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10 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

this is how you sound

really? huh... well I re-read my statement and I didn't see any references to capitalism, proletariat, bourgeoise, or anything else you literally just thought I said. 

here's a tip: back away from the keyboard when you are pissed off at something. nothing good ever comes when you are typing angry. I mean it. I sometimes get client or co-worker emails and I immediately see red because I don't like their tone, or believe they've misinterpreted something I said earlier. my initial reaction is to type a resounding FUCK YOU BITCH back to them, but I don't. I walk away from the computer, go outside, think about it a bit, and come back at a later time to respond. often times I re-read what their email said, and it was ME that may have jumped to an incorrect conclusion, and the F U to them would have made things entirely much worse.

so with respect, please chill the F out and open your mind a bit dude. none of us want any of the things you purport we are supporters of. if you really think you are doing the cause a favor by continuing on and on with this discussion, remember, you are not. you are making your cause that much more unattractive and insane to any of us who don't see things exactly as you do.

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socialist efforts are consistently hampered by poor ad copy; the right has exploited this all the way from fascism's aestheticization of the political to the trump era's clarion call of "the left can't meme!"

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13 minutes ago, Wunderbar said:

do you guys jerk off to dictionaries?

A dictionary is an excellent companion to verbal masturbation, but it's the thesauri and etymology that really get me hot and bothered. See fornication.

Edited by dcom
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who else remembers when zeff was an incel/MRA? it's nice to see all his hatred and bitterness has found a target other than women, so I guess his current form is a slight improvement. still, hopefully one day he'll grow out of this nonsense as well.

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My dad was part of the Clarté organization in the 60's, which was heavily radicalized by communist ideology at the time. I have a newspaper front page scan from the time with his mug and an exposition of the various death lists they planned for the bourgeoisie, there were even planned bombings and other nasty things in the works which I never got the true scope of, perhaps best left to the pages of history. He eventually exchanged one obsession for another and went into pentecostalism. 

I've encountered a lot of people with life experience from former communist states and that keeps coming up in the back of my head whenever the subject is brought up. I don't believe it's possible to successfully engineer an arbitrary  society based on some visionary ideals. History keeps being violent and everybody's owned by somebody. Maybe humanity will make it into space in time and we can worry about developing some universal values and commerce-free resource based economy, in the meantime it's just a matter of getting through the day, stave off the wolves. So yeah, they won I guess. Universal pensions will be a thing of the past in many countries some decades from now, so we'll have to save up, look after #1. 

Edited by chim
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1 hour ago, zero said:

really? huh... well I re-read my statement and I didn't see any references to capitalism, proletariat, bourgeoise, or anything else you literally just thought I said. 

here's a tip: back away from the keyboard when you are pissed off at something. nothing good ever comes when you are typing angry. I mean it. I sometimes get client or co-worker emails and I immediately see red because I don't like their tone, or believe they've misinterpreted something I said earlier. my initial reaction is to type a resounding FUCK YOU BITCH back to them, but I don't. I walk away from the computer, go outside, think about it a bit, and come back at a later time to respond. often times I re-read what their email said, and it was ME that may have jumped to an incorrect conclusion, and the F U to them would have made things entirely much worse.

so with respect, please chill the F out and open your mind a bit dude. none of us want any of the things you purport we are supporters of. if you really think you are doing the cause a favor by continuing on and on with this discussion, remember, you are not. you are making your cause that much more unattractive and insane to any of us who don't see things exactly as you do.

I think you need to reassess your psychological analysis capabilities if you think that from my posts you can infer that I'm typing angrily.  I'm very calm and laughing at you

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29 minutes ago, chim said:

My dad was part of the Clarté organization in the 60's, which was heavily radicalized by communist ideology at the time. I have a newspaper front page scan from the time with his mug and an exposition of the various death lists they planned for the bourgeoisie, there were even bombings and other nasty things in the works which I never got the true scope of, perhaps best left to the pages of history. He eventually exchanged one obsession for another and went into pentecostalism. 

I've encountered a lot of people with life experience from former communist states and that keeps coming up in the back of my head whenever the subject is brought up. I don't believe it's possible to successfully engineer an arbitrary  society based on some visionary ideals. History keeps being violent and everybody's owned by somebody. Maybe humanity will make it into space in time and we can worry about developing some universal values and commerce-free resource based economy, in the meantime it's just a matter of getting through the day, stave off the wolves. So yeah, they won I guess. Universal pensions will be a thing of the past in many countries some decades from now, so we'll have to save up, look after #1. 

doesn't sound like marxism to me.  sounds like typical anarchist tactics.  those plans for the bourgeoisie are pretty reprehensible, and not even required or helpful in achieving socialism

communism is not about engineering an arbitrary society based on visionary ideals, that is fourierist utopianism.  communism is a very concrete and well defined change built on top of capitalism.  there's a reason why states attempting socialism upon feudalism or other agrarian modes of production have serious issues

socialism is a very logical leap beyond capitalism, and communism is the very obvious next step beyond socialism.  it's the gradual dissipation of centralized power in favor of a more robustly designed system of labor allocation and resources distribution

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12 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

I think you need to reassess your psychological analysis capabilities if you think that from my posts you can infer that I'm typing angrily.  I'm very calm and laughing at you

ya, we're all just having a laugh here dude. this is literally me after just reading what you posted:

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51 minutes ago, caze said:

who else remembers when zeff was an incel/MRA? it's nice to see all his hatred and bitterness has found a target other than women, so I guess his current form is a slight improvement. still, hopefully one day he'll grow out of this nonsense as well.

I remember quite clearly and while this period of my life was disgusting, reprehensible, misguided, and stupid, I still retain many of these belief systems, however, they have been reformed in favor of a critique not of gender contradictions, but class contradictions.  no longer do i blame women for forcing men to be workers.  it's quite clear that the bourgeoisie would happily have women be workers too, even in the most degrading and harmful jobs, as has happened recently.  i have very many critiques of incels and MRAs, probably more than you given my intimate knowledge of them, and while my past self can easily be insulted, I'd prefer it not applied to my present self, which is firmly feminist and not in favor of MRA tactics or ideology, though supportive of their critiques of worker exploitation

Edited by cyanobacteria
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1 hour ago, cyanobacteria said:

I remember quite clearly and while this period of my life was disgusting, reprehensible, misguided, and stupid, I still retain many of these belief systems, however, they have been reformed in favor of a critique not of gender contradictions, but class contradictions.  no longer do i blame women for forcing men to be workers.  it's quite clear that the bourgeoisie would happily have women be workers too, even in the most degrading and harmful jobs, as has happened recently.  i have very many critiques of incels and MRAs, probably more than you given my intimate knowledge of them, and while my past self can easily be insulted, I'd prefer it not applied to my present self, which is firmly feminist and not in favor of MRA tactics or ideology, though supportive of their critiques of worker exploitation

You'll have many of those in life it's the reason Zero said what he said about maturity I'd reckon. My apologizes if that was not the intent of your comment, Zero. Being young is cool because you're very open to the world as a whole and ready to embrace many things. You'll be like voila I have the answer! Then, you'll hit a point in your life where most come to the conclusion that there are no answers and most ideology etc is bollocks. There's where you essentially enter adulthood. Now you can get stuck in your ways, which some do, so it's a double edged sword (question all things).

All I'm trying to say is don't get too wrapped up in your head. The best thing, in my opinion, is to get out and live life. Get into nature,start a sport like skateboarding, or pick one back up you gave up when you were younger. Ask a girl out and get rejected. Ask a girl out and get some culo. Leave the intellectual dribble for eggheads unless that's what you really want to do.

Anyways man I've read some of your posts here and at a certain point it all reads as angst. You could probably spend that energy on many much constructive outlets than writing up a anthology worth of text on a message board.

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7 minutes ago, Ethel said:

You'll have many of those in life it's the reason Zero said what he said about maturity I'd reckon. My apologizes if that was not the intent of your comment, Zero. Being young is cool because you're very open to the world as a whole and ready to embrace many things. You'll be like voila I have the answer! Then, you'll hit a point in your life where most come to the conclusion that there are no answers and most ideology etc is bollocks. There's where you essentially enter adulthood. Now you can get stuck in your ways, which some do, so it's a double edged sword (question all things).

All I'm trying to say is don't get too wrapped up in your head. The best thing, in my opinion, is to get out and live life. Get into nature,start a sport like skateboarding, or pick one back up you gave up when you were younger. Ask a girl out and get rejected. Ask a girl out and get some culo. Leave the intellectual dribble for eggheads unless that's what you really want to do.

Anyways man I've read some of your posts here and at a certain point it all reads as angst. You could probably spend that energy on many much constructive outlets than writing up a anthology worth of text on a message board.

i appreciate the concern but you are assuming quite a bit of things.  i may be a fast and verbose typist and I may waste too much both during and through my daily internet usage, but to invent other topics like this is wholly inappropriate, and to reduce my statements to your characterization is both verbally violent and inaccurate.  i do waste my time here, but so is everyone else

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Just now, cyanobacteria said:

i appreciate the concern but you are assuming quite a bit of things.  i may be a fast and verbose typist and I may waste too much both during and through my daily internet usage, but to invent other topics like this is wholly inappropriate, and to reduce my statements to your characterization is both verbally violent and inaccurate.  i do waste my time here, but so is everyone else

Naw, this is violent. Go pound salt up your ass.

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1 minute ago, Ethel said:

Naw, this is violent. Go pound salt up your ass.

i remember when i used to write posts in this fashion too.  after i gained a certain level of age and maturity i realized the futility of such forms of violence

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6 hours ago, Alcofribas said:

i don't understand the question you're asking. why would she "suddenly become a capitalist?" 

@cyanobacteriahas been pretty explicit that private property would still be allowed in his Marxist wunderland, which I believe included running small stores.

 

6 hours ago, Alcofribas said:

presumably this person hires people to assist with the work. the so-called "workers." as she expands she will likely not be doing the stuff you're talking about (rather vague stuff i might add -- "inventory flow?" lol) - this is all stuff that workers will do. for instance, as a regular staff member at a family owned bookstore i have been responsible for "inventory flow" (purchasing/ordering inventory, pricing it, processing it through the inventory system, shelving it on the sales floor, POS transactions, etc) absolutely 0 of which the owner of the store participated with in any way. this is just normal stuff that falls to the workers of a normal small business, owners are not typically in the trenches ordering pens and receipt paper or ringing people up at the register. i think your picture of the small business owner is a little out of touch - in my experience they relegate as much actual work as possible to people they under pay who never see any serious income boost when business does well and the owners just kind of "manage" whatever they want. typically they will enjoy all the perks, buy themselves nice things like new cars or homes or whatever.

they're definitely not ordering "resources" or dealing with inventory in any way. this is for workers and managers. sure, if they are so small they can barely hire any help they will have to do this - but this is generally not the condition of a "successful" small business and basically every business owner will try to ascend from having to do everything by themselves. you should also keep in mind that small businesses typically exploit workers in many other ways precisely bc they are too small to divide the share of work fairly. additionally, they have a lot of boundary fluidity with what they ask of staff - for instance, at the same job i mentioned above i regularly had to drive to the owner's sister's storage units to help her manage and move her massive collection of stuff. it's been completely normal for me as a worker in small businesses to do stuff like this - the owner just asks their employees all kinds of random shit. so when you talk about supply/demand/second stores you definitely have to be more realistic about what that really means on the ground for the people actually doing all that shit. it's quite cringe to see you comment about how the business owner should be "compensated with respect to her responsibility and risk." basically any worker at a small business would find this amusing ime

So if I read you right, you're saying they're already capitalist. I can't speak about your personal experiences, but in my own experience I know and have worked for owners who do work in the trenches. Considering the above statistic of 99% of firms in American being small businesses, with the majority of those firms having fewer than 100 employees, it is not implausible for owners to be doing a lot of that. My uncle owns (actually owned he's sold it since) a small hotel/pub/restaurant in Cornwall, UK, which had a staff of about 20 in the peak season (tourist place). I worked there for a summer (well a bit more than a summer) and while I definitely didn't make enough to buy a Rolls, I was able to work, live, bought a small motor, and traveled across England. My uncle did quite well out of it, but he also worked long hours doing so, as well as taking on all the risk by putting up the initial investment etc.

I use the example of a bakery because I knew some people who worked for a local bakery in Vancouver that did fantastically, and have opened up two other locations. The people I knew who worked there never (rarely may be a better choice of words) had to do anything outside of their job description, and certainly not for free. My wife also worked for a small business in Vancouver, and since she was essentially the office manager her work was quite varied but she was well compensated for it. The owner, while not doing much of the managerial work, did ironically do work which was the main thrust of the company.

Ultimately, decision making in small business lies at the feet of the owner, and so they are risking quite a lot for incorrect decisions. I have yet to see a persuasive argument for why an owner shouldn't be rewarded commensurate to their risk? Bookstores may not necessarily be highly capital intensive but there is still risk involved. And many owners would also feel badly should the business fail and their employees' livelihoods suffer (maybe not in the wacky cut-throat world of American small business?).

6 hours ago, Alcofribas said:

i mean, basically every single job i have has depended on workers doing way too much work to keep things going. and nearly every single job i have witnesses people working well beyond the efforts put in by the business owners. literal situations where if one under-payed person decided to leave the business would collapse. this is so common that it's kind of stupid to even mention it. it's so common for business owners and even regular managers to have absolutely no idea what's going on in their business. yeah, they're taking a financial risk - and they are also taking all the reward.

If those businesses are so fragile and the under-paid person knows it, that is significant leverage. Now, of course in the US unions and workers' rights have been eroded significantly, so that leverage is harder to wield. In countries where workers rights haven't been eroded as badly, that leverage becomes an important tool.

Sorry for being cringe.

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29 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

@cyanobacteriahas been pretty explicit that private property would still be allowed in his Marxist wunderland, which I believe included running small stores.

please provide direct quotes of this claim.  also, "my" "marxist paradise"?  what kind of nonsensical phrase is that? what is a "marxist geographical region" anyway? marxism is a way of analyzing political economy, not a political system.

29 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

So if I read you right, you're saying they're already capitalist. I can't speak about your personal experiences, but in my own experience I know and have worked for owners who do work in the trenches. Considering the above statistic of 99% of firms in American being small businesses, with the majority of those firms having fewer than 100 employees, it is not implausible for owners to be doing a lot of that. My uncle owns (actually owned he's sold it since) a small hotel/pub/restaurant in Cornwall, UK, which had a staff of about 20 in the peak season (tourist place). I worked there for a summer (well a bit more than a summer) and while I definitely didn't make enough to buy a Rolls, I was able to work, live, bought a small motor, and traveled across England. My uncle did quite well out of it, but he also worked long hours doing so, as well as taking on all the risk by putting up the initial investment etc.

I use the example of a bakery because I knew some people who worked for a local bakery in Vancouver that did fantastically, and have opened up two other locations. The people I knew who worked there never (rarely may be a better choice of words) had to do anything outside of their job description, and certainly not for free. My wife also worked for a small business in Vancouver, and since she was essentially the office manager her work was quite varied but she was well compensated for it. The owner, while not doing much of the managerial work, did ironically do work which was the main thrust of the company.

Ultimately, decision making in small business lies at the feet of the owner, and so they are risking quite a lot for incorrect decisions. I have yet to see a persuasive argument for why an owner shouldn't be rewarded commensurate to their risk? Bookstores may not necessarily be highly capital intensive but there is still risk involved. And many owners would also feel badly should the business fail and their employees' livelihoods suffer (maybe not in the wacky cut-throat world of American small business?).

If those businesses are so fragile and the under-paid person knows it, that is significant leverage. Now, of course in the US unions and workers' rights have been eroded significantly, so that leverage is harder to wield. In countries where workers rights haven't been eroded as badly, that leverage becomes an important tool.

Sorry for being cringe.

it's entirely possible that some owners do labor as well, but if they get all of the profits then the labor can be considered a side hobby next to surplus labor value extraction.  all the profits come from the workers.  i'm failing to see how you're justifying withholding profits from workers for the benefit of the private owner.  you have your oft-repeated statement of "the capitalist takes on risk" but they are definitely -not- doing so or they wouldn't be a capitalist.  they aren't risking their stability, future, and large amounts of time in proportion to the aggregate risk and time input of the actual workers.  youre just repeating capitalist propaganda and a bunch anecdotes not representative of most peoples' experience. and it's not even as relevant given that the primary issue of our time is third world worker exploitation, not even first world.

why do you have so much empathy for the business owner and seemingly none for the workers?  the poor business owner, so wealthy they can somehow buy or rent various retail locations and purchase a means of production, is risking so much in comparison to the wage workers who do not have this wealth.  the class orientation of your posts are so consistent, so skewed almost entirely in favor of the rights of the bourgeoisie, that it's just hard to take them seriously given the small percentage of the population they made up in comparison to wage laborers whose rights are more important given that they are being trampled more often and they constitute more individuals

every piece of bread sold by this business, which the business owner probably didn't even bake let alone assist in the productive labor for the manufacturing of the input materials like flower, is providing 100% of the revenue to the business owner which they can choose to provide crumbs of to the wage laborers according to their personal whims

it's truly an outrage

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5 hours ago, cyanobacteria said:

the unnecessary deaths caused by starvation and lack of medical care in even the richest capitalist countries are actually alright because the bourgeoisie is just trying really hard to provide for our material needs but they just can't keep up with all we expect of their hard working selves. it's not their fault that they have to own everything in the world, in fact it must be a hassle.  they're relieving us of the burden of being able to have democracy in the workplace by just giving us dictatorial orders from on high, which if we disobey will result in us being homeless.  in fact this threat of homelessness keeps us working hard, without them punishing us the global proletariat wouldn't get work done.  thank you bourgeoisie for punishing us like we deserve.  i'm a pathetic slave who not only has been physically colonized by the expectation of wage labor, but mentally colonized by the ideology of the bourgeoisie

You have some weird fetish where you think everyone who think Marxism is not the "greatest gee-willikers just the best way to ensure prosperity for all" must think that capitalism is 100% infallible. This is obviously not true. the issue is that Marxism and central planning will not improve on this lot, on the contrary, it will make it worse.

Here is a very good easy to understand PDF about why central planning has inefficiencies that lead to the downfall of the state, using the USSR as an example. https://carleton.ca/vpopov/wp-content/uploads/CPEs-IO-and-structural-inefficiencies.pdf, (I'll note here that the author of this paper graduated from the Economics Department of Moscow University in 1976). Here he has a paper on the new socialism and how it may be competitive. You should read it, you'll like it.

 

27 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

it's entirely possible that some owners do labor as well, but if they get all of the profits then the labor

Clearly they don't.

 

27 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

why do you have so much empathy for the business owner and seemingly none for the workers?

Why do you insist on erecting this strawman? How many times have I said in this very thread that strong regulation, strong unions, workers rights, pensions that adjust for inflation, universal health care, etc. are all necessary to provide for the dignity of workers.

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8 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

You have some weird fetish where you think everyone who think Marxism is not the "greatest gee-willikers just the best way to ensure prosperity for all" must think that capitalism is 100% infallible. This is obviously not true. the issue is that Marxism and central planning will not improve on this lot, on the contrary, it will make it worse.

Here is a very good easy to understand PDF about why central planning has inefficiencies that lead to the downfall of the state, using the USSR as an example. https://carleton.ca/vpopov/wp-content/uploads/CPEs-IO-and-structural-inefficiencies.pdf, (I'll note here that the author of this paper graduated from the Economics Department of Moscow University in 1976). Here he has a paper on the new socialism and how it may be competitive. You should read it, you'll like it.

 

Clearly they don't.

 

Why do you insist on erecting this strawman? How many times have I said in this very thread that strong regulation, strong unions, workers rights, pensions that adjust for inflation, universal health care, etc. are all necessary to provide for the dignity of workers.

why are you equating socialism and communism with central planning or claiming that I've done so?

why are you denying that the owners get all the profits? they DO.  and they get to decide how to pay the employees, and almost always decide to give them the absolute minimum required to keep them around rather than their fair share.  they also oppose quality of life improvements electorally to help their workers get an edge up on them

regulation, unions, workers rights, inflation adjusting pensions, universal health care are all necessary for worker dignity, but not sufficient.  you've yet to explain how to get it or explain why capitalism so regularly fails to provide those things, and in many cases provides them at one point in time then removes them later with the workers being unable to win it back electorally.  you are a utopian saying it would be great if they had that, and that it's theoretically possible to have that under capitalism, so capitalism is okay, when in reality capitalism opposes that.  it's like you haven't read marx at all as you barely if even are precognisant of the obvious refutations of the bourgeois ideological drivel you write

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8 hours ago, cyanobacteria said:

you're better off asking whether we want a microsoft given their history of monopolizing software markets to the detriment of customers.  same for bmw and shell.  given their insistence on not fixing climate change to maintain their profits.  i oppose them for the same reason i oppose too much of a focus on industry-tied workers' unions under socialism.  the oil workers union cannot be allowed to override the decision to fix climate change just like the corporations should not be allowed to, yet the corporations themselves are more powerful than the states.  corporations are not a natural outgrowth of business activity, they are a particular type of organization of private property rights and a pool of maintained wage laborers or otherwise. 

That is an interesting question: do we want a microsoft? A heavily regulated microsoft might not be bad, considering their software (as much as I dislike using it) does power large amounts of economic activity. And Bill Gates apparently was one of those who could actually code (the quality of his code is in dispute, but apparently you couldn't bullshit him) and run a business.

Corporations and corporation-like business arrangements have been in existence since 3000 B.C. in Mesopotamia, for example, (see p.15 of the linked PDF), in Assyria (see linked PDF), and so on throughout history. Yes formal corporations didn't exist until 1555 with the Muscovy Company, but the practice and type of company organization has been in existence for almost as long as there has been "civilization".

 

9 hours ago, cyanobacteria said:

that baker is not taking on risk, the workers are taking on more risk than her since presumably they have less capital to pay for their life tragedies, given that they've resorted to wage labor.  she may be "risking" money if the new business fails, but that money was earned from what exactly? from the labor of the workers in her business.  you ask questions presumably on how these topics are interpreted within a marxist lens but still fundamentally are incapable of understanding that lens yourself given the assumptions in your questions

Generally, to start a business, you take on a loan from a bank. This is not without considerable risk, given that close to 50% of small businesses fail in a given year. The money was not earned from workers in her business, as her business didn't exist yet. Your last sentence is the perfect example of why others think you arrogant: I understand the Marxist lens well enough, but I was interested to hear your thoughts and interpretation. Instead you merely parrot back Marx, and rehash the same material over and over. When confronted with data and evidence about your claims, you ignore it (see my refutation of your interpretation of Chinese "democracy", discussion on the mix of private/public enterprise and its efficacy in providing good mass public transit, your claims on North Korea, etc.), so as such, I am no longer interested in hearing your interpretation.

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