yes I agree the reaction was wildly disproportionate to the original stimulus
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yes I agree the reaction was wildly disproportionate to the original stimulus
Well, I'm taking it into my own hands to kill this conversation dead, lest it consume us all, through the powerful magic of COMPLETE DIGRESSION.
SO! IT'S DECEMBER! And in my addled mind, that means it's Christmas right on up to the 25th. So let's talk about Socialist Christmas Songs. I'll start us off.
If you want to go for silly, here's one about a labor dispute between Santa and his elves:
If you want to go for somber, here's one from Jethro Tull about Christmas celebrations in the face of crushing poverty:
SO! IT'S DECEMBER! And in my addled mind, that means it's Christmas right on up to the 25th. So let's talk about Socialist Christmas Songs. I'll start us off.
If you want to go for silly, here's one about a labor dispute between Santa and his elves:
If you want to go for somber, here's one from Jethro Tull about Christmas celebrations in the face of crushing poverty:
What's the socialist view on earning a living by starting your own business? It's something I've been thinking about for a while, because I don't think being a wage slave is a much better alternative, right? Let's say it's just you, there aren't any staff so there's no exploiting workers. What would one preferably offer? Physical products or intangible services?
I'm inclined to think offering services would be preferable to physical products, because that way there isn't any (or at least considerably less) exploitation, right? Let's use a self-employed accountant as a simple example offering their services to smaller business. Does that person make themselves an accomplice to exploitation? My gut says no, because with physical products, there's always some levels of exploitation happening, whether it's in the factory, transportation, or wholesale. Except if you make the products yourself out of your own labor, but that's a different story.
Is my logic sound in this? What do you think?
I'm inclined to think offering services would be preferable to physical products, because that way there isn't any (or at least considerably less) exploitation, right? Let's use a self-employed accountant as a simple example offering their services to smaller business. Does that person make themselves an accomplice to exploitation? My gut says no, because with physical products, there's always some levels of exploitation happening, whether it's in the factory, transportation, or wholesale. Except if you make the products yourself out of your own labor, but that's a different story.
Is my logic sound in this? What do you think?
If I started a company I would be inclined to make a democratic co-op of some sort where everyone has a say on things like wages, how profits are used etc. No one would be above the groups consensus decision making.
Obviously roles would be delegated and not every operational decisions has to be taken by the group but regular staff meetings to discuss and jointly decide important things, e.g. who to hire.
Obviously roles would be delegated and not every operational decisions has to be taken by the group but regular staff meetings to discuss and jointly decide important things, e.g. who to hire.
The main thing that for sure needs to go is the concepts of investing and renting and employees not having any ownership of their work.
The profit motive has it's flaws too even in a co-op driven economy but personally I have a hard time envisioning a world without that which isn't just driven by cronyism. Maybe I just need to learn more, but I bet it wouldn't be obvious until we unwind from capitalism more and see what happens.
I wish the Dead Cells dev team were around me somehow. I have a degree in CS and no job lol.
If the workers own the workplace and business decisions are made in a democratic way, you don't need unions.
Well, not necessarily. You just wouldn't need unions to settle workplace disputes. Unions would still probably be useful as inter-workplace means of solidarity and organization. This distinction becomes less important in a world where every business is co-op, but in a world where that isn't the case and we're still in the phase of coalition-building, there could still be significant uses for unions.
Unions are also good for tenants. Non-labor unions need more attention.
In a democratic worker owned workplace you don't have that union vs. management divide, if you have a union, everyone would be a union member. You need to have democratic dispute resolution mechanisms, but that's not terribly hard to do, and they generally work better than the adversarial labor v. management system you have in a capital owned workplace.
I should add that this is all in a Utopian theoretical world. In the real world you want to connect with the national (and ideally international) labor movement, and doing it by forming a union just makes practical sense. But I don't expect workplace dispute to be solved by classic union labor actions. I think you have better tools than that in a truly democratic workplace.
You presume landlords...
rules clarification request: is a mao joke here okay or is it advocating mass murder?
Actually, here's the magic-- tenant unions continue to exist even beyond their opposing force in the landlord. A tenant's union allows for democratic and distributed methods of responding to changes in the lived environment, and a group can come together to hire an on-call general maintenance man for the building (who can also delegate to subcontractors). Effectively, the mechanism of the tenant's union replaces landlords entirely by more efficiently performing the good parts of their function at a lower cost to the tenant.
And who says only capitalists are good at obsoleting their competition!
Aren't you describing a housing co-op?
Edit: to be clear, I think housing co-ops can be great (it depends on how they set them up), I'm just talking about terminology here.
...I mean, shit, I might be, but I've only heard of this described as tenants' unions.
Having worked as a union
organizer I cannot imagine union action without antagonism or at least agonism with management... in a coop a union doesn't make sense.
organizer I cannot imagine union action without antagonism or at least agonism with management... in a coop a union doesn't make sense.
Speaking about next steps, we're kinda coming up close on the brink of rich capitalists and conservative republicans realizing how real the threat is to their place in society going away forever if they don't do something drastic, such as various forms of lockouts from the rich capitalists, and republicans taking a hammer to our democracy with even more fervor.
How we weather that is kinda the most immediate concern, assuming it's a given that Bernie and the squad is just the start of opinions changing.
How we weather that is kinda the most immediate concern, assuming it's a given that Bernie and the squad is just the start of opinions changing.
But what if you're self-employed without a staff, offering your services to other smaller business? Basically what I was wondering was how to reconcile socialist thought and the concept of making a profit. Would such a thing be allowed if there's no exploitation of workers? Are there any other forms of exploitation to take into account?
Same as above, I was wondering how starting your own business, making profit, and being self-employed without staff, how all of that would be under socialism?
More specifically, what is the ethical and socialist way to go about starting a business? Obviously selling toys you import dirt cheap from China or other low-wage countries isn't a good thing, since a lot of labor exploitation go into them, but what about intangible goods and services? I mean, it does have surplus value which is frowned upon, but is it also related to services? Or just physical labor?
I mean we are constrained by the capitalist system we are in. Everyone understands that if you are self employed you still need to put food on the table and a roof over your head. Imho making profit is fine, especially if you use your privilege to help work towards a better future, e.g. activism, donation, etc..
That said you also have the freedom to chose the most ethical suppliers for whatever it is you have in mind. You have the choice of turning down customers that you don't feel comfortable with. etc.
this reminds 2 events that happened recently in brazil, 1 old man reading marx during a football match, was removed from the stadium by the fascists supporters of the president. And a black college woman was beaten by the police after they found a marxist theory book in her bag, calling her a terrorist, etc. The Black shirts are alive and well in brazil.
changing subject zizek talked in the michael brooks show
I'm not sure that a Disney corporate mascot who was focused grouped to sell toys at a 1000% markup is gonna love what they read there.
Would have been more accurate if Biden was riding his bike backwards. Poor man is growing more senile by the day.
Present company excluded of course :) I'm just talking about etc in general.
Some of them. But his cognitive backslide IS, uh... getting more apparent.
To be fair he was born after a great upheaval of the Empire falling. (2008 crash)
He's probably disillusioned with his current system.
I actually see a path for Bernie moving forward into February. It's predicated on Biden doing maybe a few more finger-bites in public, and Pete tanking too... but it's a possibility.
The only two who can change this fate are Warren or Bernie.
Pete has no minority support and is a snake.
Believe me, none of us here are pro-Pete. But if Leftist Twitter really is as much of a threat as the former Kamala campaign advisors say they are, hopefully the constant spam of Pete's goons tearing down a homeless camp and his fractal weirdness with McKinsey and day trips to Somaliland (???) will do something. He's got a mean streak he showed off going after Tulsi. You tilt someone with a mean streak like that and they could really flame out publicly.
Biden just has to be incoherent at a prime-time event. If he's biting fingers in public... well. It's less a hope, because it'd be awful to hope for more of that, and more a numbers game thing.
Oh c'mon, Faux Progressives surely would excite socialists! :P
Aye, he's certainly much thought of. Hope he's doing alright.