Cowbee
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml
- Comment on Happy Labor Day! 3 days ago:
Look to what Engels did. There are plenty of class traitors throughout history.
- Comment on Happy Labor Day! 3 days ago:
I’m aware of Graeber’s work. I don’t really agree with much of his conclusions or analysis, as he is an anarchist and I’m a Marxist-Leninist, but we would agree that much of office work is indeed socially unproductive, if we were to pivot to a socialist economy. That being said, we exist in capitalism, and thus office workers are working class, regardless of how necessary the work they do is beyond helping generate profit.
- Comment on Happy Labor Day! 3 days ago:
That doesn’t make the people filling those roles not working class, in fact it highlights how disposable the working class is to the capitalist class, and further reinforces my point: capitalists are the enemy.
- Comment on Happy Labor Day! 3 days ago:
Office jobs are still jobs. If a business genuinely was wasting vast amounts of money on fake work, then these jobs would be eliminated already. They are gradually being automated away, same as physical labor, but they still exist because they are still important for production.
The target of your ire should not be this or that subsection of the working class, but instead the capitalist class.
- Comment on How are you going to never forget 9/11 this year? What are you never forgetful for? 4 days ago:
I’ll never forget the lies about WMD to justify killing 1 million Iraqis in an imperialist conquest of oil.
- Comment on Curious! 1 week ago:
If you consider yourself a socialist, then get organized! It’s a very fulfilling task, and most orgs have secondary memberships that don’t have the same time and monetary requirements. Also, you get to meet cool comrades!
- Comment on perhaps 1 week ago:
Getting organized is always a useful and valuable thing to do!
- Comment on *Eyeroll* 1 week ago:
And destroyed Libya for many of the same reasons the US is attacking Iran.
- Comment on Can't believe its been 2 weeks 2 weeks ago:
No? Marxists generally believe socialism can and does exist, and has existed thus far. The minority of Marxists believe it hasn’t.
- Comment on Can't believe its been 2 weeks 2 weeks ago:
No?
- Comment on Can't believe its been 2 weeks 3 weeks ago:
I don’t see what you mean. The means of production and who own them are both political and economic inherently.
- Comment on Can't believe its been 2 weeks 3 weeks ago:
You too!
- Comment on Can't believe its been 2 weeks 3 weeks ago:
Decent, busy.
- Comment on Can't believe its been 2 weeks 3 weeks ago:
I mean the means of production and distribution.
- Comment on Can't believe its been 2 weeks 3 weeks ago:
No? Private ownership began to dominate society after feudalism. Turtles aren’t compelling others to labor for them through capital ownership.
- Comment on Can't believe its been 2 weeks 3 weeks ago:
Capitalism as a mode of production is only a few hundred years old. It’s essentially a mode of production where private ownership is the principal aspect of the economy, and capital owners control the state. Before capitalism was feudalism, and before feudalism came slave societies, and before those came tribal communalism.
Human nature is incredibly malleable and depends most upon how we produce and distribute, how we live and how our environment shapes us.
- Comment on Can't believe its been 2 weeks 3 weeks ago:
The 100 million figure includes abortions and Nazis killed during World War II, so even that’s already horrendously off (not to mention the outright faked numbers).
- Comment on How to get attention around here. 4 weeks ago:
Sure, but before you get to communism there’s socialism, which has a worker state.
- Comment on Ladybugs 1 month ago:
I never mentioned South Africa, but either way I was simply extending the argument against the US to Canada itself. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable extension.
- Comment on Ladybugs 1 month ago:
I said:
To be fair, Canada is also a genocidal settler-colony and an active imperialist power.
I directly compared Canada to the US Empire, as a lesser imperial power and a similarly genocidal settler-colony. I think the fact that Canadians distrust the US Empire is a bit hypocritical, a progressive movement within Canada should also oppose the Canadian state.
I wasn’t really trying to “twist” what you were saying, more give you an alternate perspective. For all of the reasons you hate the US, you should also hate Canada. Both are bad, Canada just is lower on the imperial ladder.
- Comment on Ladybugs 1 month ago:
Imperialism is not “wages illegal wars,” imperialism is a process of wealth and resource extraction from the global south. Canada participates in this international system, headed by the US Empire, as a willing recipient of the spoils. Further, Canada is a member of NATO, which is a military coalition of imperialist countries designed to prevent backlash from the global south.
I assume you at least agree with the understanding that Canada is a genocidal settler-colony, and therefore should be abolished as a state alongside the US Empire, Israel, etc.
- Comment on Ladybugs 1 month ago:
Mild critique, there is no “American nation,” there are settler-colonists that do not form a nation, colonized indigenous groups, and semi-colonies of formerly enslaved peoples.
- Comment on Ladybugs 1 month ago:
To be fair, Canada is also a genocidal settler-colony and an active imperialist power.
- Comment on What's the difference between socialism and communism? Is there one? Or are the terms interchangeable? 2 months ago:
I hope it will, so who knows!
- Comment on What's the difference between socialism and communism? Is there one? Or are the terms interchangeable? 2 months ago:
I already answered this over on Late Stage Capitalism, so I’ll just copy and paste my response over here:
I’m sorry, but this just reveals that we aren’t on the same page when it comes to Marxism. Your primary error is with erasing all of the advances of historical materialism and scientific socialism from Marx, and returning it to the utopianism of pre-Marx socialists such as Robert Owen. Essentially, you are treating capitalism as “private property,” socialism as “public property,” and communism as “big socialism.” This is dogmatic, and erases that modes of production are NOT their finite parts, but instead are determined by which aspect of the economy is principal, ie dominant and rising, and which class controls the state.
When you say China is a “mix of capitalism and socialism,” this horrendously misrepresents what a mode of production actually is. In China, public ownership is the principal aspect of the economy. Huge state industry forms the backbone of the economy, and governs the large firms and key industries. This is because public ownership and planning is more effective at higher levels of development.
The private property that exists in China is relegated to small and medium industries, and highly competitive ones. This is because of the key development in Marxism advancing it beyond utopianism: the form of production suits the level of development of the productive forces. Rather than taking the Utopian path, which was to “model build” and create a system outright, Marx observed that capitalism came from feudalism with the rise in industrialization, and that markets themselves were centralizing, in other words socializing production while keeping profits private!
To return, your position that “the more communist you are, the more you dogmatically collectivize, regardless of level of development” is distinctly anti-Marxist, and moreover was already tried by China! Under the Gang of Four, there became a fetishization of equality in poverty. They were dogmatic in trying to collectivize as much as possible, with little regard for the level of development. Reform & Opening Up was a return to more classical interpretations of Marx, and thus saw a stablization and slight acceleration in development. This strategy and understanding is reflected in Cheng Enfu’s diagram, here:
When Marx and Engels wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party, their basic advice to any successful revolution is to nationalize the large firms and key industries, develop the productive forces as rapidly as possible, and gradually nationalize the rest of the economy as it develops. This reflects the exact path the PRC is charting, right now. This is why it’s important to read and understand theory, as if you became a leader of a new socialist country with your current understanding, you’d likely commit the same mistakes as the Gang of Four.
- Comment on What's the difference between socialism and communism? Is there one? Or are the terms interchangeable? 2 months ago:
I already said the concept of communism predates Marx. I am not redefining communism to Marxism. OP is asking about socialism and communism as they actually exist and are understood, and further “primitive communism” as described by Marx is misleading and instead is better described as “communalism.”
- Comment on What's the difference between socialism and communism? Is there one? Or are the terms interchangeable? 2 months ago:
“Religious communism” is not a thing, and early communalism exists in micro-pockets. Neither is the same as what is understood as communism, the theoretical mode of production that predates Marxism.
- Comment on What's the difference between socialism and communism? Is there one? Or are the terms interchangeable? 2 months ago:
Not a single one of the ideologies listed on that page has successfully established socialism except for the derivatives of Marxism-Leninism, such as Juche. The closest is Zapatismo, but Zapatismo does not consider itself communist, nor socialist, nor anarchist, and instead is a primarily indigenous ideology related to the Chiapas region.
- Comment on What's the difference between socialism and communism? Is there one? Or are the terms interchangeable? 2 months ago:
The fact of the matter is that Marxism-Leninism is what communism means for 99.9% of historical practice. Someone trying to describe sharing as “communism” when OP is talking about actual modes of production and distribution is missing the forest for the trees. Marx didn’t define communism, he created an ideology that better understands how to actually achieve it and why it is historically compelled, what gives him validity is that the only socialism that has actually existed at scale in real life has come from Marxism-Leninism.
- Comment on What's the difference between socialism and communism? Is there one? Or are the terms interchangeable? 2 months ago:
Socialism is a mode of production and distribution where the working classes control the state, and public ownership is the principal (rising and dominant) aspect of the economy. Communism is a post-socialist mode of production and distribution where the entire economy is collectivized and planned, and there is no longer a state, class, or money. See Cheng Enfu’s diagram:
