I will never downvote you, but I will fight you

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: April 24th, 2024

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  • So has anybody considered like trying to get a job at ice, but never doing the job just eating up as much time as possible? Just like showing up and asking a lot of questions, telling stories, etc., and then if you do get hired you just continue to take up as much time and energy as possible? I think if you could organize a bunch of people to do it, or just one at first, you could probably learn a lot. Like they’re desperate for people to hire, there’s gotta be a way to further mess with that



  • Okay fair. But what is meant is that leases, debt, market forces are justifications for class domination.

    Remember that all financial activity begins and ends with the banking system. New money is created by banks, it circulates throughout the economic system, and then returns to the banks in greater amounts via interest and exploitation. This all supports a system that ensures a wealthy few have domination over the precarious existence of poor and middle class workers.

    Small capitalists are especially vulnerable to these pressures. When you own a business to take a lease on a building then the price they pay is determined by the market. But market prices are driven by political and private interests. The commercial real estate market has been described as a “zombie” for over a decade. Supply is tightly controlled so that owners can return a profit on their profit year over year. This has created unsustainable circumstances, a bubble that could pop if a movement came along to seize it.

    Power over the workers is the only thing that the system offers small capitalists, who are as beholden to large capitalists as the rest of us. But for us we get mad at our boss or manager, who is more like an overseer of wage slaves than a plantation owner. Coming back to work means people have to go buy new business attire, we spend more on gas, we put more wear on our vehicles, we get less free time to improve our lives or sustain a work/life balance. And for what? People are more productive when we work from home, we make more money for our companies, we are happier and more effective. What does keeping us poor and stressed and tired do to sustain a rational system of labor, even exploited labor?

    But the system isn’t rational. And if it isn’t just about profit and productivity than what is it about?

    As leftists have been saying for at least two centuries, it is about the power of one class of owning capitalists over all others.

    Its like saying that an automobile drives with its wheels. In a very minor way it is true, but it is a complex machine operated by many essential systems. When we look at the car its important to inspect where the rubber meets the road, and understand the component systems, but to understand it we need to look at how all the seemingly disparate systems operate together, as well as who is driving it and where they intend to go with it.

    Return to work is a mandate that one billionth of the world’s population demands of .0075% of the worlds population, in order to control the remaining 99.9925%.




  • Sigourney and Gillian aren’t billionaire capitalists, they’re wealthy because they’re talented actresses. Their talent makes the owners of production companies lots of money, and they’re paid a fraction of it. But they still have to find someone to buy their labor. They had to audition to get jobs before they were big stars.

    TS’s dad bought a record label and signed her to it.

    Class analysis can be tricky, especially the entertainment industry, but it isnt always about being rich or not. The surest way to tell is “what is the relationship to production?” Tay is a billionaire because she helped ticketmaster and Live Nation create a monopoly, she’s a parasite. Without Gillian and Sigourney, the movies and shows they worked in wouldn’t be as good.



  • Sending that much money to a two year old doesn’t make sense. They literally have no concept of money or social responsibility. Why send money when the kid clearly needs a Dr.

    /s

    Charity from billionaires always looks so fake. Just send it anonymously. Otherwise its just a publicity stunt.

    If her entire fortune was $100000 she would have given $6.25. A handful of pocket change and a fiver. Yet I don’t get articles by the independent written about me when I give an unhoused veteran a $20

    I’m glad that someone in her position did less than the absolute bare minimum to help that child’s family. What a moving gesture.





  • The 3.5% theory is extremely questionable. The first paragraph of this article is problematic if you know like 3 things about Philippine politics.

    I’ve dug deeper into the data and it is very opinionated how it defines “success” and violence/nonviolence.

    I’m not a pro-violence guy, i defend liberation struggles, buv work to create educational/political/cultural revolution. Also the 3.5% mobilized population would be rad AF in USAmerica.

    I haven’t read the whole book the study is based on, though I was working on it for a while. But IMO it misrepresents historical fact to make a nice-sounding abstraction, and I’m not sure how people will react to its failure, which would be based on a faulty premise.

    We need to be more focused on what we will do with the power that will come from mobilizing like 12 million Americans rather than hoping some members of the political class notice and decide to fix things. The actual problem is that power is kept out of the hands of workers. The thought of building that power and giving it away would be a catastrophic blow to our movements.

    The political system is empowered to fix problems, but not equipped. As far as I can tell, the only people who have ever created or fixed a goddamn thing in all of history have been workers.


  • Juice@midwest.socialtoMemes@lemmy.mlLemmy libs: "But stalin baddd mkayyy"
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    20 days ago

    Well you see, I watched half of the yellow lecture and now good thing bad and bad thing good! Its Dialectical Materialism!

    Neo-Stalinism is a meme ideology that produces radical liberal bureaucrats, not revolutionaries.

    But principled MLs and Maoists are much better at decolonial struggles and centralization than most of the left. And they tend to be much better educated on history and theory than the based Stalinists, and certainly most ambient liberals.

    The trick is to learn to tell the difference between aspirational leftists and real ones. The real movement, you can disagree but you have to prove yourself in action because in political struggle the stakes are real. And to be effective we have to work together in evaluating and acting on what is objectively real. But in the real movement, people come from all different backgrounds, and live in all different environments that affects the way they look at social problems.

    The people you’re arguing with don’t understand that the most loyal supporters that Stalin enabled in those early days after the revolution, were later executed/purged on trumped (heh) up charges of anarchism and Trotskyism. They have memorized a few apologetics for why its good actually, or never really happened. Its because they want to be actual practical organizers, but they’re still idealists who think repeating certain phrases legitimizes them. The older ML and Maoist organizers know this too, and try to educate where they can but any movement can become sectarian and self referential.

    Don’t take the bait, the history is deeply contradictory no one really understands how easily it breaks people’s brains. Its better not to worry and focus on doing something real


  • Do you believe private property is a fundamental human right? If yes, Do you believe that people who own or run businesses should be able to pay a living wage?

    Do you have a theory of political change? What is it?

    Are you familiar with theories of imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism? Are you pro-reparations?

    Do you believe economic degrowth is necessary to avoid climate change?

    Are you opposed to the genocide in Palestine? Do you support a one or two state solution?

    Are you a British Green or an American Green?

    I worry that by asking these questions directly it might affect any answers but these are “further left” than your stances.

    Based on what you shared I’d say you’re a “progressive liberal”, which is a right-leaning moderate position. But that’s where a lot of revolutionary leftists, including myself, started out.

    What really matters to me when relating to progressive liberals is: If you’re willing to educate yourself, and getting involved in a political party like you’re doing could help.
    if your positions are based on a real spiritual progressivism, or if someone acts fundamentally reformist/opportunist.