Cowbee [he/they]

Actually, this town has more than enough room for the two of us

He/him or they/them, doesn’t matter too much

Marxist-Leninist ☭

Interested in Marxism-Leninism, but don’t know where to start? Check out my Read Theory, Darn it! introductory reading list!

  • 41 Posts
  • 17K Comments
Joined vor 2 Jahren
Cake day: 31. Dezember 2023
  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.ml•Average convo with liberals when Ukraine comes up
    21·
    vor 9 Stunden

    Blaming Yanukovych for the Maidan Massacre, a false flag committed by the Banderites now in control of Kiev, is exactly why you’re full of shit. The west orchestrated the coup and supported the Banderites for overthrowing Yanukovych, who chose the Russian loan over the IMF loan due to the IMF loan requiring austerity measures.

    The Donbass region is where Russians are indigenous. You’re trying to erase that through the guise of “international law,” and again, after being linked proof of ethnic cleansing, you ignore it all. Even when you’re linked pro-western sources, you plug your ears.

    The Banderites started the war by massacring civilians, committing ethnic cleansing, and cozying up to the west and NATO, breaking both Minsk agreements. Russia intervening after the Neo-Nazis in Kiev dramatically escalated their onslaught is the fault of the Banderites, not Russia and not the Donbass region.

    This is on top of you defending a self-reported fascist, and acting like you’re “dispelling propaganda” while uncritically maintaining that any source, western or not, that disagrees with the neo-Nazis in Kiev is “propaganda.” More sources? Must be “gish-galloping.” You have a thought-terminating orthodoxy to defend fascists and neo-Nazis.

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.ml•Is it when you govern from the capitol?
    2·
    vor 1 Tag

    I don’t understand why concentration onto a single capitalist or a small group should destabilize the system.

    A hunter gatherer tribe can live by itself. The world run by a capitalist could as well.

    You’re confusing the ability for non-capitalist systems to function without circulation of commodities as their basis with the ability for capitalism to do so. Capitalism functions by this, it’s how capital is valorized.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

    The single capitalist would still own the means of production.

    A “capitalist” system where you have a single person that owns everything is both structurally impossible (similar to anarcho-capitalism) and also not capitalism. You’ve gone beyond the relations of bourgeois and proletarians into a system owned by a single autocrat, which would immediately cease. Capital isn’t circulating, and it isn’t being valorized, and this one person could not possibly get everyone to go along with treating them as god-emperor.

    These kinds of hypotheticals will never come to pass, and thus it’s pointless to discuss beyond entertainment value.

    The capitalist could buy everything for a penny. But they don’t have to. They own everything and can pay workers the wages for the workers to survive. But then the capitalist sells the goods for them at the stores at the prices that reflect the effort to produce them if the capitalist wants efficency, or any other price depending on the goals.

    Market efficiency doesn’t exist here, there isn’t a market for labor. It’s one capitalist. Prices don’t come from thin-air, and the capitalist has no use for money because they own literally everything. Systems of accounting would not work here.

    Make it a hundred.

    A hundred competing mega-capitalists would still be close to collapse, but could feasibly exist. They would compete and actually be able to valorize their capital, the way capitalists exploit workers today.

    In which way? Wiki couldn’t help me.

    Simply imagining a society doesn’t mean it can actually exist. Anarcho-capitalism can’t exist because the state is what legitimizes property relations. Same with your example, both would fall apart into something new.

    Decay lets some people suffer. Coupled with wars and fascism the system can still be stable. There must be something in humans that makes them want to cooperate. Organized suffering people alone will disperse when the suffering is over.

    Humans naturally do cooperate, and we’ve seen workers organize to establish socialism. Further, fascism doesn’t really stabilize anything, and neither does war, it only temporarily buys time while accelerating revolutionary fervor.

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.ml•Is it when you govern from the capitol?
    3·
    vor 2 Tagen

    So socialism is only stable if the people, and especially those in power are happy.

    That’s true of any society, for the most part. Socialist countries do end up doing this much better than peer countries though. Also, in socialism, the working class is in power. Administrative positions exist, but they aren’t unaccountable or anything.

    Isn’t that the same concentration of power?

    Not at all. Collectivization of production and distribution into one democratically run system does naturally follow from the groundwork paved by late stage capitalism, yes, but this collectivization also brings with it democratization of power.

    Only in global communism. The charged workers don’t have to be the same as the producing workers.

    I don’t see how this relates to communism, moreover the working class as a whole is the class that produces and consumes. The company towns only worked somewhat because the commodities they produced were sold outside, making everything a company town wouldn’t work.

    I know. It could be futile to wait for the collapse.

    Still don’t see your point.

    There can be circulation. People earn wages and buy commodities. It’s like socialism, just people get less because the capitalist get’s more than everybody else.

    Not at all. Buying goods with money earned isn’t the same as circulation of capital. Capital transmogrifies from money to productive commodities to produced commodities back into money in a grand expanding circuit, but without such a system you no longer have capitalism, and prices collapse. This “mega-capitalist” would be overthrown instantly and socialism or barbarism would take its place.

    If all resources are available there is no need to sell abroad, or to buy fron there.

    There is for profit. You’re trying to create a weird utopian mega-capitalism that would, the instant it existed, collapse into socialism or barbarism.

    Why is that inevitable?

    A single person can’t actually own the entire economy. They would be ousted instantly. This is the same kind of utopian thinking that powers anarcho-capitalists.

    Why rely on it instead of building a ‘we’ on its own?

    We don’t, we rely on organizing. Capitalism’s decay speeds up that process.

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.ml•Is it when you govern from the capitol?
    4·
    vor 2 Tagen

    Top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is self actualization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow’s_hierarchy_of_needs

    Per wikipedia the link you gave: Although widely used and researched, the hierarchy of needs has been criticized for its lack of conclusive supporting evidence and its validity remains contested. There is no innate human desire for power, just improving our lives. Power doesn’t foster a thirst for power.

    How should they settle wages?

    In a socialist economy, public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy. Wages are more strongly controlled via the administration, but until we get to a point where we can distribute according to need, we will distribute according to work, including variance for skill, danger, and intensity. See how socialist countries already settle wages.

    UBI in a democracy could be possible.

    Democracy and capitalism are incompatible. Any social reforms gained by the working classes in the context of an economy dominated by capitalists will inevitably be limited in factor to how the capitalists wish. Democracy is only compatible with socialism and communism, for the most part.

    That’s a definition thing. They still have to trade and network.

    They don’t even need to do that, they pay people to do this. No value is created via ownership.

    Which means the worker could be paid their full value while the profit comes from the buyer.

    Workers are the buyers, except for luxury goods which are targeting capitalists, as well as industrial equipment, etc. Workers cannot be paid the full value of their labor and still have the capitalists profit. Your argument is that you can pay people more and charge more, but this is self-defeating again. Value isn’t created by ownership, nor by charging monopoly prices.

    If it does, the owners can still remain in power and continue the processes without external valorization.

    This doesn’t follow from capitalism being contradictory and unsustainable in the long run.

    Give some people a nice distinctive hat and there is one.

    Administration is not a distinct class, you’re trying to conjure an economy with no circulation of capital yet where everyone will accept the ruler. This is just anarcho-capitalism with extra steps, in that it would collapse immediately.

    Why is the context important if one owns everything?

    Because capitalists over company towns essentially had semi-slave labor while selling their commodities abroad, to better paid workers and other capitalists, as well as purchasing goods from outside of the company town. Company towns weren’t selling purely to their own workers.

    Do the owners care if their control is not called capitalism anymore? Whatever it is, it doesn’t have to collapse.

    It has to collapse if it is to remain capitalism, because the idea of a system where a single mega-capitalist owns everything in a closed system is one that has no opportunity for profit or gain, and so would immediately collapse into a socialist revolution.

    Unless it is reset by war. Capitalists know how to keep workers occupied. There will never be so much pressure that the workers organize. To change things, workers must want it without suffering.

    Workers have already successfully established socialism for billions of people, and as capitalism decays the suffering comes with it. Imperialism is collapsing and the rate of profit is falling.