Stirner’s coming for your toothbrush bois
This isn’t really a meme
And now infographics are memes… Shitposts has more memes than this community.
No, you see, you have to upvote it because communism is great
🤢
I’m about to leave Lemmy too because the main thing that shows up is /c/memes and half the time the posts aren’t memes and when they are they’re just reposts from 10 years ago.
Why not just block the meme channel?
Why keep browsing all at all if you’re so picky.
For me its because it’s the default and I like the memes. For the person I’m commenting to he probably doesn’t know how to configure it.
Look up some stats. More people that lived during the stable years miss it compared to the economic unrest they face now.
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This was never the case… And never even remotely worked out.
Reminder folks: better dead than red, shooting a communist is an act of mercy.
Exactly. Fuck these people. They are just as bad as Nazis.
A good system to level off achievement and remove all the incentives to be productive.
There’s a reason capitalism always wins.
You mean capitalism?
https://www.spring.org.uk/2023/01/intrinsic-motivation.php
Turns out people are actually more productive if you don’t force them to do it in order to live.
Good. Productivity killed the planet.
That is such a wrongheaded view of climate collapse I don’t even know where to start
A social media site with terrible takes on global issues… we truly have become Reddit 2.0 🥰
Bro dropped an L take and can’t even back it up smh
I disagree. It made life objectively better.
How’s about a website that generates money, like Facebook or YouTube? Can you own that?
What about products that designed to create ongoing streams of revenue, like a patent on an invention or a piece of art you can collect royalties from every time it is displayed? The USSR famously took ownership of Tetris away from its creator.
Under communism, how does the stock market work? I’m not a big fan of it, but it’s pretty hard to imagine getting rid of it now that the global economy is pretty much dependent on it.
Today, five countries exist that can be said to be communist: China, Russia, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba. Of those five, none have achieved actual communism, and several have inarguably embraced capitalism to a great extent. All of them have essentially authoritarian governments. Which is unsurprising, since a dictatorship of the proletariat is central to the Marxist vision of how to create a communist society, and involves the creation of a single-party transitional government that forcibly suppresses all its critics and rivals.
I’m not big into capitalism and I think we should implement plenty of socialist reforms, but I will never understand why some people on the Left—or anyone for that matter—think communism is what we should be striving for.
“Today, five countries exist that can be said to be communist: China, Russia”
Tell me you have no idea what you are talking about without directly telling me you have no idea what you are talking about. In what way can today’s Russia “be said to be communist”, and how does its current, very explicitly anti-communist government, contribute to the point you are making?
You can replace Russia with North Korea if it suits you, I forgot to include that one. Yes, the USSR was communist, while modern day Russia much less so. Doesn’t change my point and doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Modern Russian is a capitalist oligarchy. Your entire position is based on ignorance of how the world functions.
You point out one quasi-mistake I made and all of a sudden my entire position is false and based on ignorance of how the world functions?
People like you are what make the internet a shitty place to be sometimes.
It’s not a quasi-mistake, it’s an error that betrays at best a bad case of brainworms and at worst a grievous misunderstanding of history that may well have happened in your lifetime.
Dude, what you just said is on the level of saying 2+2=5. Or, “like any forms of sandwich, bananas are sentient.” It was THAT level of incorrect and detached from reality.
The USSR famously took ownership of Tetris away from its creator.
He developed the game on company time. If he’d lived in a capitalist country, the government wouldn’t have taken control of Tetris, but the company would have. Every software company contract I’ve ever heard of has a clause that says the company owns any code you produce while working there.
I’ve worked at a handful of companies and am currently employed at one that do not do this.
Yes, but you choose to work for a company. Don’t pretend that’s the same as the government of the country you happen to be born in taking ownership of your creations. In a capitalist country, had Alexey Pajitnov chosen to develop the game himself, he would have made much more from it. If he had done that in the USSR, he’d still have his creation and all its monetary proceeds taken away from him.
Under capitalism your choice is to sell yourself or become destitute. That’s not really a choice, it’s just indirect coercion.
Not going to waste my time with someone who has such absolutist views untethered to reality.
Xoxo 💋
No you can’t own a platform like youtube or facebook, but you could make content on it, intellectul propriety is not a thing as you don’t have to produce art just to get a monetary return, but just because you enjoy doing so, there’s no need of a stock market in an ideal communist world because everyone gets what they need based on what they can provide, but if it’s just a country i guess it’s the government who takes care of it.
Regarding those 5 countries i’m not sure of every one of them, but talking about China as you said it’s not a communist country but it is not a dictatorship of the proletarian either, as it’s not the proletarian class nor their democratically elected representatives who govern the country.
In the end i’ll add that greed is not more “human nature” that wishing to kill someone annoying.
We didn’t own Reddit’s platform, but we made content and engagement for that community anyway.
That worked out awesome. Let’s scale it up to an entire society.
I really can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic. I think so, but Poe’s Law
Yeah, fair. I mean, I’m engaging in the community here, rather than there, so I thought the context clarified my sarcasm.
Give me an example of a communist country that has not resulted in the creation of an authoritarian government.
You’re not wrong, but also give me an example of ANY country that doesn’t resort to authoritarianism when the government is threatened by a plurality of citizens.
…any democracy? Different governments get voted out of power constantly. A lot of countries elections are almost 50/50
I would say you’re arguing from ignorance then. The civil war in America happened because slavers didn’t like the outcome of an election.
They asked for an example of ANY country that doesn’t resort to authoritarianism when the government is threatened by a plurality of citizens. You can choose any currently functioning democracy after a tight election.
The question becomes then, are those stable democracies threatened? I would argue no, that you’re using irrelevant examples to prove your position.
American capitalism was threatened to an extent by Bernie’s campaign and a contemporary cnn headline compared his “rise” to that of Hitler. So you tell me. Do they get defensive when actual leftist principles are on the line. Looks to me that it is the case.
There are plenty of governments out there that aren’t authoritarian. What do you mean when you say “the government is threatened by a plurality of citizens?” What is the nature of the threat in question? A democratically-elected government that puts down an armed rebellion from part of its populace doesn’t magically become authoritarian simply because it used forced to maintain its existence in response to a domestic threat.
Give me an example of any single communist country with an authoritarian government
And note that what I just asked for is like asking for a sandwich without bread
Capitalism is an authoritarian, both liberal and conservative wants capitalism, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. You don’t have choices.
If it makes money (or some equivalent) then you can’t own it. Parents aren’t necessarily, if you’re supported so that you can invent for the betterment of society or for fun.
Dictatorship of the proletariat is supposed to be a temporary phase, but it is a fundamental weak point in the transition to communism that I think cannot be overcome, because once people get that power, they won’t be able to give it up (or they’ll be removed by people who don’t want to give it up).
So I consider communism sort of an unattainable ideal that we should strive towards rather than actually considering implementing irl.
Stock market? The thing where you buy tiny fractional ownership of of a company, too small to influence it, then try to sell that legal construct for a little more to someone else later? Why would you need that at all?
As I said, not a fan of it, but the global economy is pretty entrenched in it. Can’t just get rid of it cold turkey style.
Those websites are highly capitalistic and never brought any innovation, all technologies related to the internet were researched by public money.
Look into patent trolls. Patents are bad, publicly funded research is always better, but it doesn’t prevent people from spending money to do research, but it doesn’t entitle them for the profits.
I’m not advocating FOR communism, I’m just trying to dispel myths.
Socialism is soluble with capitalism.
Never brought any innovation? VP9, AV1, zstd, GraphQL, React, and many more were made/contributed to by Google/Facebook specifically to improve those services. We benefit from this as they release these programs/formats.
Programs and format are not research. Nothing new was invented, they’re just alternative to existing things.
think communism is what we should be striving for.
Simple - it’s the ideal. Will we ever get there? Possibly not. Is it even desirable? Debatable. But it’s always better to know where to go and not know how to get there than having the option of going anywhere and not knowing where to go.
Simple - it’s the ideal.
Not in my view. I don’t want the State owning all sources of wealth and material goods. The problem with capitalism is that too much of that stuff gets funneled into too few hands. Communism is the same problem, just different people. No thanks.
I don’t want the State owning all sources of wealth and material goods.
Good news - neither do communists! In fact communists want NO state :D
How is this different from socialism?
Socialism is the stage previous to communism when there’s a State in which the proletariat is in power, the purpose of the State is to use its repressive forces by one class over the other to oppress them and keep them in place, capitalism (also called the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie) has the bourgeois as its ruling class and oppresses the proletariat, socialism (also called the dictatorship of the proletariat) utilizes the State to oppress the bourgeoisie until global socialism is achieved, on that point on class society is abolished and the State is dissolved. This late stage is what we call communism.
Workers owning the means of production is socialism yes.
It’s not, never once has communism worked, not has socialism ever worked. They all end up being dictatorships and the same capitalist problems for the others. Only difference is there is barely any social climb in a dictatorship except at the beginning.
Hey I am all for socialism, most functioning nations have some high level of socialism in play. The issue here is a full blown case of black and white ism.
Nationalized healthcare, Nationalized oil and gas, Nationalized education, Nationalized utilities, Nationalized violence. All in place in most civilized places. Someone owning a farm is not the issue, its someone owning the place that buys the grain and controls the price.
Claiming socialism had “barely any social climb except at the beginning” unlike capitalism is not something that you can do while maintaining any shred of honesty. The reality is objectively the complete opposite. While there are plenty of valid criticisms of the USSR, access to education was not segregated by wealth, top universities were open to all who knew their shit, and throughout its entire history party leaders tended to come from humble backgrounds.
Now, compare the above with the USA.
Access to education is not segregated by wealth either. Coming from a blue collar family I’m able to go to a very prestigious and expensive university because I’m smart and recieved plenty of academic scholarships and support I sought out. If you can’t get the majority of your college paid for through scholarships you are doing something wrong. Plenty of great, and rich Americans come from humble backgrounds, this point is is applicable to any society. From a cursory search, the only party member that actually had the grass roots humble beginning was Gorbachev, all the others had significant connections from others in the party that propelled them into power.
Y’all should move to Cuba
Food is rationned, meaning everybody has food, and healthcare is great.
You just described healthcare system in soviet union. Instead of money vodka was used, as money was worthless, and there were no foods in grocery stores. Doctors were drunk and barley came to work. Communism just makes everything even more worse than it already is. There so many horror stories you don’t hear.
it was totalitarian, nobody wants a totalitarian state. communism and totalitarianism are different things
why don’t you quote the homeless people in the US and the drug problems of philadelphia, the capitalism of south africa, and saudi arabia?
we disagree, it’s okay.
L take, communism and socialism don’t work and never will. There’s a reason every communist or socialist country has failed or fallen back into capitalism for the masses and authoritarianism for the top.
And the reason is the US coup’ed every single one of those experiments.
“During the years of Stalin’s reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women’s rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that “socialism doesn’t work” is to overlook the fact that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.” Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
read a book you moronic dipshit, specifically this one ,[https://valleysunderground.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/blackshirts-and-reds-by-michael-parenti.pdf] , look it’s even free, you have 0 excuses to not educate yourself, you’re welcome
Where did you get this definition? Look up communism in any standard dictionary or encyclopedia and you will see that it entails the removal of private property.
Edit: ugh, y’all got me arguing about communism again. I need to go outside.
But that’s exactly what this meme is saying
Lol telling people to go look up the definitions without yourself knowing the definition is giving Facebook.
Fine.
Google, define communism:
a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.
Britannica:
communism, political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production (e.g., mines, mills, and factories) and the natural resources of a society.
a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state
Merriam-Webster:
a: a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed
b: a theory advocating elimination of private property
Oxford English Dictionary:
A theory that advocates the abolition of private ownership, all property being vested in the community…
Remember that it is unnecessary to cite sources when dealing with common knowledge.
The person you replied to is also incorrectly representing his side, but basically you need to also understand what ‘private property’ is refering to.
The vast majority of communists define it as it’s represented in the original meme since they approach communism as an economic strategy and not a social one. Private property as defined by captialist governments only refers to the things listed above like farm, office building, ie. anything that generates capital.
All other communists who don’t agree on this definition of private property are also disagreeing with Marx himself as this is his set standard.
Private property is the capital, the actual means of production. Personal property is your stuff.
That’s only true within the sphere of Marxist ideology and is not a widely-held distinction made by the rest of society. i.e., actual current law wherein:
Private property refers to the ownership of property by private parties - essentially anyone or anything other than the government. Private property may consist of real estate, buildings, objects, intellectual property (copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secrets). The transfer of a private property commonly takes place by the owner’s consent or through a sale or as a gift.
Outside of Marxist ideology, and in actual practice, individuals are one class of private entity, making personal property a type of private property. The average person can not be expected to fully understand the nuances of how Marxism alters these definitions, nor accept them in practicality.
The post is about communism. I’m not sure why you would ask about where the definition came from if you already know how communists view property.
How do new means of production come to be? Like, if a community really wanted a unicycle repair shop, how would that get started? How would it be decided that we use resources for that shop instead of, say, a pogo stick repair shop? Would that be up to a local government (or some other governing body)? Honest question.
My country used to have communism. Niche shops like this barely ever started as small businesses and instead usually started out as specialized departments of large all-encompassing state corporations. Instead of there being a company that specialized in making furniture, the furniture would be made by the logging company. The company that ran a chemical plant would directly sell shampoos, paints, toothpaste, fertillizer, etc. It cut out middle men but the products were usually crap quality because it couldn’t focus on each product individually. This stifled progress. My dad wanted to learn programming (this was the late 80s) but because the government was too oldschool to open a computer science degree programme, the only way to get near a computer was to go to a university that specialized in mining and take a programme in mining machine automation.
Honest question, at what point does a workshop transition from ownable to not?
A small garage shop with a workbench and a tool wall is obvious enough, but can you own a separate workshop outside your home? Can it be far down the street, or out in a barn somewhere, or in the outskirts of town among large factories? Can you own a lathe? Can you own a CNC machine?
What tools are ownable and what tools are not? What’s the scale-cutoff?
Bandsaws, drill presses, welders, large trucks, small trucks, cranes, sheet metal cutters and benders, pipe benders, etc.
Can you buy material? How much? Should it be limited by something else than your funds?
If you take on jobs that are too much for you to handle on your own, do you have to either make your means of small scale production communal, or give up the job?
Please draw some lines for me here.
The line? When you start selling things to people en mass. One or two custom things you sell occasionally? Workshop. Start setting up production lines and hiring people? Now it’s for the people
