Cowbee

@Cowbee@lemm.ee

This town, in fact, has more than enough room for the two of us

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Cowbee,

I like the bean dose containers! How are they to use? Do they keep your beans fresh?

Cowbee,

No, in a real free market the banks would lobby to be bailed out. Removing even more regulation from it would result in more lobbying. Even with anti-corruption measures, without worker ownership or massive Unionization, eventually these protections will slide back once someone more opportunistic takes office.

Worker Ownerhship and decentralization are the correct path, rather than antidemocratic Capitalist production.

Cowbee,

There are numerous critical flaws of what you just said.

  1. Why would Guards support you? If you become a robber-baron, hiring muscle to protect your factories from the Workers, you have to deal with the fact that either you don’t actually control and own your factories, the mercenaries do, or accept that you have become a micro-state.
  2. What is preventing any of these micro-states from absorbing others and becoming a full state? Nothing.
  3. Why would anyone willingly work for you, unless it already reached the point where you are essentially a state? They could make more money simply by working cooperatively.

Private Property cannot maintain itself unless you have a monopoly on violence and thus a state.

Cooperatively owned property, on the other hand, supports itself and is maintained cooperatively. There are no avenues to realistically overturn it.

Cowbee,

What an excellent way to dodge literally everything I pointed out and feign a logical high ground. Perfectly smug and absolutely irrelevant.

Cowbee,

If everyone has equal power, there’s no statist component.

Cooperative structures are not inherently more efficient, but Cooperative work structures would result in higher paid workers. The strawman about a lack of decision making in the Cooperative could easily be flipped, while the Workers are already producing, the Capitalists are figuring out how to extort their customers and workers better.

Communally owned property supports itself by virtue of being communally owned. If nobody has an individual claim to it, someone who tries would be contested by the community, hence its communal ownership.

You only have strawmen and vibes, no actual points.

Cowbee,

Nope, just like it doesn’t require unlimited resources and automation to get you to do your chores. However, at a societal scale, its definitely a futuristic goal, which is why Communism is only achievable after Socialism, which is similar to modern society except industry is collectively, rather than individually owned.

Cowbee,

You’re continuing to compare a fully developed superpower that never had skin in WWII with a developing country the rest of the world tried to oppose at every step, that’s still completely disingenuous. The graph was volatile because the USSR was founded in Civil War, had a famine in the 30s during the horribly botched collectivization of agriculture, then had their bread basket invaded during WWII while they took on the majority of combat against the Nazis. After that, steady!

Decentralization is firmly a Socialist ideal, and is incompatible with Capitalism. Capitalism requires that workers have no power, otherwise it wouldn’t exist.

You then go on to completely butcher the definitions of Socialism by assuming it means state control, rather than collective control, of the means of production. State control is merely one path of Socialism.

Private Property requires a monopoly of violence to enforce, ie a state. You cannot have private property without threat of violence via a state, even your example proves this.

All in all, you’re frustratingly bad at arguing anything coherent, and it’s clear you don’t actually care about proper definitions.

Cowbee,

People don’t get everything for free until productivity is so high that it’s practical, which comes from development. The distribution is handled by the Socialist State, typically, until it becomes vestigial and no longer necessary.

Cowbee,

You followed an arbitrary logical chain to depict one form of Socialism, yes.

In Capitalism, the market is controlled by Capitalists, who represent a minor fraction of the population. In Socialism, the economy is controlled by everyone.

Cowbee,

It can only happen at a global scale. There are numerous answers to your question, but again, it isn’t as simple as removing all incentives. Read theory, Marx never pretends to know what Communism must look like, which is why Communists focus on achieving Socialism first, as we can very well transition to that now.

Cowbee,

Because it’s an easy transition to Linux, which is beneficial in numerous ways. If you’re gatekeeping Linux distros, you can kindly leave normal people alone.

Cowbee,

Giga brain Chad over here! Nah, my partner and I wake up at different times, and she doesn’t even like coffee in the first place. I usually start preheating my machine before taking a shower in the morning, and that gives enough time for my flair to preheat. All I need to do is manually grind, start the kettle, and do my puck prep, then good to go!

It’s honestly a comfy ritual, plus you get to pull a great turbo shot every morning for pennies compared to even a Starbucks, for far better quality. Does it “save” money? No, but it’s a hobby I love!

Cowbee,

Pour over is just a gateway drug to Espresso down the line, you either go for the simplified Aeropress or the complex espresso.

Cowbee, (edited )

How deep of an understanding do you have of these supposed proposed systems? As a leftist, the vast majority of mainstream leftist tendencies have strong theory that specifically deals with what you consider to be their ultimate flaw: an assumption of human good. It’s hard to actually answer for every single leftist Tendency, because you haven’t really given any specifics.

As for your second paragraph, there have been remarkably few countries that genuinely have tried Socialism, and all of them were developing countries. Don’t take this to mean that I’m a fan of Marxism-Leninism, but there are two prominent examples of countries that most would consider did in fact “work,” those being the USSR and China.

Again, not defending the USSR or China overall, but asking for clarification on your definition of working, as they were and are economically strong.

Your point about the top of the tree is, bluntly, extremely bad. You offer no explanation why a Socialist or Communist structure cannot be democratically accountable to any lesser degree than Capitalist structures, and assume absolute power. This goes directly against all leftist theory, even Marxism-Leninism, which is centered on the principles of Democratic Centralism.

Your point about Communism being “sharing everything and owning nothing” is also entirely incorrect, and further proves my point. The entire final paragraph is so divorced from any sense of actual leftist theory, that it can only be a product of someone fully believing a right-wing pundit’s propaganda, and not the actual primary sources for leftist tendencies, to the point where I’ll break down each sentence.

  1. Communism, principly, is a far-future status by which the whole of the productive forces can meaningfully provide whatever anyone wants at any time, and work is done for the pleasure of working, rather than for the necessity of being. As such, it must be built towards over a long period of Socialism, which is chiefly Worker Ownership of the Means of Production. Communism and Socialism are built on the idea of earning what you actually work for, rather than allowing individuals to own the products of other’s labor via ownership of the tools they use. You make the error of assuming immediate implementation of Communism, rather than gradual.
  2. We can partially agree on your second point, but given the actual structures proposed by various leftist tendencies, it doesn’t matter for this conversation, and you’ve yet to prove why.

Sorry for the wall of text! I truly think that you should talk to leftists, actually read some Marx, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Lenin, Luxembourg, and so forth, and actually get an idea of what the various leftist tendencies are actually saying. You don’t have to be a leftist, but you absolutely should understand leftism before attempting to disavow it entirely.

Cowbee,

How do you account for the vast amount of anti-CPC Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists, if this “influence from a hostile government” is so effective? Might it be simpler to see that Capitalism’s increasing failure has driven more people in developed countries towards radicalization, especially as generations are further removed from the Red Scare?

Cowbee,

The simple answer is that Communism does not in fact rely on everyone being perfect and unselfish. The complicated answer is telling you to go read Communist theory.

Why do you hold the belief that Communisn requires everyone be perfect and unselfish to function any more than Capitalism does? Can you describe the principle or structure that leads you to believe this?

Cowbee,

Lack of acceptance for what? Leftism is a group of ideologies, and not necessarily one built around tolerating that which they oppose out of a sense of moral superiority.

I was just asking for what you’ve seen that points to Communism working in theory and not in practice, because so far you’ve explained exactly none of that.

I’ve found a good start for your lack of understanding, though! You completely misinterpret the definition and conflate private property with all property, when it is specifically referring to tools and industry, ie the Means of Production. You absolutely own things in Communism, like your house, toys, games, books, etc. You just don’t own Private Property, like factories, restaurants, etc. The definition of Communism is a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society, and you make the error of pretending to know what exactly that entails by your own worst imagining of your own worst interpretation of said phrase.

Your next paragraph is also very enlightening, you assume Capitalist Mode of Production with Communist consequences! This is precisely what I’m getting at, you believe things like Companies would exist in Communism, when Communism itself is anti-market, and you’re again making the assumption that we can just turn on the big red Communism button and get there, when it must be built over a long period of time, with structures such as worker councils.

Your question about bullshit jobs has numerous solutions, actually. First of all, you’re assuming Communism in modern society, rather than the future, after lots of automation. Socialism would have monetary rewards, even lower stage Communism as well, for performing this labor. Eventually, it would be like your current life. Who cleans your house? You and your roommates, whether that be your friends, or family. In a Communist society, likely everyone would take turns, for whatever bullshit jobs haven’t already been automated away. In lower stages, they would be paid more money until this becomes possible.

Your points on the USSR and China are also wrong. In the USSR, wealth inequality was magnitudes lower than it is in their current oligarchic hellscape, and the Workers actually had a lot of say over how their life went, assuming they didn’t criticize the Politburo. This was referred to as Soviet Democracy, by which worker councils called Soviets decided things democratically at the local level.

No, I wouldn’t live in the USSR or modern day China, because they are developing countries with authoritarian leadership. However, you’ll find that is true across the board for developing countries. Perhaps if the USSR or China ever fully developed and became more democratically accountable, I would choose to live there, but for now you’ll find that quality of life follows development more than structure.

Both Maoist China and the USSR had far less wealth inequality than they have today, both doubled life expectancy, and the USSR had close to 0 homelessness with fully free education and Healthcare. They also lacked luxury goods and had an Authoritarian party controlling the state, but you’re demonstrably wrong about wealth inequality.

I am not a tankie or a supporter of the ML form of Socialism, if it needs to be restated.

If I point to Hitler’s Germany, Pinochet’s Chile, and Batista’s Cuba, does that mean that Capitalism is great in theory and doesn’t actually work in reality because it results in Authoritarianism? The answer is that you must state the why and how this came to be, so as not to repeat it.

Do you genuinely think the USSR and China are the only forms of Socialism that could ever exist?

Please, just read some leftist theory or watch some YouTube videos. All of your false preconceptions are easily debunked even by looking at historical records and doing some light critical thinking. I know you mean well, but you could genuinely have improvements in your understanding.

Cowbee,

Yes.

Cowbee,

Yep, I can’t make it myself either. I just shoot for it when I can.

Cowbee,

Protesting helps a little, that’s not what I’m referring to by a grassroots movement. You can’t really do much in the face of a bourgeois dictatorship via electoral means, the system itself is designed against radical change.

Cowbee,

Maybe if this was Reddit, but on Lemmy there are vast numbers of Communists and Socialists, not just Social Democrats who want Capitalism with band-aids. The founder is a Communist, and decentralization is core to leftist ideologies.

Cowbee,

That’s certainly enough to form a hypothesis, but far, far from proof against it. There aren’t any “good” developing countries either.

Cowbee,

To liberals, unironically yes, lol.

Cowbee,

Did the tents come from famous US communists?

Cowbee,

Commodification of necessities has led to perhaps the worst of modern problems.

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