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the_wizard_of_0Z
AsklemmyWe have lost all sense of self preservation. Almost like we the gipity. Which came first the gipity or the ape? I swear chain smoking monkeys driving cars.
on paper it sounds legit, but eventually it comes down to who has control of it.
Speaking of USSR, there's going to be responsible person assigned for that place, whether it was collective farm or any manufacutring plant. And everyone who is in that place will have an personal interest in abusing that power. Ordinary workers took whatever they could find to home, it was known that if everything is owned by everyone, therefore it is also mine. I think shared ownership goes against human nature and to live in altruistic and self preserving society would mean to overcome it. When we think of ourselves part of humanity and not part group/nationality/political view or individual maybe we will be one step closer
How can you say this about industry, but not something already publicly owned, like police, fire departments or military? And yes, yes, I know how well some of those are run, BUT, would they be better under private control? Hell no. In fact, I'm pretty sure they'd be better without the corrupting influence private wealth has on our political system.
My answer is we as a species started doing division of labor and we decided that people who decide how things are run is it's own labor and should be run by that "kind" of person.
This is why.
https://deyachting.net/assets/uploads/de-yachting-440250124005720.webp
Its not, the people working to convince you that it is have an obvious interest in maintaining the status quo, and they're probably not gonna let things get better until and unless there's a gun to their head
You might find Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony interesting.
tl,dr: The ruling class and its institutions influence perception and values. Cultural norms become so ingrained that they become "common sense" and "what's natural".
It's not a crazy idea. It's the one true, undeniable, self-evident truth that has always been hidden by the greedy and the powerful, and all of the smoke and mirrors they possess.
Because the ruling class ideas are the ruling ideas, they control education, public spaces and media (and also the repression apparatus in case the former is insufficient). It's not about the sense of self preservation, we are not so different than ancient or medieval commoners who found questioning the divine rights of kings to own everything, a crazy idea.
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.
― Karl Marx
The people who currently own the means of production really really like having control over everything.
🤠 they sure do
Communism is when we all share a toothbrush
No seriously I had an old woman, good friend of our family, tell me that democratic socialists wanted to make illegals live with us in our houses that we paid for. Like that was their plan, they were going to force homeowners to house migrant families.
What the fuck have they been smoking in this country? That’s not how ANY of this works!
My grandfather actually had to share his own house with five other families in Bulgaria in the forties after the revolution.
If he had a house that could fit five families and was occupying it alone then good
My great grandpa had to give up all his slaves in Cuba after the Revolution 😢
Rich people don't want to give anything up.
Assholes don't want their out-group to have anything nice. Even if it means they suffer.
Many people don't know shit about fuck, and they're just trying to get through the week.
This is a nice sounding sentiment but in practice you get the same system anyway.
Who is the “public”? It might start with councils, co ops, group discussions, but eventually it always gets consolidated by the most cunning people, doesn’t matter the system, it’s a long standing historical cycle.
Democracy with peaceful transfer of power is new, America was always considered an experiment, and it seems like that it might be failing because the forces of accumulation, power, and control are too pathologically overwhelming.
The cycle always ends with bloody revolution, new government, the new government is usually an autocracy wrapped in a flag of something populist sounding, things get marginally better for people for a time then the accumulation cycle kicks in again because a new set of cunning people enter that can take action on a freshly born populace and around and around we go.
The only thing that has a prayer of keeping anything in check is a citizenry that stays aware, mistrusts whatever the government is, understands the cycle, and continuously fights for rights by making it a credible threat that the people WILL revolt unless the leaders do the right thing.
Modern day leaders have incredible tools available to passify and stupefy at scale, I’m not sure how this can be fought back against now.
Bottom line though is socialism, democracy, capitalism, communism, monarchy, despotism they are all just systems run by people. It’s up to people to hold people accountable no matter what you’re running. If people aren’t willing to keep fighting for justice and they stay complacent ALL systems trend towards corruption.
The flaw in your logic, is that you are arguing for a kind of essentialism in human beings. You say
The only thing that has a prayer of keeping anything in check is a citizenry that stays aware, mistrusts whatever the government is, understands the cycle, and continuously fights for rights by making it a credible threat that the people WILL revolt unless the leaders do the right thing.
As if these changes in society would not mark a radical difference in the composition and structure of society. You go on to speak to your skepticism that the mechanisms of control exerted over the masses will ever be overcome. And I admit, they are very scary and concerning. But there is no theory of change in what you are describing. The world is made of people, but the people you describe are still an abstraction. You aren't considering how the system that the capitalists are constructing is already changing people. you are assuming that the conditions that the ruling classes are imposing on the masses will work as expected to repress the masses. But their repression changes society. Changed society creates changed people. Changed people change society.
Despite 109 years (since the Balfour declaration) of coordination and action among the ruling class for the creation of a state to destabilize the middle east for resources, and a near global imperialist consensus for the creation and "right to exist" for Israel, support for them has never been lower.
In 2008 the global economy crashed. The culprits were widely known, the whole political and media apparatus justified the bail outs, while the people were against it. Deep recessions hit every sector. It took 4 years to manage a large but individualistic and disorganized protest movement against it. Since then, we have seen many more mass protest movements, George Floyd 2020, Pro Palestine student encampments, and now protests against ICE. Each iteration, more organized, more resilient. The DSA, a group of only about 6000 members from the 80's - 2010s, has now grown to 120k members, the largest socialist org in American history. Its worthy of criticism and is lacking in many crucial areas, for example the labor movement is significantly weaker than it was in the 30's. But in January, the ICE OUT strikes in Minneapolis was a bona fide general strike. It was brief, and doesn't compare to the general strikes of '32 - '34 where the city of Minneapolis was basically taken over by communist teamsters. But its significant and legitimate.
If people aren’t willing to keep fighting for justice and they stay complacent ALL systems trend towards corruption.
I mean this in the most gracious way possible, but this is a bit of a self report. People are willing to keep fighting for social justice, in larger numbers than we've seen in 100 years. Education and awareness is better and more coordinated, organization is better, politics are clearer. There are still major challenges, around race and gender especially, but 4th wave feminism has changed the discourse irreversibly, 2020 protests were the largest and most diverse protests ever, although fairly rational demands like "defund" are getting killed in the discourse, and trans people and gender theory are here to stay. There will be repression, but the more repression they cause, the more people organize against it.
The fact is, the system is not rational, and the people running it are running it based on their own class interests. Those interests are opposed to our interests. Capitalism is the most unstable system ever conceived. In a way, that is how it is able to spread and subsume, it destabilizes old structures and transforms them into racist, imperialist profit motive. But now it is destabilizing itself in its search for profit. The liberal period is over and we are entering a period of direct domination and resistance. As there is more and more to organize against, we will forge the social structures that create the future society.
This is a much better view of history than "the cunning will always rise up." We could use you in helping to ensure that doesn't happen. Democracy, real mass democracy, is the only defense we have. Don't sit on the sidelines and poo poo about doomed preconceptions, your perspectives could help the movement rather than carry water for the imperialists
Oh actually I think we are both in extreme agreement here. I agree there is a lot of progress and momentum by some people. This definitely is exciting to me.
We just need more and if the change does happen we need to make sure we have a way to keep a large population of people going after the change.
I haven’t been on the sidelines either, I’ve been protesting, donating, helping organize locally, it’s just so frustrating sometimes when I encounter so many people in daily life that are like “huh, what’s going on?” Or “I don’t care about politics.”
I want a system that keeps that sentiment to a minimum, I’m not giving up myself, I just want to make sure we build something that can solve the core problems in ways that haven’t been done yet.
Thanks for responding, reading your other comment, I can see there is likely a lot of agreement. I do tend to harp on "the way we define people in society" because I think it is fundamental to leftist theory of change. Education is prob the largest part of what I've worked on, when compared to other comrades I tend to be very pedagogical rather than political. Def the biggest challenge is getting people out of their heads and thinking critically, about themselves and their conditions, then taking that critical thought and turning it into critical action.
However I've def encountered lots of funny behavior from "leaders" of movements, some especially nasty cases in progressive groups, but even in good leftist groups there can be a very "my way is the right way" emphasis. Fortunately, its basically always possible to struggle for more and better democratic input from members. The way in which we go about it matters, and I've seen that wielded cynically as well, but if an org is truly democratic if people can speak up and share their experiences, it has a balancing, instructing effect on the discourse. And on the other side, bureaucracy is death.
I've also met lots of people who will walk up to us in a protest like "I totally support what you're doing" but if you ask them about their own politics they have a hard time describing it. But the fact that there is so much agreement that "the vibe is off" that it is moving people to action, putting hours lives into situations where we can act and learn. The people who are leaders today were baby leftists in 2020, each iteration we keep creating more and more engagement with socialism and social transformation. Its exciting, but the more these ideas move from idealism to, basically the only way we can protect the people we love and care about, the more there is to do.
Glad you're out here with us!
Ha thanks for the kind words, and I definitely have seen the types of “leaders” you describe. They exist in all systems and they are a cancer, really need to keep the group open to feedback and support the process and prevent loud voice consolidation.
Anyway nice to meet you internet stranger / friend :)
I'm so sick of this patronizing head-pat "everything else is just as bad, we tried" response.
The fact of the matter is that the easiest way to do this under our system is making companies employee owned.
I worked for one for several years, and yes it was subject to many of the same administrative issues as every other company, but every single employee earned stock every month that kept increasing in value. A guy who had worked there for about 30 years as a worker -not a manager- was retiring with a stock portfolio worth millions. They also had the normal crappy 401k and social security they could have earned anywhere else, but because it was employee owned, they had all that company stock too.
So we have shown it can work to have the workers own the means of production. Is convenient to present government ownership as the same thing so it can be easily criticized, but it isn't really.
How does that work for the next generation of employees, the ones that weren't there from the beginning? Doesn't it mean privatisation as people retire and sell off their shares? And doesn't it mean dilution of value for new employees as their shares represent an ever smaller portion of the company?
How do they approach those issues?
Hey employee owned companies I agree with. I agree with trying something new for sure, my main point isn’t to patronize it’s to highlight that we need a system that keeps everyone engaged and educated.
Elites will always try to tell people not to worry, to sell their shares to them, the trust them. This needs to be prevented and discouraged structurally and culturally.
Let’s try, it’s worth trying always, I’m not saying to give up, I’m saying the cycle will cause another revolution, what we do with that new chance is important to understand what is turning the wheel.
Because more than half of people don’t really understand what the means of production is in the first place.
I do think the terminology resulting from "German translated to English in the late 1800s" does not help.
It looks like the future is gonna be some people don't even know where babies come from..They lost the ability to know how to grow food. This is the new dark ages
In case anyone here doesn’t know, babies come from the butt.
A lot of current people don't know thanks to a lack of public education on the subject.
Not all is lost though. I recall seeing an interview with an American World War 2 veteran describing his understanding of how babies were made prior to getting married as "I recall thinking it had something to do with the belly button." So "we" have been there before.
We do to the extent you own stock.
What is a gipity?
"AI" shortened version of chat gipity 🤣
I highkenuinely thought it was an ancient species of ape that came before the monkeys you mentioned.
In Germany we say (schett) skibbidy. I kinda like it.
Bosses did a really great job convincing us otherwise
Equality gives a feeling of helplessness. There is no hope for a high status person with the knowledge and skills to solve the hard problems.
The more global warming and nuclear threats create uncertainty the more people feel the need to find somebody who resolves their problems. With their power and status symbols billionaires trigger the feeling that they are what we need to create a better world. If we distribute their power it feels like we destroy our only hope.
We could start resolving our problems by ourselves, right here, right now. With digital goods the means of production can be created from nothing. (But) Who dares to say how we should start?
Who's this "public" guy?
