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There’s a fact that a lot of people commenting here are overlooking. Marx himself admitted that in the lower stage of communism, wages will have to exist until people’s mindset on labor changes. It’s simply not true that communism will not work because ‘people don’t like working’.
edit: grammar
Not really? Organization around mutual aid exemplifies time and time again people’s willingness to do all kinds of labor without pay as well as capital’s antagonistic response to the act.
Wages only have to exist until people are provided an alternative means of well being and self empowerment. That they can observe the value of labor is intrinsically tied to survival and well being, rather than extrinsically and arbitrarily.
What prevents me from working a few months, getting enough money for a computer and internet, and then have food and housing for free and don’t work for the rest of my life?
Yep, every existing socialist society past and present requires labor, and paid for it. We can’t jump from A to Z, we have to build socialism and build communism, and we have to continue developing. Wage labor as the sole motivator for labor in society is something that gets phased out as work becomes more for satisfying needs than profits for the few.
Also, in the higher stage of communism, labor that is necessary but not preferred — cleaning the sewers, for example — could be done in turn.
Fuck I’d be happy to clean sewers if I had a stable high quality of life and I knew that my work was directly contributing to the community and its health. (In fact, most sanitation workers currently have that perspective - sanitation work is care work, and something to be very proud of).
This far in the future, you can find someone like me who would willingly design sewer-cleaning robots. My labor is being wasted on pointless billionaire projects.
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It’s also just not true. Most people will find work to do if they have none. That’s pretty much what hobbies are. And all of the people I know who lived very long lives stayed active volunteering the whole time. My grandmother was like that, and died at 97 shortly after she had to stop for health reasons.
Not to mention that if your basic necessities are covered, you could still work to buy things that aren’t necessities.
this tweet is philosophical junk
Are you saying that it’s bad philosophy or that philosophy is bad?
Okay but you won’t do stupid bullshit in inefficient ways that keep me in 5000$ wine and a gilded skull throne of all the kids who hit puberty and became too old for me to fuck. So nothing of actual value to society.
so is it even really ‘work’?
People are going to work for pleasure. That’s how we’re wired. What I find interesting is that people don’t get this. They also never see any motive to work beyond the profit motive. I guess that what a system designed to squeeze all the blood out of you does… you have none left to wander your mind.
Betterment of yourself and your part of society, human connection, just fucking around with curiosity and silliness. That’s what I know deep down I want to guide me, but I’m also fighting against an internal system that had me hearing “you have to work if you want to eat” since I was a child.
You have to eat food to eat. That’s it. It’s literally the basis of life. I don’t see birds commuting and paying taxes on their food
You have to eat food to eat. That’s it.
…and that food has to come from somewhere. Someone has to work so you can eat.
Surprise, it comes out of the fucking ground! Of course if you want to eat something that is not native to your region it’s a whole thing with exploitation and whatnot. I just find the disconnection with nature/life jarring
Food doesn’t simply erupt out of the ground on its own, not in quantities necessary to feed any kind of significant population. Farmers do in fact have to do labor to produce crops.
The bit about food not simply erupting from the ground on its own in quantities sufficient to feed a significant population goes double for cities where you have lots more people and lots less growing land.
Of course that was hyperbole. I am not saying that growing food is effortless or easy. I’m just saying that food is natural (duh), while coerced farmers aren’t natural, but rather a product of capitalism allowing you to buy any kind of food known to man, fresh, in a huge supermarket, and throw it away if it is not sold. Or any another authoritarian system for that matter, it would just happen in different ways. As my other comments show, I’m talking about different scales. Cities provided an advantage not long ago in many ways - infrastructure, culture, economy, opportunities etc -, but as modern technology shortened distances, I feel less and less people can find a compelling reason to live surrounded by miles and miles of cement and smog. High-density and high-volume communities/housing are two different things.
You started with a rejection of “you have to work if you want to eat”, my whole point was someone has to work if you want to eat, and if that someone isn’t you they probably need some kind of incentive for why they are working so you can eat.
food absolutely erupts out of the ground on its own lmao, the fuck do you think vegetables are?
you can literally go out into the wilderness and just find food in the ground, what the fuck are you on about
Not in quantities sufficient to feed any kind of significant population. You could at least get to the end of the first sentence before you reply.
Birds commute all the time. If they aren’t where the food/nesting material/mating partner is, they commute there.
Yes, they follow their basic needs. Migrating and commuting are not the same thing. They don’t have to deal with made up “you have to work from the office” situations was my point
The specific issue in the US is the exploitation of labor to serve the need for infinite profits. In an ideal state, the government (for the people, by the people) would stand between the needs of labor and the needs of profit by providing labor with legal protections from exploitation. When those in government become one with the needs of profits, the people lose.
What we are seeing now after Citizens United is that it becomes more profitable to lobby/capture the government to increase profits than it is to buy more productive labor. By extension, they use a portion of their profits to convince labor to vote against the interests of the many by identifying and focusing on divisive culture issues.
Now who is poised to protect labor? Used to be the news media holding the government accountable to the people, but now most influential news media organizations are held to the need for infinite profits. They have something to lose now if they report on an issue that interferes with their ad revenue.
The solution? Talk to your neighbors and engage in your local community. Invite others to the community. Support each other by sharing skills, knowledge, and resources locally. Serve your community rather than insatiable unidentifiable shareholders. Also be wary of organized religions that can be used to incite conflicts or division. Not saying religion is bad, just that large organizations dilute the accountability needed to prevent the reliance on infinite profits.
On the other hand, if nobody would work, or even want to do the dirty jobs like trash removal, we wouldn’t be able to have a functioning society.
These sort of comments are almost a non sequitur as they just take ridiculous ideas from capitalism.
Capitalism is fine as long as it’s controlled well. Any system that doesn’t have the right laws in place to limit it would be abusive within minutes. Put laws in place to restrict how much wealth each single person can have, for example, that would be way more productive than writing up nonsense like this
You think that you personally ought to be threatened with starvation, illness, and homelessness?
No, because I have a job
Do you really expect food to magically materialize out of thin air in your home that also just popped into existence?
If nobody works, how do you exactly.expect humanity to survive?
I think yours is the non-sequitur, or at least whataboutism. You’re introducing a “counterexample” that isn’t actually all that related to the original point. The original comment is just pointing out how capitalism is based on coercion, which is just a statement of fact.
or even want to do the dirty jobs like trash removal
Not to nitpick, but I don’t think that would be the case. We’re ultimately talking about building a society where everyone’s needs are met regardless of what they do, end game communism. And I think you’d still see people like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JahXgey1sK4
For the lazy, it’s a group called Pedal People. They go around collecting trash in their city on bicycles with bike trailers, and they haul a respectable quantity of trash, recyclables, compost, etc. They do get payed, around $33 an hour, and it’s a co-op.
Even in a true communist society with no money and all needs met, people like this would still exist. These people legitimately enjoy their jobs collecting trash on bikes, sustainably, even in the snow and heat. And it’s not the money that’s the only point for them. They’re doing a good service, getting exercise, have direct control over their labor, etc.
Replace that paycheck with a society that respects their work with ample food, shelter, healthcare, etc and they probably would still be doing this. People like to be useful and helpful, we’re social creatures that evolved to live in communities.
We just need communities that don’t threaten each other, and instead let people do what they can do to be useful.
I’m going to be honest here, I am extremely confident that even if free housing in something like a homeless shelter and free cheap basic food was provided on a universal basis free of charge by the state, thus eliminating the “work or starve” situation by ensuring everyone’s basic biological needs can be met without labour, the people who make posts like this one would then claim that “work or eat boring food” counts as coercion.
The state has the capability to keep people alive. That’s not the issue. People are generally not content will merely being kept alive and not sick. They want to live enriched lives with access to air conditioning, video games, cell phones, hamburgers, and national parks. All of that takes an enormous amount of labour to produce.
the people who make posts like this one would then claim that “work or eat boring food” counts as coercion.
The food doesn’t need to be boring. But even under that assumption, it would still be less coercive, and therefore better.
All of that takes an enormous amount of labour to produce.
It sure does, but we live in a time of historically unheard of automation and excess. Over a century ago Kropotkin calculated a 5 hour work day/300hr work year to be the minimum needed per worker. And we’ve had a shit load of technicological advances since then. Even with the increases in amenities I’d be shocked if the true current number isn’t drastically lower.
And your examples are all examples of things that people would genuinely like to work on. For example Mr. Technology connections is obsessed with heat pumps. I’m working on open source games, even while currently living under the coercion of capitalism. And I wouldn’t mind putting significant time into working to maintain a nation park, so long as it didn’t mean that it fucked with my food, shelter, and healthcare.
Of course, I don’t think that food served to the needy (or to the vagrant, in this scenario), should be boring on purpose, and of course those in charge ought to endeavour to provide whatever variety is possible, but it just so happens that the types of food that can be most easily produced, and thus the most efficient in terms of converting hours of labour into calories, tend to universally be judged as boring. I’m guessing it will be a lot of grain, maize, potatoes, and soybeans.
I absolutely am not going to take someone’s word on the notion that 300 hours of labour per annum (which is a one hour work day) is sufficient to maintain the current standard of living.
Infinite profit is a capitalist feature not a “USA problem” the media never fought for the working class because it seeks profit as well, the capitalist can buy it the working class cannot
Work toward what? Because it isn’t just work to create the things they need.
Unless you assume people will work out of goodness of their hearts, every system has to somehow coerce people to work. You can’t fulfill everyone’s basic needs without workers.
And yes, maybe people would do some types of work anyway, but good luck finding people who find working in sanitation as an interesting hobby.
Making sure everyone has basic needs doesn’t mean you don’t pay people to work. People would work because they want the other things you get from money aside from survival.
So you are in favor of keeping an underclass of people that you can threaten with death to force them to work?
Having an underclass and (monetarily) coercing everyone to do their fair share of work to meet everyone’s needs are two very different things. If I need to spell that out for you, you may want to think about these things and how they would look in practice a bit more for yourself before discussing them.
A billionaire’s family isn’t under threat of dying if they don’t get a job. They already have what something like UBI would give to everyone else. The only way to use pay to force labor is to have people so poor that not having an income would lead to their death.
That is called an underclass.
Everyone refusing to work would always lead to everyone’s death. Blame God for making reality this way. People must be coerced to work when needed.
But you immediately jumping to the opposite extreme case as if there were only two options shows you have no interest in actually understanding what I am saying. Can’t teach someone who doesn’t want to learn. So I think we are done here.
People must be coerced to work when needed.
This right here is where you go wrong. It is simply untrue. You’re just using it to disguise how much you want to advocate for slavery.
How is it untrue? And how is working to secure your own needs slavery? Are you living in a fairytale world?
Feigning ignorance? Okay, slaver.
Someone would probably engineer a new sanitation machine or system that doesn’t need as much human labor or exposure with unsanitary stuff as an interesting hobby. But yeah, people would have to build communities and the sense of community, and come to a consensus on how that community would want to divide labor; i.e. the community could vote to take turns doing undesirable jobs, or allow people to in undesirable jobs to work less hours or something.
Now that I think of it, things could be radically different if everyone is exposed to the undesirable work. Communities would probably opt for composting and less or compostable packaging in lieu of having to do a lot of trash work. They’d probably opt to eat less meat rather than working at a slaughterhouse.
Preach. We are so deep into capitalism that we forget how we could do things “the human way”
It’s interesting but you did not answer the issue. What do you do when someone refuses to do the work assigned to them. Do you coerce them (so same as capitalism) or do you just let them off and encourage more people to refuse as well, because why should they do it if others don’t.
You reward those willing to do the hard jobs. Coercion’s ethical cousin is called “incentive”.
Capitalism also calls salary incentive.
Calling a Nazi a socialist doesn’t make it one. Calling me a duck doesn’t make me one.
They’d be hurting their family, friends, and community, and risk becoming ostracized. That should keep most people on the shared vision. Everybody having a say from voting or some shared consensus gives people ownership over decisions and should increase cooperation. There would likely still be some people who wouldn’t cooperate, in which case they can leave or be voted out of the community and try to join another, which I suppose is coercion. I suppose there could also be lighter consequences for not doing what the community agreed upon (sanitation duty or peeling onions or whatever) that the person could choose to do if they wanted to stay.
I should say that in these hypotheticals I’m envisioning an anarcho-syndicalist or perhaps market-socialist type of society made up of a network or federation of smaller communities. I don’t think this would work very well if it was one nation-sized “community,” because people likely wouldn’t care as much about the plights of people on the other side of the country.
So an even stronger type of coercion. Since in capitalism, you can earn money in any way you like and are able to. Here it is what you are assigned or banishment. It’s nice you throw in words like community, but this is a very authoritarian regime at it’s core.
You get banished from your employer under capitalism, and don’t have a vote on anything the employer does. I don’t typically think of truly democratic systems as authoritarian; everyone comes to a consensus to what work everyone is “assigned” to do.
There are 10s of thousands of employers and you can often be self employed as well. There isn’t a one employer that can banish you. But yes, in many cases, employers do have some amount of power over you. However, what you describe already exists. It’s called working for the government. How well is the democracy working out for government employees?
I think that people need a purpose and I think in a society not based on maximization of profit, people would have the ability to choose what that is and not have to do “whatever pays the bills”
Imagine a society where your doctors want to be doctors and your musicians want to be musicians.
In my experience watching my father retire and just living as an adult, people get squirrely when they dont have something to work on.
Work doesn’t have to be what capitalism values to be work, it can ve creation, it can be gardening, it can be helping others.
Id argue people do fundamentally have drive to work as they have drive to have purpose. Work just isn’t necessarily the suffering capitalism has led us to believe it is.
Yes and no. There fundamentally are jobs that are both necessary and unpleasant. It is easy to talk about things like gardening and art, but we need sanitation. Even some level of bureaucracy. There are many kinds of work people may be willing to do for free or cheaply, but also many types of work almost no one would.
PS: You can actually see this in volunteer driven open-source software projects. There are many volunteers to develop features or even fix bugs, but they sorely lack management roles and work on important but niche features (unused by most volunteers) like accessibility for blind people.
Well, then make those jobs come with benefits proportional to their unattractiveness
Ok, where do you get those benefits from? Someone needs to work on those, and they will also require benefits. If people don’t have to work, some portion will inevitably either not work or work hobby like jobs (that don’t usually produce very attractive benefits). So you have less things being produced and require more things to guarantee everyone’s needs and significant benefits for working peoples on top of that.
You seem to be under the impression that everything that’s being “produced” right now is of actual value and must be kept up or replaced under a non-capitalistic system. I’d argue the contrary. There is so much braindead wasted labor being performed and energy wasted in the current system that would be completely freed up if our main economic goal were to change from “growth and competition at all cost” to “ensure a good life for everyone”. At the same time, our ever increasing ability to automate work and solar energy becoming incredibly cheap means that less and less of the necessary production actually requires human labor.
Add to that that most people like to have community and purpose, and would be happy to give back to a society that guarantees their wellbeing for rather modest reward, and I really don’t think finding enough people to do the actually necessary work would be a big issue at all. Kids that stock up their pocket money by mowing lawns are basically already making that exact deal.
Ok, as long as I don’t have to participate in this “utopia” of yours and can keep living as I do, go for it. Of course if you need to coerce others to participate, you may have lost the plot somewhere.
Idk I know nurses and janitors that actually enjoy that work. Some people do enjoy doing sanitation and we should let those who enjoy it do it and get their needs met for it. Perhaps the unpleasant jobs should get more incentive? (Currently that’s not the case)
Anyway my main point is incentive instead of coercion. People should all play their part in society but should have their needs met no matter how they choose to play that part. Society not based on maximization of profit would value different jobs than our current Society.
I agree with you, I have thought a lot about a hypothetical reality where people work paid jobs for 1 or 2 days a week (or 50-100 days a year) to do the things needed for society to function and spend the rest as they wish. It seems somewhat achievable compared to abolishing coerced work all together.
Adding another comment to address this PS.:
There are many volunteers to develop features or even fix bugs, but they sorely lack management roles and work on important but niche features (unused by most volunteers) like accessibility for blind people.
Those volunteers are still volunteers inside a capitalistic system that have to get by somehow. Of course they’re going to spend their extremely limited free time on the things that benefit them directly (features they need, bugs that affect them). The incentive structure is set up against them. That would be very different if they didn’t have the pressure of keeping afloat in spite of their volunteer work.
Perhaps, but whether it is by knowing my self or people I work with, I kinda doubt that.
Also, what exactly is it that you would need to bootstrap a group like this? Does it involve coercing people that want to keep capitalism to participate?
I agree with this philosophy, but it does require you to admit that before civilization we were all slaves to nature. I think this is true, but some people might object that this meaning of “slave” is different from the conventional meaning.
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And if it wasn’t, at least it was brief.
Well, no. Infant mortality was crazy high, health problems were different, but life expectancies were 60-70 years if you survived puberty. We only recently hit that in agricultural hierarchalist society, and are slipping back below it.
Yeah, I’m aware of all that. Just my attempt at humour.
“The only thing keeping me alive is the hope of dying young.” - Brother Theodore
Sorry. Common misconception I felt the need to correct. From that period of history people just assume things about and treat vibes as facts.
The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
Coercion isn’t necessarily the problem - in a society that produces for needs, what if there’s not enough people who want to produce furniture for instance? What about agriculture? If you don’t meet the quotas, people’s needs won’t be fulfilled, so some degree of coersion would be necessary.
Maybe, maybe not? I find that your point is probably more valid on big scales encompassing tens or hundreds of millions of people. But I believe that in a “real society” - one where you mostly know and care for other members - people would be much better inclined to spend part of their time fulfilling others’ needs. Ultimately I believe that most humans are ok with taking “someone has to do it” jobs and will do them well and with pride, as long as they can see the impact of their work. And trade will always be a thing for “fulfilling needs” across different societies
Yeah, and for things to be traded, they need to be first produced somewhere. If it’s a necessary item like insulin or electronics or whatever and lots of ethnostates that you describe need them, then the producers would need to meet a quota or else there’d be shortages.
That’s where coercion might come into play that I was previously talking about - what if there are jobs that are required to fulfill people’s needs, but there’s not enough people who want to do them? You have to somehow force or persuade enough people for everyone’s needs to be met and for society to function, and my coercion I don’t just mean “threaten with violence” or “make them starve”, it could also be more peaceful methods like having some cultural status for being so noble or something.
ethnostates that you describe
Whoa buddy, please adjust your reading glasses. I’ve never talked about ethnicity because my idea of society/community does not involve it. In fact it is quite diametrically opposed to an ethnostate. I do not appreciate you transforming my definition of “where you mostly know and care for other members” into something I am opposed to.
You keep saying “quotas” like something that must exist, and I simply disagree with that. This might be interesting reading.
and my coercion I don’t just mean “threaten with violence” or “make them starve”
FWIW, I believe that “labor” as I’ve described here can be fair and acceptable. I would be ok with working in a chem lab or electronics fab for a part of my day if the “compensation” (loosely) is fair and I believe it is a decent use of my time to improve the world around me.
peaceful methods like having some cultural status for being so noble or something.
I wouldn’t give a fuck about being made an aristrocrat, and sounds like you’re just describing bribery anyway
I get this sentiment, but why would anyone want to farm then? Who does the work? Hell, in the US we need immigrants to do it because nobody else will. I guess my response to this will always be ok if nobody has to work, then who will, and why? And if nobody decides to work, then there won’t be the resources to make it so that nobody has to work. Nobody has ever replied with a solution to that aside from “well if we’re in a post-scarcity world then we don’t need people to work…” but we’re not. Not even close.
It’s kind of like libertarianism in my mind. If there are no rules and everyone is self sufficient, then who’s to stop the people who don’t want to earn their keep from just using force against those who do?
Capitalism, the system where we allow poverty to exist
I think we do more than allow it.
Indeed we do
Why, again?
You trying to get off or something?
Yeah usually but that’s on another screen. Why do you ask?
$
And that’s what exactly?
Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.
~Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Okay so now we’re right back to ‘why?’.
There is apparently always someone who values their own wealth over any benefit of others. So, they exploit others to enrich themselves.
It’s just selfishness all the way down.
The others, have little wealth of their own, so have little power to resist the exploiter.
So, we keep doing this because of kayfabe and terrorism?
That makes it sound like it’s just a passive side-effective and not a critical tool in the elite’s arsenal in keeping the working class subjugated by holding the promise of suffering over our heads if we choose not to spend a third of our lives generating wealth for them.
It wasn’t my intentions to make it sound like that and hoped that it would come across as you stated it
There was rampant poverty in the USSR too. As there is in China. They don’t seem too winning in N Korea either.
They are still capitalist societies
Nice whataboutism there. But as you seem to be under the illusion that these countries are not capitalist (and presumably therefore communist, considering the countries you chose and the usual dogma that comes with them) let’s have a look.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
First, let’s define communism. Luckily the world wide web has done that already for us.
Communism (from Latin communis ‘common, universal’)[1][2] is a political and economic ideology whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products in society based on need.[3][4][5] A communist society entails the absence of private property and social classes,[1] and ultimately money[6] and the state.[7][8][9]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
The legacy of the USSR remains a controversial topic. The socio-economic nature of communist states such as the USSR, especially under Stalin, has also been much debated, varyingly being labelled a form of bureaucratic collectivism, state capitalism, state socialism, or a totally unique mode of production.[260]
some leftists regard the USSR as an example of state capitalism
Maoists also have a mixed opinion on the USSR, viewing it negatively during the Sino-Soviet Split and denouncing it as revisionist and reverted to capitalism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union#Legacy
So the USSR was not communist, but rather somewhere between capitalist and its own thing.
Modern-day China is often described as an example of state capitalism or party-state capitalism.[290][291]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China#Economy
Not communist by any stretch of the imagination.
North Korea is a totalitarian dictatorship with a comprehensive cult of personality around the Kim family.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea
Not communist.
Capitalism is a shit system for vast swathes of the population and results in poverty, exploitation, and death.
Is communism the answer? I don’t know, it’s never truly managed to take off anywhere without either being corrupted from within or attacked from without. But capitalism most certainly needs to go in the bin.
The USSR was socialist. Public ownership was the principle aspect of the economy, and society was run by the working class. It was not yet communist, but it was certainly socialist. The PRC is also an example of socialism, public ownership is also the principle aspect of the economy, same as the DPRK. The extent to which markets play a role varies greatly in these countries, but markets are not synonymous with capitalism, and socialism is not defined by the absence of private property just as capitalism is not defined by the absence of public property.
I suggest you avoid using wikipedia if you’re trying to get a Marxist perspective on existing socialist states past and present. They aren’t written by Marxists but by anyone, and opinions presented by the authors should not be confused for Marxist analysis. If anything, they have an overwhelmingly liberal bias, and should be aconowledged as such.
The Soviet Union was capitalist. Right-o.
By the way, congratulations on finally getting Wi-Fi on your planet.
The “Lucy” argument isn’t as compelling as some tankies seem to think. We’ve had plenty of communist regimes. They’re all abominable. No good holding the football out and saying “but this time it’s real communism”. Communism is rancid because people are rancid.
So do you want to take away freedom to starve and die of hunger
Claim is ok, the unspoken “so everything will collapse” is bullshit. In the end, Hampton is right: “work (do what someone else wants) or starve” is not how anyone should live
work (do what someone else wants) or starve" is not how anyone should live
That’s literally the bedrock of civilization… It has been this way since Sumerians.
And normies still can’t quite figure it out
All that history in school, nada
We done slavery for at least a long as there has been civilization. That doesn’t make it good.
Correct but it makes it the reality that people keep denying
No one is denying shit. We’re stating that our systems dont have to be based on coercion. It is possible to build a society off of cooperation instead. Denying that is denying that we made this shit up and it can be how we want.
Calling american wagie a slave, will get you kicked out of the party lol
Most people are denial. Fediverse is not reflective of modern American discourse.
People who use the term “most people” are usually full of shit in my experience.
(Guess who the commander-in-chief is of the “most people” crowd)
If you had have a different experience with the public, please do share
I dont give a shit what most people think. Its a fact not an opinion. Our systems are built on coercion because we’re just making slight changes to them over time. Thats why they are that way. It has nothing to do with the thoughts that talking heads plant in the average Americans’ mind.
Edit: reading this after posting I would just like to clarify that I am not trying to be pointed or angry with you. It comes off that way tho. I really do mean we have the choice in how our societies operate.
I don’t take online discourse personal, all good.
really do mean we have the choice in how our societies operate.
I don’t even disagree here in theory… In practice, it is hard to explain it this way though.
We are ruled, and our opinions mean nothing and most people are unwilling to do any opposition.
So it is just few freedom enjoyer doing their lil direct action while scream into the fedi void while we are increasingly being subjugated by the owner class.
And the normie sees nothing wrong and thinks the freedom enjoyer is the weird one.
Lol. Aren’t you cold there, at the peak of mount of scholarship?
It hasn’t been like this around Ramana Maharshi, just to point one name you can look into. And human life and possibility have never been about just sustaining body till it drops dead.
Oh, my little know-it-all, you say plenty of people have been living like that for plenty of time? Good catch, take a candy, good boy
An obscure example does little disprove my thesis…
Bedrock of civilization my ass, lol. Did I ever say I was looking for a dispute with you?
Your thesis?
Civilization as we know exists due to slavery and violence.
How do you know it’s “due to slavery and violence” rather then “despite slavery and violence”? It seems more likely to me that civilisation is rooted in cooperation and solidarity, while slavery and violence is a cancer that grows on top of it, and hurts almost everyone involved.
List an example of a civilization that was not build by force and labour extraction from the under class.
Cooperation was achieved at a gun point. There is no solidarity even in communist regimes.
