of the workers of the Pyramids and Temples
-8 h per day, 6 days a week
-Free housing, food and a small garden for themselves and their families
-Medical assistance and care in sick leave due to illness and accident.
-Exempt from paying taxes
-Care and assistance for the old ex-workers.
(better than today in most countries)
Slaves (mostly prisoners of war and criminals) were naturally also used, but only for basic jobs and assistance. The Pharao knew very well that if he wants a job well done, he cannot get it with slaves and in poor conditions, but with well-cared and happy professionals.
God damn, they got better healthcare than I do five thousand years later.
Better healthcare coverage*
You definitely don't want healthcare from 2000bce lol
I think that was a recent discovery, let me check
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/who-built-the-egyptian-pyramids-not-slaves 2021
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/11/great-pyramid-tombs-slaves-egypt 2010
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/5000-year-old-pay-stub-shows-that-ancient-workers-were-paid-in-beer/ 2016
so yeah kind of recent in the grand scheme of things, but you are correct
The communist version of this meme has someone with a whip and sword standing behind them and telling them to work for the benefit of the people or die
This is called projection, especially since capitalism itself was built with ongoing slavery and genocide. The only people who should fear communists are the bourgeoisie and their running dogs.
And farmers who own their lands, and workers who want unions independent of the state, and political dissidents, and a thousand other groups
And farmers who own their lands,
you mean that land that is worthless without government fundings and bail out?
and workers who want unions independent of the state
wut im sorry are you gonna try to claim capitalism is better for workers? XD
and political dissidents, and a thousand other groups
that you just made up
you mean that land that is worthless without government fundings and bail out?
Idk man the kulaks liked their land and died for it
wut im sorry are you gonna try to claim capitalism is better for workers? XD
By any objective measure, capitalism plus taxes and a robust social welfare system is the best available system.
Idk man the kulaks liked their land and died for it
bro the kulaks were wealthy landowners why would you give a shit about pigs like landowners
By any objective measure,
A bold claim that I'd love to see you substantiate
farmers who own their lands,
which burned their crop because they didn't want to collectivize causing food shortages
and workers who want unions independent of the state,
which were ultimately used by the west (solidarnośc)
and political dissidents,
Unlike any other country
and a thousand other groups
No u
the bourgeoisie and their running dogs.
You're a political dissident if you live in a capitalist country. You in jail?
You think society should improve, but you're not in jail, so society is perfect. Checkmate commie
I'm just saying, you assert capitalist countries would do the same as communist countries with political dissidents, why aren't you in a capitalist gulag for speaking against capitalism quite publically?
Look at what happened actual organized dissidents like Fred Hapton, MLK, the Black Panthers, the original Black Lives Matters organizers in Ferguson etc. if you want to see what the US gov does to dissidents. We're just people on a reddit clone, they don't care
And farmers who own their lands
The Maoist uprising against the landlords was the most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, leading to almost totally equal redistribution of the land amongst the peasantry
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"Farmers who own their own lands"
And hire laborers that make less than minimum wage
He's entitled to keep the product of his labour, "hiring" isn't a thing after the revolution since "money" isn't a thing after the revolution, nor is "owning" a farm. If he "hires" a guy to plant crops, the hired man has done the labor and thus owns the crops. Since the farm is "the means of production," "the man who owns the farm" does not actually own the farm, "the people" do.
I'm talking about how farms are in capitalist US now. People who own the land rip off laborers, who tend to be migrant workers without a way of protecting themselves.
I want the revolution to expropriatate the land and belong to to the people
Oh he had listed those things as "people who should fear communism" so I thought you were on topic not just throwing semi-related jabs at farmers who will never read this, so I thought you meant like "only if he pays people less than minimum wage" so I popped in with "no no, not even if he does pay well." My mistake!
Edit: People like that do fear communism. They're kulaks
I changed "should" to "do", because they don't have to fear it, but most do because of their class position
No everyone. You see capitalism is when good thing, and communism is when bad thing.
Look at these poor North Koreans suffering under Communism
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How would this picture look like in a socialist democracy like some European countries?
At best European nations are social liberal democracies. No European country is a socialist nation.
What are the minimal requirements of a nation to uphold in order to be considered socialist?
A good faith attempt to end the capitalist mode of production and move to the socialist mode as envisioned by Marx. Elimination of the role of capital in the ownership of industry or production, that's your chief characteristic
Oh by that measure I wholeheartedly agree, there is not a single socialist nation in Europe.
How would you describe the European legislation to protect their citizens from the effects of the market and capital? (Welfare, worker rights, pensions, limited work hours, paid leave etc.)
I'm not looking for dialectical nitpicking (maybe Socratic questioning), I'm asking out of curiosity and a want to understand the differences.
That's social liberalism. It's an offshoot of democratic socialism which discarded the goal of transition to socialism for continuing to reform capitalism. It also describes the US New Deal Coalition.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism
Humanity is flawed, so any of our constructions will be. But democracy is better than any alternative.
I'm not 100% sure about that, but I was more interested in the intrinsic correlation between democracy and Liberalism.
I just can't imagine a democracy that isn't liberal, because all the basic elements of a democracy crumble soon after. Unless, well, you consider ancient Athens' Democracy to be an actual democracy.
I mean I guess you could have a socialist or feudal democracy, but the problem begins with those when you think about what happens with political dissidents
Wholesome democracy Taiwan with their very democratic four decades of martial law and concentration camps
Where people can vote for their leaders of any political bent, while people on the mainland are machine gunned for peacefully protesting to gain the right to do so. Wumau tankie fascists are all the same.
This is like an octopus ink cloud of liberal
and bullshitThey still put Chiang "The butcher of Shanghai" Kai Shek on their money to this day. I have some from my time there. Guy was sort of the Zelensky of his day honestly
Taiwan aka Republic of China aka state of China aka not a country. I dont care what a hand full of redditors have told you but they dont have a seat at the UN, the United States and EU doesnt recognize it as a sovereign nation, Taiwan depends on Chinese government and Chinese exports.
Either way, China claims itself to be a democratic socialist country so just own that.
Yeah ok man I don't care about your geopolitics, the point is that the only part of what is considered China which is at all democratic is Taiwan. The PRC is a totalitarian, one party dictatorship.
There are eight (8) other political parties in the mainland People's Republic of China
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Their existence is allowed as long as they recognize the CCP as the leading party. That is unusual for a Communist state, but it is definitely not a democracy.
Not that it is a bad thing, it is just not a democracy.
china is more of a democracy than the US what with its supreme court, senate, and electoral college.
Great, I wasn't talking about America. I am also not American, so maybe you're right about it being corrupt.
It doesn't change the fact that China's CCP allows other parties in a controlled manner, to such an extent that they are allowed to exist as long as they acknowledge the superiority of the CCP.
This leads to the tyranny of the majority, as explained in the writings of John Stewart Mill.
Is it morally wrong? I'm not sure you can judge China the same as other nations. I find China to be very complicated and unique in human history.
Is it a democracy? Certainly not a full one. The Majority's tyranny is an easy discerning factor between democracies and republics.
you might have a more accurate assessment if you got the name of the party right lmao
communist party of china is the preferred nomenclature, communist parties are usually "communist" first and whatever nation state second, see see pee is a western invention, maybe to scare boomers by reminding them of the CCCP but i'm not sure we have a memo or leak about why the switch was made.
people have mentioned older coverage when china was not the big scary enemy where capitalist media referred to the cpc correctly, but i don't have arbitrary 1990s newspaper articles at hand.
Ok, CPC instead of CCP. Brilliant.
How does that make China a democracy?
presumably how their legislators and executives get their jobs, and who gets to vote would make china a democracy or not?
do you know whether they have elections or how they are held? do you know how proposed laws are considered and declined or instituted? or do you just hear "one party state" and make a pile of assumptions?
ancient athens, the american representative republic, westminster derived parliamentary systems, and school textbook direct democracy aren't the only forms democracy can take, and frankly those systems (except for the school book one that isn't used to run any countries) all have huge flaws and failings, and could fairly be called "not actually democracies" if we look at public opinion polling compared to what public policy is actually made.
logically it can't be true that the members of an association ought to govern themselves by the democratic process, and at the same time a majority of the association may properly strip a minority of its primary political rights. That logical statement is only true if you assume that in a democracy, political power is equal.
And yet, by definition, Democracies are not holding said contradiction to be a paradox or negating factor. As a matter of fact, the only conclusive definition of the word Democracy is "a form of government that allows all eligible members of it to partake in the ruling of the country."
By that definition, China is a democracy. It is, by the Chinese constitution - "The people's Democratic dictatorship", but it is still a democracy. It is actually intentional, to make sure that reactionary forces won't overthrow the communist party. At least, that's what I've read so far.
I stand corrected, and apologize for being confidently wrong in my terminology.
logically it can't be true that the members of an association ought to govern themselves by the democratic process, and at the same time a majority of the association may properly strip a minority of its primary political rights. That logical statement is only true if you assume that in a democracy, political power is equal.
yeah i mean that's the school book scenario and one of the flaws with "simple" democracy that has no mechanism to protect women or queer people from christians, slavevs from their owners etc. the democratic process is more than one thing, especially once your association gets too big and you decide to have representatives. Places like china, viet nam, and cuba are democratic but unless you live in a place that does "democratic centralism" you probably weren't taught about that form in school. I certainly wasn't.
that "people's democratic dictatorship" terminology that you seem bothered by is by way of marx's "dictatorship of the bourgeoise" and "dictatorship of the proletariat" and doesn't mean the same thing as "state run by a single dictator". Somebody else can give a better summary but the really bare bones version is that the state is ostensibly putting the interests of the people first and actually controlled by the people, unlike the US which talks a big game about "of the people, by the people, for the people" and then congress never does wildly popular things like legal weed and proper healthcare and does do horridly unpopular things all the time because the rich fucks who own congress benefit.
Keep reading, there's a lot of misconceptions to break and good on you for taking the time.
"moving the goalposts" is an informal fallacy, and sports other than handegg have them, so the analogy being made should be perfectly comprehensible
Once you wrote it like this, it is comprehensible. Still, first time I heard it. Don't know what handegg is too.
After reading about the analogy, I fail to see which rules, process or competition was changed (or in this case, conversation) mid-play.
I was consistently talking about China, I was consistently talking about their party system and I was consistently talking about it being non-democratic in comparison to Democratic party systems where there are mechanisms to prevent the tyranny of the majority.
Also, the tyranny of the majority isn't a new thing. The formationg of the modern democracy is circa 1800's. It is a system that was conceived centuries ago. a century before communism. It's not like I pulled a fast one here.
I didn't even say that it is a bad thing for fuck's sake. I haven't even displayed my actual opinion.
I fail to see where the goalpost analogy fits here.
idk take it up with the person who said you were changing standards
Sorry, I thought the same person who stated, answered. Thanks for clearing that up though.
Taiwan hasn't even been "democratic" (in the sense of "murder all political opponents to the left of Reagan for 40 years and then start letting people vote for the party that did this") for more than a few decades, so even at face value this barely counts.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)
So thered be no joke and they'd be forced to do good? Sounds like an improvement
You know I'm a communist, and I'd actually wager we would agree on your stance here if you chose better words. What you're actually advocating against is state capitalism, and we both agree it's a horrific and unjust system.
Something I've noticed about "anti-communists" is they absolutely love taking the USSR, CCP, and DPRK at their word for what they are. When they describe themselves as communist/socialist, you take it as an undeniable fact.
Do you think the DPRK is a democratic republic? It's in the name. Of course you don't, because it'd be ridiculous to let an authoritarian regime change the definitions of words to mean whatever they want it to mean :)
especially how they're sucking up to this bootlicker like they should be liked for being one of the good ones they can be "civil" with
There's two paths to talking with a communist. Either they're a tankie and start singing the praises of the USSR and PRC and all sorts of totalitarian hellholes, or they start talking about hypothetical economic systems and states which haven't been shown to be practically achievable. I don't say this to be a dick, man. I much prefer the utopian idealist communists over those who cheer when political dissidents are machine gunned for wanting democracy. But it still doesn't make libertarian communism a workable system, whether it's anarchic communism or democratic socialism or some other form of stateless society.
So, I am happy to be civil with you, I just fundamentally disagree about whether attempting to achieve those ideals would end well. In my opinion, it would have one of three results - anarchy and a breakdown of the economy, imposition of totalitarian rule in reaction to groups of people who don't want to give up their private property rights, or reversion to another form of economic structure, like capitalism.
No economic or political system can be shown to be practically achievable before it's been achieved. If you don't think the following examples are examples of genuine socialism/communism, then that's not an argument against the ideology.
We've had communists fight alongside other leftists. So revolutionary Catalonia was a functioning leftist space, meeting all the criteria to be called communist (classless/moneyless/stateless). It functioned incredibly well for a year before it was invaded.
If you want a longer, but smaller example, Red Vienna existed for about 2 decades and was a fully functional socialist space that improved worker's lives before being outlawed by a regime change.
If your position is that imperialist capitalist nations will always invade/outlaw well-functioning socialist/communist systems, you can't know that for sure, but it's definitely a possibility. That doesn't mean the entire idea is worth throwing away.
It won't always be the same ones so I'm unsure of what you're asking. Which ones invaded the spaces I listed before?
For Revolutionary Catalonia it was the Nationalist Faction who overthrew them. They advocated for, and implemented, a form of national syndicalism that was "fully compatible with capitalism".
For Red Vienna is was the fascists who overturned the socialist policies and returned the city to a state of capitalism, allowing land-leeches and other bourgeoise to return to continue exploiting the working class.
Someone do something about political memes on the general meme communities please
