ou can say all you want that they shouldn't get paid more than a school teacher or janitor, but people are still going to go sell out concerts and watch movies — Marchesk
I wonder how some of those wage slaves feel about not being able to go to work. — Marchesk
Pretty bloody good, by all accounts. And to drill it into you again: the point is not to get rid of work. It is to ensure fairly compensated work. — StreetlightX
But who decides and how do they decide what fair compensation is? — prothero
StreetlightX
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But who decides and how do they decide what fair compensation is?
— prothero
Ideally, anyone with a stake in how things are run. This means workers, employers, and even the surrounding society and community for whom the work impacts upon - and ideally enriches (and not just in a monetary way). I don't have any easy answers as to the mechanisms by which such principles might be incarnated. It's even possible and likely that the market will still play a role in some manner (markets, after all, are not capitalist: they existed long before capitalism, and will probably exist long after it. The problem with capitalism is the political elevation of a very specific configuration of the market as being the sole arbiter of value). — StreetlightX
Say I decide to start a business. I purchase the land, have the building constructed, and buy the equipment. — Marchesk
We see the stores of the bourgeois parts of town (& the newly-gentrified ones too) and say that we want that shit and even more — StreetlightX
These are all capitalist structural aspects by which you acquired the capital in the first place. That's why some, at least fundamentally, revolutionary act is required to remove these structures and their effects. — Isaac
We’ve been told to live with less and less by not only Green Capital, but by the Church, by our liberal “friends,” and even by fellow comrades. Fuck that shit. Nah; if we’re going to be putting our shit out on the line it’s definitely not going to be so that I can live simply. — StreetlightX
Do revolutions start at the beginning? Because as it stands, we're already in the middle, with people owning lots of various things and having different amounts of wealth. How would you change that? — Marchesk
This is where the question of force comes in for a Marxist revolution, because you can't start over at the beginning without making everyone give up their possessions. — Marchesk
Would the revolution be a generation thing where the restructuring of society is to ban inheritance? I'm not sure that's enough, because in the meantime you still have tons of capital at play — Marchesk
Force is being used to maintain ownership of possessions as they are. If I set up camp in a corner of your estate the police would force me off. — Isaac
Which I would say is a good thing in general, because people want to own their own shit. — Marchesk
What's not good is deciding I should have no estate, because it all belongs to the community. If you want to wreck an economy, that's a good way to go about it. — Marchesk
All the discourse about small-time landlords reminds me of something I think a lot about small businesses, which is that most of the time when you hear "oh but if you did [good leftist thing] what about small businesses?" it's a good argument for why the left shouldn't particularly want many small businesses. Like, if a business is too small to pay minimum wage / endure burdensome regulation / offer family leave then maybe we want it to be replaced by a bigger business that can offer those things. Likewise, when people are like "oh well some landlords are so small-scale they'll go bankrupt if they miss one month's rent"--okay well, is there some kind of social interest in having rental units be owned by a business that's probably too undercapitalized to replace a boiler in an emergency? Should we avoid attempting policies we otherwise think would be socially desirable to keep that landlord afloat? Maybe they should sell their buildings to someone who can operate at scale.
Leftists spend a lot more time railing against big business than small business because big business runs the world, but from the perspective of a worker or tenant big business is easier to regulate, easier to organize, better able to concede to demands, etc. and all else equal it's often preferable from a worker or tenant perspective.
If modern hunter-gatherer communities are anything measure of how we used to live (which is, of course uncertain) then for the vast majority of human history we did not particularly "want to own our shit". — Isaac
unless you detail the way in which declaring property to be owned by the community would bring about this economic disaster. — Isaac
While not undermining the eventual goal of having people own their own homes and businesses. On which note: small investors just trying to save for retirement or for a down payment on a house also fall into this category of “bourgeoisie so petit they’re basically proles”) — Pfhorrest
I think it was more of what worked as a survival strategy for hunter-gatherers. Either way, I don't think using hunter-gatherers as a guide for of a high tech economy in a world of 7.8 billion people and global trade is very useful. — Marchesk
But I was more thinking about the short term chaos of declaring all property public. — Marchesk
A lot of people will not be in favor of that, for starters. — Marchesk
you'd have arguments over how to fairly divide everything up, and what happens to all the former capitalists. And you'd have the poorer people who think it's their turn to own shit instead of sharing the wealth. — Marchesk
As per above. I don't think there's a lot of evidence for the idea that humanity as a whole are 'into' any set thing. People are 'into' property ownership at the moment — Isaac
We are mostly whatever our culture makes us, change the culture, you change who we are. — Isaac
If we change that culture there's no theoretical reason why people would not be in favour. — Isaac
By "at the moment", you mean the history of civilization? — Marchesk
We're not ants, as someone once said regarding socialism. — Marchesk
Good luck with that. I can see Northern Europe style socialism/capitalism. I can't see the full blown thing becoming mainstream in places like the US. — Marchesk
Communism has been tried. — Marchesk
We’ve been told to live with less and less by not only Green Capital, but by the Church, by our liberal “friends,” and even by fellow comrades. Fuck that shit. Nah; if we’re going to be putting our shit out on the line it’s definitely not going to be so that I can live simply.
— StreetlightX
I agree with this sentiment. If you're going to create the Marxist "utopia", then aim for one that offers the same perks as the capitalist one. The majority of us don't want to go back to lifestyle of peasants or monks. That's not a good selling point. — Marchesk
Along the lines of what Isaac may have been suggesting, the capitalist imperative of economic growth is baked into our culture, is baked into us, and it is simply unsustainable. Also, a cultural shift is possible whereby the meaning of ‘well-being’ is more eudaemonic than economic. — praxis
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